Woe to you lawyers! You load men up with burdens grievous to bear, while you yourselves do not lift a finger to help carry these burdens. Woe to you! You build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. You yourselves are witnesses that you approve the deeds of your fathers: they killed them, and you build their tombs! Therefore also the wisdom of God has said, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will slay and persecute, so that the blood of the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah who perished between the altar and the temple. Truly I say to you, it will be required of this generations. Woe to you, lawyers! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You have not entered in yourselves, and those who were entering in you have hindered.

I intend to be a lawyer because of, not despite, Jesus’ harsh words to lawyers. He implicates them in the destruction of Jerusalem and in the blood of every righteous man slain from the foundations of the earth. It would be an understatement to say that a negative view of lawyers has some scriptural basis. Nevertheless, it is because of the things the wisdom of God says about law that I am choosing lawyering as an occupation rather than trying to make my career in biblical studies, either in academia or behind the pulpit.

To read Psalm 119 is to feel the joy of a man experiencing law as all it was meant to be — a way that God interacts with and enlightens the life of man. The Psalm is dominated by ten synonyms for law: torah ‘law’, ‘edah ‘testimony’, derek ‘way’, pikkud ‘precept‘, hok ‘statute’, mitzvah ‘commandment’, tsedeq ‘righteous(ness)’, mishpat ‘judgment’, dabar ‘word’, imrah ‘saying’. For those who take Psalm 119 seriously as scripture, one thing is inescapable: law is something worth delighting in.

And yet it is also true that law is the means by which the strong oppress the weak. Jesus puts it this way in Matthew:

But woe to you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: you neither go in yourselves nor allow those who are going in. Woe to you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You devour widows’ houses, and make pretentious long prayers. Therefore you will receive the greater damnation. Woe to you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You circle land and sea to make one convert, and when he is made, you make him twice the son of hell you are!

The law, as God intends it, is to be a means by which weak and strong, rich and poor, may be given impartial justice. The reality on the ground, on the other hand, is that it is often a means by which the weak prey on the strong. One formulation of this predatory principle, one which can be wince-inducing for those who too enthusiastically turn capitalism into a value system, is James’ rhetorical question to the twelve tribes scattered abroad, “Is it not the rich who oppress you?”

One response to the inequities of the world-system around us, a response not to be discounted, is to disengage from the structures of oppression. This will doubtless sound strange to modern democratic man, who sees the State either explicitly in the case of North Korea or implicitly in the case of the United States as the central institution of salvation.

The Amish and Hutterites, and to a lesser extent any other Christians who choose to handle their disputes out of court, are examples of this way of responding to systemic injustice. And while they are not perfect, they have made some very real progress in seeking justice. All the notoriety about shunning aside, it is true that the Amish have managed to build a peaceful society with alternative structures of conflict resolution that has worked more or less successfully for two hundred years. And their number has increased during this period, growing from perhaps 5,000 Amish about ninety years ago to about 500,000 today. To do this with acceptable levels of material prosperity and superior levels of physical and mental health to the wider culture is no mean task. We must not, as some Christians do, dismiss out of hand their model of approaching society.

It is in some ways similar to what the early church did. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul puts it this way:

Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? . . . I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? No, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goes to law with brother, and that before infidels! Now therefore there is utterly fault among you, because you go to law with one another. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather be defrauded?

To the extent that early Christians heeded Paul’s words, to that extent they set up their own ways of dealing with disputes (including simply absorbing a loss rather than going to the corrupt unbelieving world-system for justice). To that extent they also took care of social welfare, doctrinal discipline, and other such issues “in house.”

But such a situation could not last indefinitely, and this is due to an inconvenient biblical principle that the shallower sorts of evangelical thinking ignore: diligent, careful, consistent following of biblical principles leads to numerical, economic, and material dominance in society. Try as you might to avoid it, the meek can and will inherit the earth. The unrighteous most assuredly are storing up their wealth for the righteous.

The Christians multiplied and began to replace unbelievers as the dominant group in the Roman Empire. All this was done without weapons, and through several different avenues. First, the Christian community took full advantage of human biology. While Romans often used abortion or exposure to destroy their own offspring, Christians refused to participate in either. The Didache, a document of the very early church written sometime between 50 and 120 AD, commands “thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born” (Didache 2:2, Lightfoot Translation). This in itself was an advantage. Secondly, Christians made the concept of becoming a Christian by adoption more than just a metaphor: they literally took babies that the pagans exposed to die, incorporating them into the community of faith. This practice added to Christian numbers significantly and was so threatening that the Roman Empire outlawed the practice on pain of death. Christians, emboldened by their faith, ignored the order and continued taking the pagan babies. Third, pagans who saw the manifest superiority of the Christian way of belief and action converted in droves. This started among the lower classes but it was not too long before the elites began to take notice as well. Because those in power have the most to lose from a social revolution, they resisted strongly, but they were eventually won over.

In short, Christians carried out a cultural conquest through faith rather than force, through moral rather than military means. Those segments of modern evangelicalism which seem to take joy in losing decry the reign of Constantine as the moment when the church lost its way, laying down its prophetic mantel as a select group outside of the world and calling it to repentance, and instead becoming worldly. While it is true that the seductive lure of power has worked no small corruption in the history of the church, cultural victory was not a betrayal but a logical outgrowth of the separate holiness of the church.

When I quoted Paul above, I left out the following and replaced it by ellipses:

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more so things that pertain to this life?

And so the verdict is this: the concept of the saints judging the world is embedded in the very passage which urges separation from its legal system. This paradox needs to be pondered carefully. We know from Genesis that the calling out of Abraham from the idolatrous nations was, paradoxically, the beginning of a process by which all of the families of the earth were to be blessed.

Similarly, it is true that the law was given to Israel to make it distinct, to separate it from the nations. But was the ultimate goal of the law the exclusion of the gentiles from God’s blessing? Heaven forbid. They were excluded that they might one day be included. The blessing of all nations through Israel was the end goal of the law, as Isaiah puts it this way:

And it shall come to pass in that day that the mountain of Yhwh’s house will be established on the top of the mountains, and will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will flow into it. And many peoples will go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountains of Yhwh, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion the law will go forth, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge among the nations, and will rebuke many peoples, and they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war any more.

Just as the separation, that is, the holiness of Israel was to bubble over into blessing for the wider world, so also the separation of the church was to do the same. In retrospect, it is no wonder that the Roman Empire was Christianized. Are we to be upset that a sustained three-hundred year evangelistic program converted the majority of people living in the Empire? Are we to be upset about the fact that the Emperor became Christian? Heaven forbid!

Now, if it is the will of God that none should perish, but that every knee should bow and declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ, this surely includes rulers. And, if the conversion of these rulers is meaningful, it will have repercussions for how they rule. Thus, the Christian Emperors, for all their faults, did many good things. They outlawed the killing of infants by exposure. They caused the gladiatorial games to cease, so that human beings no longer killed other human beings for sport. And as Christianity spread beyond the borders of the dying empire to new lands, further victories occurred. In the Middle Ages, for all its faults, the spread of Christendom lead to the elimination of slavery within its borders.

Those who look at Constantine as a disaster for Christianity must think seriously about what they say when they urge Christians not to become involved in “worldly affairs.” When those in power came to Christianity, should they have abdicated? I can imagine a Christian Emperor saying, “Christians ought not to legislate their morality. I will step down as soon as I can find a suitably pagan replacement who can ensure the continuation of infanticide, the murder of Christians, the sport-killing of men in arenas, and the enslavement and maltreatment of millions of people.” That this course should have been implied is the implication that modern pietistic Christians must face up to when they speak with unqualified disdain for the Christian-domination Roman Empire and the Christian-dominated Middle Ages.

The Amish today, if they continue to be prolific, will at some point face, and are beginning already to face, the same question as the early church: how long can a Christian counter-culture experience long-term sustained growth and still remain a counter-culture?

In 1920, 5,000 Amish made up one two-hundredth of a percent of the United States. As of today, they make up one-sixth of a percent of the United States. They are still decidedly a counter-culture. But if they continue to double in population every twenty years, they will make up about 1% of the US by 2060, and 4% by 2100. If present growth rates continue (and growth rates do change, I know) the Amish will make up one-third of the United States by 2160.

How much of the US has to be Amish before the Amish are forced to become involved in politics. If the Amish made up fifty percent of the US, would they be able to stand back and refuse to vote while our politicians launch yet another senseless war that kills countless innocent people overseas? If they Amish made up seventy-five percent of the US, do you think they would stand by as the remaining quarter allowed millions of abortions to occur? Of course not. The truth is that, no matter what the Amish may say, the current political non-engagement of the Amish is only a temporary holding pattern. Unless the Amish way of life collapses, they will at some point become activists.

In fact, that day may soon be upon us. My sources close to the ground in Holmes county tell me that Amish there are already discussing voting in the next election. It appears that their aversion to abortion and gay marriage are causing inner soul-searching over the morality of simply leaving politics to the current godless leadership. This soul-searching will only continue to increase as Amish faithfulness causes these meek people to inherit more and more of the earth.

What I am getting at is this. I understand that there is a time and place for Christian non-involvement in the unjust structures of the world. I understand that there are deep systemic injustices in modern law, that there are structures of oppression embedded in the law. (Anyone who doubts this has not looked seriously at the vast difference between the amount of legal aid that rich and poor can buy, the absolute mazes of loopholes that the guilty can hide in, or the destruction that the war on drugs is wreaking on the urban and often black poor.)

But there comes a point, both corporately and individually, when silence in the face of injustice becomes a betrayal of the gospel. For me, I am persuaded that this point is now. And so off to law school I go.

This is an unusual debate for me. I’m used to debating pinkos and commies and right-wingers and suchlike — and I’m sure Gary [North] has had similar experience — where here, Gary and I agree on 99.8% of everything and I’m not sure what the other 0.2% is except this one issue.

– Walter Block, around 2 minutes into this video.

For those of you who have read the work of both men, Walter Block is one of those incredibly libertarian folks sometimes referred to as ‘anarcho-capitalist’. Gary North, on the other hand, is a Christian Reconstructionist, of the hard-core variety, the sort whose ideal government would institute the death penalty for idolatry, infant sacrifice, abortion, witchcraft, blasphemy, false prophecy, contempt of court, murder, adultery, homosexual relations, bestiality, rape, incest, kidnapping, life-threatening perjury in a capital case, and incorrigibility toward parents [1]. And so I am confused. Either Walter Block’s knowledge of North is limited to what he has read on lewrockwell.com, or Walter Block is deliberately ignoring the differences between stateless libertarianism and theonomy because of what a good ally Gary North makes. I suspect the latter.

If you look carefully at the debate, you will notice Block’s frequent complimenting of North, while North is a bit more reserved about Block, who is among the sort of people North considers allies of tyranny. If my instinct is right, this one-way showering of love is a symbol for what has been going on in a deeper level in American culture. Pro-choice anti-state libertarians are quickly realizing that if they are going to achieve the goals they desire, they are going to need the aid of larger segments of society. For the foreseeable future, anarcho-capitalists are going to remain a tiny minority of the population, and if they want to influence the direction of the culture of the United States, they are going to need allies.

Though philosophically theonomists like North are utterly opposed to anarchist libertarians, in practice they are united on many issues. For a hard-core libertarian, one of the most odious things that the government has done is to take the great mass of people aged six to eighteen and forcibly schooled them in statist schools at the expense of the taxpayer. While Rothbard was on the sidelines writing writing Free and Compulsory, the nascent Christian Reconstruction movement, in both its “hard-core” and “soft-core” varieties, was opposing public education in a much more powerful way: by beginning a mass exodus of religious children from the public schools and by rapidly building from scratch a network of private schools geared not toward a tiny rich elite, but toward religious folks with average or even below-average income. From a Rothbardian perspective, the libertarian impulses within the conservative Christian population are not pure, but are nonetheless scattered across such a massive population that an adulterated libertarianism of millions of politically active Christians has a far greater potential for increasing human freedom, at least over the next few decades, than all the books a dozen “pure” Rothbardians can crank out in their tiny think-tanks.

The primary concern of the anti-state libertarians is not what would happen in Gary North’s ideal world, but rather North’s actual effects on our current world. And in our current world, North and a host of others like him are chipping away mightily at the foundations of statism: high taxes, constant wars, coerced education, so-called “Social Security,” twisted interpretations of the constitution, and the massive variety of welfare payments. The death penalty for blasphemy or homosexual activity, are so far away from the current state of American politics that libertarians don’t see those things as realistic threats.

This is why, if you visit (as I hope you do) the anarchist site lewrockwell.com, North’s writings feature regularly and prominently. Libertarianism and a variety of other ideologies are coalescing to form a surprisingly powerful voting block that we might call the “anti-war right.” Such figures as Pat Buchanon, Ron Paul, and Rand Paul represent this growing trend. Notably, all three are pro-lifers, but they are rarely, if ever, criticized on that count by libertarians. Similarly, anarchist Hans Hermann Hoppe, a powerful figure in right-libertarian social theory, sees abortion as a sign of a dying culture. In the Libertarian Papers, which more than any other publication is the modern voice of libertarian social theory, Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski has been arguing powerfully against considering the pro-choice position libertarian.

For all practical purposes, libertarianism has given up the pro-choice battle — another symbol of the growing significance of the anti-war right wing. And while I am not Rothbardian enough to allow eight-year-olds to inject heroin, and I am not conservative enough to start looking for witches to burn, I am, on the whole, quite happy with what’s emerging from the dance of these two camps.

[1] You can find a list of the things that Christian Reconstructionists consider capital crimes on page 51 of Ray Sutton’s book Second Chance. To the best of my knowledge, any accusation that would institute the death penalty for any other infractions is false, frightened liberal websites notwithstanding.

Say not, A conspiracy! about all that these people call a conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear; do not be afraid. It is the LORD of Hosts whom you shall sanctify: let him be your fear; let him be your dread. — Isaiah 8

Pursuing them, even if they turn out to be true, is usually far from worthwhile, both academically and psychologically. So says Gary North. For a more thorough treatment of the topic of conspiracies, see his book Conspiracy: A Biblical View.

I, as you may know, have a deep suspicion of the operations of government. In condemning the many harmful things our government does for us, I try to stick with publicly known facts. I know a number of people who are always insisting on one conspiracy theory or another, claiming that the Council on Foreign Relations is full of devil worshipers, or that Bush deliberately allowed the towers to fall, or even that the Masons sacrifice babies.

I do not disagree with their positions — I don’t know whether the CFR worships Satan, or Bush downed the towers, or the Masons sacrifice babies. If I had to bet on these things, I’d bet that any single one was false, but I don’t know. To try to verify any of those three claims would require a huge amount of sifting through a huge number of sources, each in doubt, each making claims that I must either choose to believe or dismiss.

But let’s say I slogged through the sources and interviewed people in high places, and saw things, and eventually came to the conclusion that those secretive Masons are indeed sacrificing babies to the owl-faced god Moloch. I have a few pictures, which some say are doctored. I’ve interviewed a few witnesses who are decried as slanderers, and a few more witnesses who I am convinced up but whom I must keep anonymous to protect their own babies from being sacrificed by revengeful Masons. And I’ve decoded the vast symbolism of Masonic lore so that I can explain how their public documents and pictures contain hundreds of cryptic references to their practice of infant sacrifice.

So what next? Do I go and tell people about this? I’ll be held up to public scorn as a fool. My pictures will be denounced as doctored, my witnesses will be denounced as liars, and my own mental stability will be called in to question. I will probably question my own sanity. Can I be right when the whole world is sure I’m wrong? Will the Masons be out looking for revenge? Will I do in a tragic car accident or be found looking like I committed suicide?

There’s nothing to be gained, really, by going down the road of conspiracy, except years of wasted life, a small collection of possibly unstable disciples, and perhaps 15 minutes of fame as a curiosity on some internet radio show.

No thanks. I’ll just continue to move along with the uneasy sense that some things are hidden from us. I’ll stick to what I can know and work on that. Mark Twain said that what bothered him was not what he did not understand of the Bible, but what he did. And what bothers me about the world at large is not what’s lurking in the shadows, but what’s staring us in the face in the open.

When there’s monsters dancing outside in the front lawn in broad daylight, why worry about what might be hiding under the bed?

1 But the second commandment of the teaching is this:

This is an odd thing. I’m not exactly sure what the first commandment of the teaching was.

2 Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not corrupt youth; thou shalt not commit fornication; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not use soothsaying; thou shalt not practice sorcery; thou shalt not kill a child by abortion, neither shalt thou slay it when born; thou shalt not covet the goods of thy neighbor;

Thou shalt not kill a child by abortion. Here we have evidence that from the earliest times, Christians were not only opposed to the notorious practice of exposing infants, but that they even considered abortion to be murder. Moving on from these laws of behavior we go on to laws of speech:

3 Thou shalt not commit perjury;

This is key. The obligation not to commit perjury made it not only into the Ten Commandments, where it shows up in two different forms, in the third and ninth commandments, but also into the Didache. When we think, today, of “bad things” that people shouldn’t do, a typical list will include such popular crimes as sexual immorality, doing drugs, being mean, stealing, and even lying. Almost no one today, if asked to draft a list of ethical rules to live by, would put perjury on the list. But perjury, if we are to trust the Bible, certainly deserves mention. The court system is meant as a final place of decision when people cannot manage their relationships on earth. It is the last referee. This is why people are put under oath in courts — because the business of the judiciary is critical to the functioning of any people. And because the Judaism and Christianity are both intimately concerned with real human life, it is no surprise that early traditions in both should take special care to maintain the integrity of the judicial branch.

3 Thou shalt not commit perjury; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not speak evil; thou shalt not bear malice;

4 thou shalt not be double-minded or double-tongued, for to be double-tongued is the snare of death.

5 Thy speech shall not be false or empty, but concerned with action.

Three whole verses are concerned with laws of speech. Not only false speech but empty speech is forbidden. It is reminiscent of Matthew 12:36, in which Jesus tells us that “every idle word which men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.” This correspondence of Matthew 12:36 and Didache 2:3-5 leads to two observations. First, there is morally speaking no right to free speech (whether it ought to exist politically is another matter). We are not morally free to say whatever we like provided we avoid lying, or shouting fire! in a movie theatre or hate speech or any small list of things currently considered terrible. No, these negative demands are not all that is put on speech. There is also the positive demand that our speech be constructive rather than “idle” or “wasteful.” Second, the fact that I can barely read three or four verses of the Didache without immediately referencing Matthew argues for a close relationship between the two works.

6: Thou shalt not be covetous, or rapacious, or hypocritical, or malicious, or proud; thou shalt not take up an evil design against thy neighbour;

And finally, with verse 7 we will finish chapter two just as we finished chapter one: with a general command that is tempered by a “but”.

7 thou shalt not hate any man, but some thou shalt confute, concerning some thou shalt pray, and some thou shalt love beyond thine own soul.

Today marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, and affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.

I am committed to protecting this constitutional right. I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption.

And on this anniversary, I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.

Notice, of course, that one crucial thing never came up in all this.  And that’s the unborn child.  The unborn child is never mentioned.  There is no explanation for when people start to get rights, no discussion of the trade-offs involved in abortion decisions, nothing.

Sure, there’s a meaningless bit of rhetoric about preventing unintended pregnancies.  I’ve even heard him described by some as “pro-life.”  But anyone who sees abortion as a “private family affair,” sees it hiding in the constitution, and sees it as a victory for women’s rights has no business pretending he’s in any way friendly towards any sort of respect for the unborn.

We hear people say things like “abortion rights,” “reproductive rights,” and “keeping your hands off my body.”  But all we hear is people saying that their personal considerations outweigh a human life.

The world looks in horror at the recent revelations concerning an abortion mill in Pennsylvania.

Johnson learned last week that Philadelphia prosecutors believe Gosnell frequently delivered late-term babies alive at his clinic, then severed their spines with scissors, and often stored the fetal bodies — along with staff lunches — in refrigerators at the squalid facility. Tiny baby feet, prosecutors said, were discovered in specimen jars, lined up in a macabre collection.

While the abortion clinic in question is certainly a horrifying case, how one reacts to it will say something deep about one’s world view.  Some people see this as an unprecedented evil.  But some of us see it as nothing more than a particularly graphic representation of what’s been protected by law judicial precedent in the United States ever since Roe v. Wade.

Perhaps we’re just thick-skulled, but we fail to see any real difference between severing a baby’s spinal cord in the womb and severing it two minutes later.

We see morally depraved double-talk just about every time abortion gets mentioned in the media.  Here’s a sampling of the sorts of statements that make us shudder.  See if you can find the verbal triggers that set us off:

1. “”Did he do that to mine? Did he stab him in the neck?” Johnson asked at her North Philadelphia home. ‘Because I was out of it. I don’t know what he did to my baby.’”

In this one, we have a woman concerned that her baby might have been killed with scissors.  And yet she was under anesthesia at an abortion clinic.  To us, it sounds frightfully twisted to express outrage about the particular way an elective abortion was carried out.

2. “The grand jury said while it believes Gosnell killed most of the babies he aborted after 24 weeks, it could not recommend murder charges for all of the cases.”

I don’t even know where to start on that one.  I’m not even unsure what that means.

3. “”His entire practice showed nothing but a callous disdain for the lives of his patients,” said the nearly 300-page grand jury report, released Wednesday.”

Patients?  I assume that word refers to the women, not the babies, right?

4. “‘His contempt for laws designed to protect patients’ safety resulted in the death of Karnamaya Mongar,’ the refugee from Bhutan, the grand jury report said.”

5. “Gosnell, at his arraignment Thursday, said he did not understand why he was being charged with eight counts of murder.”

Once you can see statements of that sort and understand how they look to a pro-lifer, you’ll be able to understand why pro-lifers are often so angry, and why a few pro-lifers have engaged in violence against people involved in abortion.  To be fair, pro-lifers have so far killed eight people in the US.  Just eight.  Compare that to the hundreds of fully born babies killed by a single doctor, or to the perhaps fifty million abortions in the US, and you can see that statistically speaking the pro-life movement as a whole in quite docile.

Rather than being amazed at the amount of rage coming from pro-lifers, we should be amazed at how little rage comes from pro-lifers.

The city health department last month released statistics that showed 39 percent of pregnancies ended with induced termination in 2009.

“Induced Termination.”  It sounds grave and almost accidental.  And 39%?  That’s incredibly high.  Abortion’s not being used as a stopgap when all else fails;  numbers like this would seem to suggest that for a great many couples, it’s being used as a primary form of contraception.  It makes me suspicious that Pope Benedict might be wrong when he says that people today have a “”sheer fixation on the condom.”  Though the condom is not, as he noted, the real solution to the problems of human sexuality, if people had the sort of fixation he believed they did, we wouldn’t be dealing with a 39% abortion rate.

Let’s look at the statistics.  The health department tells us that there are 225,667 pregnancies in New York City, 87,223 of them resulting in abortions.  And this handy age distribution table of New York tells us that in New York, there are 4,383,237 females.  Of these 18.9% are 14 or younger, and 36.8% are above 45, there are approximately 1,941,774 women in New York who are between the ages of 15-44.  Of those, let’s imagine that 31% are either infertile, trying to get pregnant, or sexually inactive (those numbers from here).  That leaves 1,339,824 women vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies.  If condoms are the only form of contraception they use, and the condoms are used correctly, they will have 26,796 unwanted pregnancies.  That’s a lot of unwanted pregnancies.

But even if every single one of those mothers aborted the child, the abortion rate of New York city would be instantly only 30% of what it currently is.  But the real rate of abortion of unintended pregancies in the US is 54%, so with proper condom use we’d be likely looking at 14,470.  Unacceptable?  Yes, but it would be a mere 16% of the number of abortions currently occurring in New York.  That’s 72,753 babies.

Yes, I am a conservative.  And yes, I do support sex only within marriage.  And yes, the Catholic Church might just be right about God’s intentions regarding the fertility of married couples.

But in a world where 54% of sexually active people would end any unwanted pregnancy, I’d ask anyone who thinks they even might be in that 54% to immediately, at the very least, start using protection.  Too many lives are on the line.