The Erosion of Our Worth and Dignity

In his proclamation declaring January 22, 1984, the National Sanctity of Human Rights Day, President Ronald Reagan wrote the following about abortion on demand:

“We are poorer not simply for lives not led and for contributions not made, but also for the erosion of our sense of the worth and dignity of every individual.”

In his proclamation, Reagan claims that abortion has made this country poorer because it had eroded “our sense of the worth and dignity of every individual“. When the President wrote these words, 15 million babies had been aborted due to the ROE v. WADE decision. Today, that number stands at nearly 60 million babies. Sixty million lives lost due to abortion on demand. As a nation, we have been forced to develop a pretty thick callous over our hearts to ignore such a loss of life. There is even a huge segment of our population that justifies and defends abortion as a basic human right. President Reagan was correct — this callousness is beginning to permeate our culture in the way we treat all life.

Nearly every crime and injustice committed in this country can be attributed to a lack of respect for human life. Murder, discrimination, racism, hate crimes, rape, schoolyard, and cyber-bullying are all birthed amid this lack of respect for one another. It is a lack of respect that has existed since Cain first killed Abel but never had it been legitimized more than it was in 1973 when the United States legalized discrimination against its weakest citizens in the form of ROE v. WADE. And now, 44 years removed from that moment, respect for all human life is at an all-time low. Our hypocrisy is inescapable when we scream about the injustices so evident in our world yet encourage the murder of innocent babies. If we can’t defend the weakest among us, who is worth defending? 

The truth is, all lives matter in the sight of God and all lives are worth defending. However, the erosion President Reagan wrote of is a real thing. If our country doesn’t stand up and defend the rights of the unborn now, our culture’s respect for human life will continue to decline. Where will we be twenty years from now? What will be the state of crime in our country? Will we justify ending the lives of the elderly, sick, disabled, and obese prematurely? Heck, just look at the political landscape today. Ask yourselves, do the liberals in this country respect the conservatives and vice versa? If the lack of respect we’ve witnessed during our recent political season is any indication,  I have my doubts that our government will even be standing in its current form twenty years from now.

And it all started because we failed to protect the innocent.

God’s Word challenges us to defend those who can’t defend themselves:

“Rescue those being taken off to death, and save those stumbling toward slaughter” (Proverbs 24:11, HCSB).

If we fail to do live up to this responsibility, Scripture makes it clear that we will someday answer to a God Who will “weigh our hearts” and “repay [us] according to [our] works” (Proverbs 24:12).

As difficult as it may be to put a cork back in the bottle that is ROE v. WADE, now is the time to do it. I call on our government to take every opportunity and every possible step needed to end abortion on demand in this country. If that means defunding Planned Parenthood, defund it. If it means stacking the deck on the Supreme Court than stack it.

We have reached a breaking point in this country and we can afford no further erosion to the dignity of our lives.

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National Sanctity of Human Life Day, January 22, 1984

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Proclamation 5147 — National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 1984
January 13, 1984

By the President of the United States
of America

A Proclamation

The values and freedoms we cherish as Americans rest on our fundamental commitment to the sanctity of human life. The first of the “unalienable rights” affirmed by our Declaration of Independence is the right to life itself, a right the Declaration states has been endowed by our Creator on all human beings — whether young or old, weak or strong, healthy or handicapped.

Since 1973, however, more than 15 million unborn children have died in legalized abortions — a tragedy of stunning dimensions that stands in sad contrast to our belief that each life is sacred. These children, over tenfold the number of Americans lost in all our Nation’s wars, will never laugh, never sing, never experience the joy of human love; nor will they strive to heal the sick, or feed the poor, or make peace among nations. Abortion has denied them the first and most basic of human rights, and we are infinitely poorer for their loss.

We are poorer not simply for lives not led and for contributions not made, but also for the erosion of our sense of the worth and dignity of every individual. To diminish the value of one category of human life is to diminish us all. Slavery, which treated Blacks as something less than human, to be bought and sold if convenient, cheapened human life and mocked our dedication to the freedom and equality of all men and women. Can we say that abortion — which treats the unborn as something less than human, to be destroyed if convenient — will be less corrosive to the values we hold dear?

We have been given the precious gift of human life, made more precious still by our births in or pilgrimages to a land of freedom. It is fitting, then, on the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that struck down State anti-abortion laws, that we reflect anew on these blessings, and on our corresponding responsibility to guard with care the lives and freedoms of even the weakest of our fellow human beings.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Sunday, January 22, 1984, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon the citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life, and to reaffirm our commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of each human life.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 13th day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eighth.

Ronald Reagan