Doing the right thing often comes at a price — and sometimes, as in the case of our Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the price is dear.
As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tuberville is exercising his lawful authority to pause military nominations until the Pentagon stops its ghastly policy of funding abortion travel for servicewomen. As a result, he faces withering hostility from the progressives he’s currently thwarting. As expected, progressives want to firmly entrench pro-abortion and anti-family policies at every turn. What is surprising, even shocking, is the erosion of support for Tuberville among conservatives.
Parts of the GOP have begun to allege that his blockade of over 300 military nominations is compromising national security. He’s drawn ire from Republicans, eager for the government machine to tick forward, who say his commitment is a “mistake.”
They’re wrong. Tommy Tuberville is doing the right thing, and he needs our support.
It’s important to remember that the most morally significant choices we make are often easy not to make. It’s easy to tell ourselves that we “had” to do the thing we knew was wrong, or “couldn’t” do the thing we knew was right. Both are lies.
It is either true that abortion kills an innocent child — and, for that reason, true that we should do everything we can to defend them — or it’s not. Tuberville has drawn a line in the sand, and stands on the side of the unborn.
His posture is one all pro-life men and women ought to adopt, especially now that Roe has fallen. We know children are worth protecting. We know we are morally obligated to protect them. Now is not the time to shrivel or relent. We must act on their behalf with the same conviction possessed while Roe was the artificial law of the land.
Part of why we must be courageous in our defense of the unborn and of children more broadly is that we are their only advocates. They are utterly helpless, and cannot speak or act for themselves. Children are uniquely vulnerable to the thoughtless evil of progressive, anti-family policies.
Yet children are the heart of our nation’s future. With each child, from the moment of their conception, a whole new life with a soul and a will and a future begins to build, cell by cell. And as they grow in the womb, they build our own future with them.
Vast swathes of the American public and our political leadership seem bent upon destroying pre-born children before they ever see the light of day. Tuberville’s posture of simple, flat refusal is the correct one in the face of such grave evil.
Any policy which incentivizes or protects the destruction of children is worth rejecting, enthusiastically and totally. We ought to join Tuberville, if we can; and publicly commend him, if we can’t.
The defense of children ought to be the very heart of our politics, and at the very heart of our faith. Their Creator knows and loves them, and we owe them far more than institutionalized mass killing. We owe them love, respect and a chance at true flourishing — which includes a chance at life itself, no matter what the cost might be to us.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones,” Christ admonished the apostles. “For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”
Herbie Newell is the President and Executive Director of Lifeline Children’s Services, the largest Evangelical Christian adoption agency in America, host of The Defender Podcast and author of “Image Bearers: Shifting from Pro-birth to Pro-Life.”
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