No Glee in Guilt
- Jim Daly President, Focus on the Family
- Published May 15, 2013
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The trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell came to a conclusion today when the Philadelphia doctor was found guilty of first-degree murder. It took the seven-woman and five-man jury ten days to reach its verdict. The proceedings were filled with gruesome and horrific details, including charges that Mr. Gosnell murdered children born alive. The more I learned of what happened inside that clinic, the more my heart was rubbed raw.
To be clear, the guilty verdict elicits no glee. But what we saw inside the courtroom was an expose of evil, and it always benefits society to bring wickedness and evil to light. The victims of Gosnell's crimes join the sad and long roll of more than 50 million children aborted in America since 1973. The United States is an infinitely poorer nation without these precious lives, each person unique and loved by the God who made them.
It should be the prayer of all people that the Gosnell trial will ultimately serve as a turning point in the ongoing effort to promote the beauty and protection of all life. The innocents must not die in vain. “Justice,” as Thomas Jefferson once put it, “cannot sleep forever.”
I believe that for too long, too many have viewed abortion as a clinically sterile procedure. It is anything but. For too long, too many have been so obsessed with the “right” to abortion that they’ve thought very little about the pain to the people involved, and chosen to ignore what actually goes on before, during and after the abortion itself.
As a Christian, I process heartbreak and evilness through the long lens of the Bible, believing that man often means to inflict evil upon others, yet somehow, someway, someday, the Lord will bring good out of the very worst of all things (Genesis 50:20). We know that God identifies with human suffering, especially the suffering of children. If abortion breaks my heart, I cannot even fathom how it touches His.
And as a Christian, I not only turn to my Bible to understand and process the evil of this fallen world, including the evil inside Gosnell’s clinic and countless others like it around the world – but just as importantly, I also cling to the cross. Jesus willingly carried His cross to Calvary because He so hated evil that He was willing to die for you and for me – and yes, for Kermit Gosnell, to save us from an eternity separated from God.
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