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January 22, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — On Wednesday, Joseph R. Biden was inaugurated as 46th president of the United States, and there was much talk of unity, faith, and the goodness of America. It was all boilerplate stuff — the clichés presidents are required to utter before going ahead and implementing the ideological agenda they had planned all along. To the victor go the spoils, and all that. So far, the progressives have gotten a sweeping executive order on LGBT rights and the rollback of the Mexico City Policy. Unity for me and not for thee, says the Biden-Harris Administration.

There has been much mouthing of platitudes about turning down the temperature as polarization reaches its worst levels in decades and the storming of the Capitol shocked many to their senses. But if there is to be unity, then the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is an opportunity to reflect on the fact that almost nothing has radicalized and polarized American politics like the top-down imposition of legal abortion on all fifty states — a short time after state legislators in New York had even voted to repeal decriminalization.

Roe v. Wade has shaped and reshaped American politics now for nearly a half-century. The ruling spawned and then solidified a conservative backlash, caused entire states to flip from Democrat to Republican as Democrats embraced abortion extremism, and ensured that the Supreme Court would be a focal flashpoint for decades.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into political campaigns for the sole purpose of electing legislators who will vote for the right justices — justices who will vote to overturn Roe. The failure of the Supreme Court to do so thus far has caused enormous frustration on the Right.

Many have commented on the unhealthy fixation millions of Americans have with the Supreme Court (including the late Justice Antonin Scalia). That fixation is almost entirely due to Roe v. Wade. The Court forced a radical abortion regime on states with solid pro-life majorities: Abortion must remain legal in the first two trimesters in New York as well as Texas, in Alabama as well as California. A handful of unelected lawyers forced millions of Americans to adopt a status quo that they find to be morally reprehensible and wicked, and nothing has been the same ever since.

With a conservative majority finally in place on the Supreme Court — although that is not necessarily an indication of how the justices will vote, as past decisions have tragically illustrated — many progressives are predicting that the end of Roe is finally near. States like New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are passing extreme pro-abortion legislation in response; others have passed trigger laws that will ban abortion the moment Roe falls.

Joe Biden has already promised that if Roe is overturned, his first move will be to enshrine it in statute to ensure that an extreme abortion regime continues to be the law of the land.

On abortion, unity is impossible. Those of us who recognize the humanity of the pre-born and abhor the destruction of innocents can never be united with those who believe killing children in the womb is a right. But if America is to survive, overturning Roe is an essential first step. These fights can be removed from the realm of Washington, D.C., and sent back to state capitols across the country.

Those states that wish to be abortion-free can pass laws ensuring protections for pre-born children; those who wish to preserve and protect these barbaric practices can pass their own laws. Those who wish to live in a pro-life state can do so; those who wish to live in a pro-abortion state will also have plenty of options.

If Roe were gone and Biden declined to enshrine it in statute, pro-life politics could become primarily local once again. New Yorkers could decide for their state; Mississippians could determine their own path. The presidency and the Supreme Court could finally become largely irrelevant to the abortion wars. Not only would this bring the temperature down nationally, it would direct the attentions of activists inwards.

Roe is ripping America apart, and it must go if the republic is to survive and an uneasy truce among those with radically differing values is to be achieved. If not, we can expect things to worsen, not improve. As one writer noted on social media, you cannot have war in the womb and peace on the streets.

Religious and pro-life leaders have often noted that God’s judgment on a culture that has killed millions of tiny children is inevitable. Sometimes I wonder if we are missing the obvious: that the judgment may well be the fact that abortion not only tears babies apart — it is tearing America apart.

A culture that has succumbed to the lethal temptation of sacrificing God’s most precious gifts in exchange for consequence-free carnal pleasures is a culture with a death wish — and we may well be seeing the throes of a dying society.

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.