Sadly, death by abortion has always been around. In the ancient world, abortion was prevalent enough that the Hippocratic Oath had to be composed and administered to guide medical doctors away from taking innocent, preborn human lives. In our time, abortion has been capitalized, commercialized, and franchised—so that millions could be performed, and mountains of money could be made. Furthermore, in our day, abortion has been made convenient: Abortion pills, privately taken at home, eliminate the lives of the smallest.

Whenever in history abortions occur and however those abortions are performed, they always take innocent human lives. In all abortions, more powerful human beings, often with the assistance of other powerful people, take the lives of weaker ones. Surgically. Chemically. Violently.

Abortion always involves violence. Abortionists go after the preborn with dilation instruments, surgical knives, and suction devices. Here the violence is visible, notable, palpable—at least to those present in the clinic’s operating rooms. Pharmaceutical companies manufacture and distribute pills that attack the hidden lives of little ones in the womb. These chemicals quietly wipe out human lives. These chemicals do their violence in microscopic lethality.

Abortion involves violence. It always has. It always will. By definition, violence, brutal or subtle, is required to take human lives.

These days all kinds of violence seems closer to us than before. Even though we have been accustomed to living our lives far from the sight, or even the suggestion, of one person violently attacking another, now violence seems to be closing in on all of us. It leads the news. It is downtown—even in towns and smaller cities. It occurs outside of town—in fields and forests. It is in our schools. It is on our screens. It affects our churches, our networks, our friends, our families.

The abundance of violence begs the mention of a disconcerting matter. In the United States today, violence seems to be especially prominent on the political Left. Consider the obvious illustrations. The burning-and-shooting riots throughout the United States that followed the death of George Floyd. The three assassination attempts against President Trump. The murder of the healthcare-insurance executive Brian Thompson in New York City. The murder of Charlie Kirk in Arizona. The alleged, undercover Southern Poverty Law Center payments to promote anti-black, racist violence. Violent threats against the United States Supreme Court justices—especially those nominated by Republican presidents. Survey research that finds many young people now justify political violence. Terrorism in the U.S. connected to bad actors abroad. These are a few of the many incidents and trends that could be named.

To be sure, violence exists on the Right as well. Remember the January 6th riot on Capitol Hill. Also recall illegal aliens, and their allies, recently dying at the hands of ICE agents.

But the violence on the Left seems more widespread, organized, and ideologically driven.

From the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the United States Supreme Court to the present, the American Left has advanced and defended the right to abortion. At times, abortion has been the top priority of the American Left’s political agenda. Its political and judicial efforts have resulted in approximately 65,000,000 abortions in America.

Could it be that abortion—which has consistently been promoted, defended, and now celebrated by the Left—has acted as a gateway to various forms of political violence today? Could it be that, because of its long-term relationship with abortion, the Left became comfortable with violence to achieve its ends? Common sense makes it difficult to answer No. Indeed, it is hard to imagine those on the Left, fully committed to abortion availability (and the violence it involves), standing against any political violence today—unless that violence happens to be committed by those on the Right.

A television journalist revealed a widespread blindness to political violence on the Left. In a news story, the reporter noticed flames destroying a Minneapolis building that had most probably been torched by a rioter; then he went on to speak about the “mostly peaceful protest” in progress. Perhaps this willful blindness to violence comes from a moral callousness—a moral callousness that comes from decades of justifying the taking of innocent preborn lives through abortion.

How then should we live?

First, we are wise to recall that every one of us has a shadow side. We are all capable of compromising moral principle, committing political violence, and then justifying political violence. All of us should work on self-awareness, self-criticism, an openness to the moral critique of others, a willingness to be judged by the Word of God, and a readiness to repent for our sins.

Second, we can hold to the moral principle that political violence is always wrong. It is evil, and it leads to more evil.

Third, Christian citizens must be willing to call out and condemn political violence whenever and wherever it occurs. At our dinner tables, among friends, in churches, in letters-to-the editor, in Internet comments and commentary, we should call political violence what it is: wrong and often criminal. At times, this will require courage.

Opposing the violence of abortion means that we always oppose violence in politics. We do not get to decide which forms of violence we prefer to resist.