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Commentary

Abortion: The Left’s Unholy Grail

November 10, 2023

In days of old when knights were bold, the legendary King Arthur and his companions (those of the Round Table) would travel far and wide seeking a great treasure, risking life and limb for something of far greater worth than gold or jewels. The treasure these mythical heroes sought was the Holy Grail.

Since the late 12th century, the Grail has been thought to be the dish or chalice Christ used at the Last Supper, which the French poet Robert de Boron imagined Joseph of Arimathea had used to catch Christ’s blood at the crucifixion. In literature, King Arthur’s heroic friends Percival, Galahad, Lancelot, and the White Knight risk their lives and face certain death to find the Grail. Starting with Chrétien de Troyes’s unfinished “Perceval, the Story of the Grail” in 1190 and continuing on to Sir Thomas Malory’s definitive 14th century “Le Morte d’Arthur” and even T.S. Eliot’s 1922 poem “The Waste Land,” the Holy Grail has become the icon of that which is sought after at all costs.

The Left holds up abortion as its Holy Grail — or Unholy Grail, as the case may be. This has been made painfully clear over the past few decades, most recently in the series of elections that took place across the nation earlier this week. Democrats campaigned aggressively on abortion, while Republicans often backed away from the topic.

A prime example of this occurred in Virginia. Susanna Gibson, the Democratic candidate to represent Virginia’s 57th district in the House of Delegates, was busted earlier this year for having performed sex acts with her husband live in online video chat rooms for money, essentially digitally prostituting herself. She maintained her pornographic account and continued posting even after launching her campaign in July.

Ordinarily, such a scandal would be the death of any candidate’s political career, but Gibson stayed in the race — not only that, she almost won her district, narrowly losing to her Republican opponent by less than 1,000 votes. Let me reiterate: a political candidate who produced and sold hardcore pornography with her husband nearly won her election. Why? Gibson’s campaign was predicated almost entirely on abortion activism. In an October 19 video on her social media, Gibson said she’s “running for delegate because abortion rights are on the line this election.” Grassroots abortion activism group REPRO Rising Virginia campaigned for Gibson, billing her as “the only candidate in HD57 who will protect our Reproductive Freedoms!”

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) campaigned for state-level Republicans in the hopes of eventually passing a moderate 15-week bill to protect unborn life, which state Democrats claimed would result in a complete and total abolition of abortion across Virginia. Gibson herself argued that “if extreme MAGA Republicans … win this election, we will see an abortion ban in Virginia.” Despite her claim, she also noted (ironically) that Virginia Republicans began backing off abortion during the campaign process, even scrubbing pro-life messaging from their websites, which doesn’t exactly sound like the behavior of a right-wing cabal hellbent on banning abortions across the board — they can’t even commit to 15-week protections in many cases.

The point is, it isn’t insane that Gibson being busted for producing and selling homemade pornography even while running for office did not substantially hurt her — at least, it’s not insane if you recognize that abortion is the Left’s Unholy Grail. Leftists don’t care about porn, it doesn’t bother them in the slightest; they don’t even care about prostitution. In fact, leftists are obsessed with perversion: whether it’s lauding the online pornography empire,sexualizing the relationship between a Christian father and son, pushing the LGBT agenda on kids in the most graphic of terms, or wanting responsibility-free sex so desperately that they’re willing to literally dismember and boil alive babies in their mothers’ wombs, and make a quick buck while doing so. For Gibson, it wasn’t even a gamble: as long as she campaigned on abortion, her porn problem wouldn’t even matter, because abortion is the Left’s Unholy Grail.

Yet Republicans are seemingly terrified of campaigning on pro-life policies. Last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was a major victory, but Republicans aren’t capitalizing on it. Instead, abortion is labelled a “losing issue” by candidates, office-holders, advisors, and pundits alike.

Imagine, if you will, a fortress under siege: soldiers spend days on end battering away at the fortress’s gates, suffering loss after loss but never giving up. But when the gates finally yield, splintering before this mighty battering ram, the soldiers all sit down for a smoke and start debating whether or not they can take the fortress now that the gates are down. A bit of a crude analogy, perhaps, but that’s the situation in which the GOP now finds itself. Instead of pushing forward with a major victory, Republicans are sitting on their hands and discussing popularity contests.

Look at Virginia again: Republicans sought 15-week protections, a policy they rarely discussed openly, but were vilified and demonized by Democrats for taking up even that lukewarm position. There’s no winning the popularity contest.

Now look at Ohio: with a constitutional amendment up for referendum establishing a “right” to abortion up to the moment of birth, the precious few who simply said, “Vote No,” were harassed and vandalized. Republicans were more focused on winning a popularity contest: just two months before this referendum was scheduled, Ohio Right to Life fired its communications director, Lizzie Marbach, for daring to say, “There’s no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone,” the most basic, fundamental tenet of Christianity. Why? Because Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who has not spoken about his home state’s Issue 1, said Marbach’s comment was insensitive to Jews.

If abortion is the Left’s Unholy Grail, then a false and, frankly, unattainable popularity is the Republican Party’s. Gibson almost won her district, despite prostituting herself online, because she campaigned in favor of the dismemberment and slaughter of the unborn as a positive good — and a substantial share of her would-be constituents went for it. Those who advocated in Ohio against declaring butchering babies in the womb a “right” were targeted and threatened for saying so. Yet Republicans still seemingly fear the scorn and crave the approval of the mob.

What good is it to win the approval of the Left? What is to be gained by bartering and compromising with those who mercilessly eviscerate babies with scalpel and forceps and mock, deride, and demonize anyone who cries out, giving voice to the voiceless? The Left has demonstrated time and time again that membership to its exclusive club comes at the price of your convictions, your morals, and your immortal soul.

Arthurian literature dictates that the Holy Grail was the dish or chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper, when He broke bread and declared, “This is my body…” (Luke 22:19). Different Christian denominations have different interpretations of this Scripture passage, of course, but it can be largely agreed that Christ is foreshadowing His crucifixion the following day, that great and terrible sacrifice by which mankind was purchased at the price of God’s own blood and redeemed from sin, the ultimate image of self-sacrificial love. How horrific that in the pursuit of its own Unholy Grail of abortion, the Left uses those same words with a sickeningly opposite meaning: “This is my body.”

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.



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