I must get this e-mail once a week. It comes from a local clinic that helps women in difficult pregnancies find alternatives to abortion. The e-mail I get is a prayer list, asking me to pray for these anonymous women and their unborn children. This week there were 14 women on the list, which is pretty much typical. As I scanned the requests it occurred to me that each of these women represented a human being who could be dead within two months. All of them are considering abortion, and to carry through on that choice would mean that their unborn babies would die.

What would you do if you received a message telling you that 14 people you do not know and will never meet could very well be dead before Christmas? I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of it like that before. I stopped in my tracks. I was overwhelmed. Here were 14 real human beings, fully alive, unknowingly facing the prospect of being killed in a matter of weeks; and that by the choice of the only person they’ve ever known.

I don’t know how anything has ever been more unjust than abortion. I really don’t. It used to make me angry, but now I just get sad. I’m sad that evangelicalism is trending away from this issue. I’m sad that something so clearly immoral has become so irreparably political. I’m sad that a lot of humans never get the chance to know what it’s like to breathe the air. I’m praying for these 14, that they will live to, quite literally, see the light of day.

Most Holy God, you are the Author and Creator of life. We bear your image by the mere fact of our existence. You have established the order of this world, including the method of procreation. You have knit each of us together in the wombs of our mothers. But millions are the souls who cry out from under your altar–the weakest of the weak, the smallest of the small, the truly forgotten and discarded. Their blood testifies against us. Bring justice for them, O God. Bring justice for the very least of all. Cause your Church to rise and remember, to engage and throw down this greatest of all evils. Tear down the idols of our hearts, and take your rightful place on your throne once again, O Great King of all. Amen.