More homicidal than Herod

Many Christians observe Dec. 28 as the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The day marks the story, recounted in Matthew’s Gospel, where King Herod orders the slaughter of all male children under two years of age in Bethlehem itself and in the region surrounding it. He does so to try to kill the child the three Magi had come to see, the child he saw as a threat to his political power.

Others have linked this story to our modern abortion regime. They are right so to do. We don’t know how many precious children perished through Herod’s murderous decree. But we can be assured it adds up to a fraction of those unborn babies killed since 1973—now over 65 million.

This year marks the second Innocents’ Day since the Supreme Court handed down Dobbs v. Jackson. How Dobbs changed our comparison of abortion with the Gospel story, and how it did not, demands our attention.

Dobbs changed the perceived main culprit for legalized abortion. In ancient Palestine, the massacre originated in the mind of one man. It painted a perfectly bloody picture of Herod’s political tyranny. He imposed his evil, violent will on those families and those children. For half a century, pro-life Christians in America could pin much of the blame for widespread abortion on not one but on a few—seven justices on the Supreme Court. The high court’s decision in Roe v. Wade had created a right to the massacre of innocents, employing a tortured reading of the Constitution. Subsequent cases, especially Planned Parenthood v. Casey, largely had reinforced that right, though now in the name of a post-modern conception of “liberty” and “equality.” Dissenting justices on the bench and commentators in the public sphere frequently condemned this jurisprudence as a kind of judicial tyranny. A majority of justices imposed an abortion regime on the American people and maintained it with a rigid hand.

Yet, since Dobbs, the parallel of imposed tyranny doesn’t hold up as well. Now, the choice whether and how to regulate abortion has resided with the American people, either directly or through their representatives in the state and national governments. No longer forced to comply with Roe, how have the people reacted to their re-established power to protect the lives of the innocent? Did our Herod pass away with the demise of Roe and Casey?

No. Though Roe died, much of its spirit lives on. The American people have responded with resounding affirmations of the abortion regime. In a dominating string of elections, voters have decisively sided with legal abortion. So far, these pro-abortion victories do not reveal a blue/red divide between states. Instead, they display a broad base of support, stretching from progressive California and Vermont to swing state Michigan to right-leaning Ohio, Kentucky, and Kansas.

Parallels remain, too, in the reasoning for the ancient and modern massacres. Herod ordered the killings in a wicked attempt to destroy a threat to his rule. Our country’s support for abortion ultimately stems from a wicked attempt to destroy a threat to our own autonomy. We have internalized the definition of liberty given in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “At the heart of liberty,” the decisive opinion stated, “is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” We have demanded to define our own existence against the laws of God and the very existence of a set of human beings who get in the way of such self-definition. That statement comprises nothing less than self-deification and the absolute tyranny that always accompanies such an understanding.

Make no mistake—the American voter so far has chosen to play the tyrant. Our political tradition has recognized that tyranny can erupt from a political majority, from the bowels of popular government. Sin is never washed clean by crossing the 50 percent threshold of votes. This is true because we have long recognized that justice is not defined by voters but by the laws of God, natural and revealed. The very concept of popular rule stems from a principle—human equality—that cannot itself be rightly decided by ballot. Thus, in our recent votes, we have replaced an aristocracy of Herods for a democracy of them.

On this Innocents’ Day, we should continue to mourn the current massacre of the unborn that remains rampant in our society. We should feel shame for the collective Herod so far expressed as a majority of the American voters. But we should not lose heart. Since Dobbs, we now have the opportunity and the power to persuade each other, not just a few robed judges. We yet can turn our collective heart toward justice, toward protection of and care for the unborn innocents. Let that day come, that future Innocents’ Days remember abortion as an evil of the past, not an ongoing slaughter.