In 2002, under the auspices of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, I enrolled in a course on Celtic Christianity. As part of the course requirements, I spent a week in Ireland. At the end of a very full week, we had a night off in Dublin. I decided to go it alone and walked around the beautiful city, stopping at a sidewalk cafe for coffee and scones. I decided to relax and just “people watch.”
It was already as dark as night at 5 p.m. when the offices closed and the streets were filled with people catching cabs, going to a bar, or headed home. Dublin is the capital of the Republic of Ireland and is located on the island nation’s east coast. There are about 1.2 million people who populate the city. Established in the 7th century, Dublin is the largest city in Ireland.
I had been impressed by the ancient castles and cathedrals and by the sheer beauty of both the land and its people. It is filled with a rich history, Christian history included.
But what caught my eye on this night was not the things ancient. Rather, I was struck by the youth, energy, and vitality of the people on Dublin’s streets. The vast majority of the people in suits and carrying briefcases were, well, youthful.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that I was on the campus of a graduate school with a professional dress code. Both men and women were energetic, even at day’s end, and walking with purpose.
I thought about the last time I had “people watched” in Atlanta. The business crowd was much older with more gray hair, more wrinkles, and considerably less energy. Where did all the young adults come from, I wondered. They were everywhere in abundance! Why was Dublin so different than Atlanta?
And then it hit me. In Ireland, abortion was illegal. All of Ireland’s youth had been allowed to live. Whereas in America, we killed off 55,000,000 unborn children since 1973, Ireland kept having babies. While we took potential earners and business leaders out of circulation, Ireland had a steady, unbroken influx of children who would grow into adulthood.
While we were committing genocide and national suicide, the children of Ireland thrived. And now, as the generation that perpetuated this moral crime, we are paying a price.
A Harvard study in 2015 found that the Social Security trust fund will be depleted in 2033. Why? Well, that the government has raided and misused the funds is one reason.
But another more fundamental explanation is that not enough young people are paying into the system. There aren’t enough workers.
Why? Because we killed them.
Imagine if there were 55 million people age 45 and under that were working, or would be working, and paying Social Security taxes.
But there aren’t. We cut our own national throat for the sake of “personal rights” and convenience. We are reaping what we have sown. And it will only get worse.
When I read that Ireland was considering legalizing abortion, I was saddened and alarmed. I knew that if they did, the scene I saw before me in 2002 would disappear in a few decades. I was certain that, if that happened, Ireland would be committing national suicide.
The blog, nymag.com, described it this way: “Ireland has voted to repeal its ban on abortion. In what Prime Minister Leo Varadkar called the ‘culmination of a quiet revolution’ over the past few decades, the ‘Yes’ (on repeal) campaign won a landslide victory in a nationwide referendum.
“Though votes were still being counted on Saturday afternoon, but the Yes campaign’s lead was insurmountable after already having performed well in exit polls on Friday. Most observers thought the vote was going to be much closer, and the referendum followed months of intense campaigning. Exit polls also showed that both women and men overwhelmingly supported the repeal, and that the majority of the ‘no’ voters were over the age of 65.”
It is ironic that the young adults of Ireland were able to outvote their elders. As in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the young people of the Republic of Ireland have made a fateful decision.
Abortion of children is not just wrong, it is evil. It is diabolically, ruthlessly evil. This nation is still paying the price for the evil of slavery. One cannot enslave generations of human beings without serious repercussions. Our forefathers proclaimed that black people were not fully human, thus, the elite — those who were “fully human” — could use them as they chose.
A nation cannot destroy its own young and still expect to survive. While it takes a while to “bleed out,” we have cut our own throat. Now, Ireland has done the same. What appears to be a great victory is, in reality, the opening chapter in a terrible defeat.
If we somehow survive as a nation, future generations will wonder at our stupidity and self-centeredness. We have proclaimed, and now, so has Ireland, that children in the womb are not fully human.
Therefore, we — the true humans — have the right to destroy them. For the sake of our own convenience, we kill our young. And, in so doing, we will destroy ourselves.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA between Newnan and Peachtree City (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at bishopdavidepps@gmail.com.]
