As summer ended, news came of several prolifers having been convicted in federal court. Their “crime” was violating the 1994 FACE Act; specifically, what they did was carry out a rescue. Three years ago, the prolifers disrupted the “business” of a notorious Washington, DC abortionist named Cesare Santangelo. They put their own lives on the line to save others and for this, Will Goodman, Herb Geraghty, Lauren Handy, John Hinshaw, Joan Bell, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, and Jonathan Darnell are now in a federal penitentiary, awaiting sentencing that could keep them behind bars for up to eleven years.

Last month I wrote here about justice having been blinded in the case of these wrongly convicted, wrongly imprisoned prolifers. It was not just for them to be incarcerated for trying to save human lives. It was not just for the judge  in their trials to disallow the wrenching images of Santangelo’s victims to be admitted in court. Nor was it just that some of the jurors were Planned Parenthood supporters. All of this is manifest.

But as I wrote about the late-summer injustice, an intimation of a much bigger problem was gnawing at me. I thought of other American travesties of justice, past and present. I thought of the Supreme Court decisions  and acts of Congress  that have kept Cesare Santangelo and his ilk in business. I thought of the two-tier justice system in America, how the rich, powerful, and politically connected are often able to get away with criminal behavior, even murder. Justice, I was thinking to myself, has been blinded not only in regard to Santangelo’s tiny victims and the prolifers who fought for their dignity.

As I reflected on the injustice made plain by the fact of prolifers behind bars, I saw that the disease goes far beyond courts and chambers, police departments and law schools. Contempt for human life and human dignity is everywhere in America. Cesare Santangelo mutilates unborn children for money, profiting by their death. Other “doctors” profit by mutilating born children. A satanic ideology blankets this horror in jargon and high-sounding phrases—“gender affirmation,” “standards of care.” Schoolkids read upbeat books about the nightmarish turn our culture has taken. Parents expose their innocents to sexual predation . Other parents are willing partners in their offspring’s maiming

Wherever one turns, one sees the sickness in all its pallor. There are mass murders weekly in Chicago . Hardly anyone can recall the name of even one person slain on the streets. The Pentagon  goes on killing and maiming sprees of its own, and the names of the foreign dead and wounded, too, are either not reported or quickly forgotten. Dark-hearted villains kill indiscriminately: parade-goers, concert-goers, babies, prostitutes, university students, elementary school students, the elderly, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Sikhs, Jews.  The media sensationalize a handful of the murders, almost as a way to distract the public from the sheer number and nihilism of the crimes. Indeed, who could keep up with the body count? The killing goes on and on and on as many Americans sink deep into numb indifference.

Theft and looting are newly fashionable and trending up. Homelessness is an inverted American dream, as more and more Americans get coughed up onto the pavement, there to wallow in drugs and filth. Human trafficking is exploding. Rape and slavery are everywhere. Our country slips into a hellishness that many, including me, could not have imagined even a decade ago. We are falling apart.

We need a national rescue. But who will do it? Who will rescue America? We throw into locked concrete boxes those who have been working to bring the most vulnerable Americans—unborn children and their mothers—back from the brink. We know there is grave evil afoot, that injustice reigns. We know that not only the despised classes, but also, we ourselves, could easily be the next victims sacrificed to the gods of the cult of violence and hate. But we say and do nothing. We keep our heads down and carry on as our national life unravels. We wish in private for some miracle to make the terror stop. But we have sat by in silence while our sick society has thrown the best and most gentle in jail. And so here we are, badly in need of rescue, but there is nobody left to swoop in and save us.