No Country for Young Children

What Kind of Society Can Countenance Such Evil? by Anthony Esolen

Let us begin with a question that seems never to occur to the proponents of abortion. What must a country become, or already have become, if abortion is permitted? Here I don't mean simply that there is evil in the world, and that when you perform an evil deed you yourself are your first and most injured victim. That principle would apply in a healthy society as well as in a sick one. If the Amish farm boy assaults his neighbor's daughter, he throws the doors wide open for Satan to enter his heart; or, if you prefer to speak only psychologically, he begins to bind himself to an evil that will render him less and less able to love a woman for herself, her simple being. Yet we would not say that the Amish community itself is sick. In fact, they probably understand far better than the pro-abortion feminist professor of sociology does, just why what the youth has done is to be condemned.

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Anthony Esolen is a professor at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in Warner, New Hampshire, and the author of many books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House). He and his wife Debra publish a web magazine, Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com), on poetry, hymnody, language, classic films, and music. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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