FRANKFORT, Ky. (BP)–The Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion is the Dred Scott decision of the 20th century and “will be remembered with equal horror,” R. Albert Mohler Jr. told pro-lifers Jan. 27 at the Kentucky capitol.
Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was the keynote speaker for the Kentucky Right to Life rally which marked the 27th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision which made abortion legal. About 300 people attended the event.
In 1857’s Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court justified slavery and declared that black people had no rights or legal protections. But despite the defeat to the abolition movement, slavery was abolished in America less than 10 years later.
“A nation’s conscience can be turned,” Mohler said. “It can be awakened.”
It took a civil war to win the battle over slavery, but pro-lifers can hope to win the war over abortion “with much less carnage” by working diligently for its prohibition, Mohler said.
Pro-life advocates must “educate, legislate, organize, agitate,” Mohler said. They must support politicians who defend everyone’s right to life, and they must remove from office those who support abortion.
“We must not apologize for single-issue politics,” Mohler said. “We must keep the issue before the people. We cannot settle for silence.”
The 20th century was one of the most “murderous, barbaric and genocidal epochs” in history, Mohler said, thanks in large part to the legalization of abortion. The century has seen economic expansion but moral recession.
“We have elevated convenience over conviction and comfort over compassion,” Mohler said. “A nation cannot long prosper economically when it has sold its soul for personal choice.”
The problem is a spiritual one. “A nation that rejects God and rejects Jesus as Savior and Lord will reject life,” Mohler said.
Mohler referred to Deuteronomy 30, where God presented the children of Israel with a choice: “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity. … So choose life and live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying his voice, and by holding fast to him.”
“May God quicken the conscience of this nation,” Mohler said. “May we choose life and live.”
