By Sarah Holliday
Can you picture it? The very first moments of life: alone, sealed inside a plastic bag, left to die
with nothing left to do but cry. I praise God that the children who have known such a
beginning—like the baby in China who survived an abortion at 35 weeks and was heard crying
from inside that bag—won’t remember it. But we will. And we should.
We live in a world where this actually happens. Can you believe that? We live in a world where,
in response to the massive blue wave the 2026 midterm elections brought in, women are posting
videos of themselves on social media, smiling and gloating, saying, “Abortion is so back, baby!”
We live in a country where those same results added more states to the list of those that have
legalized abortion up until the moment of birth. The midterms also handed the Democratic
Party—which has built so much of its modern identity around being anti-life—control of
Congress. New faces will take their seats in the House and the Senate, many of them convinced
that women have a right to kill their unborn children, and that those children simply do not
matter at all.
“A wake-up call.” That’s what people keep saying these midterm results are. But a wake-up call
is only useful if it actually wakes us up. What I keep wondering is whether this one will. Because
the same people now celebrating “abortion is so back” are not celebrating a medical procedure in
the abstract. They’re celebrating the legal protection of a practice that can leave a fully formed
baby sealed inside a plastic bag, still alive, still crying, with no one around who is required to
care.
They’re celebrating the procedure that tears babies apart, limb from limb.
The midterms didn’t create that reality; they simply removed more of the remaining political
obstacles to it. The casual glee that followed suggests that a significant portion of the country has
already decided the reality itself is acceptable. And really, even with Republicans in the majority
the last two years, abortion rates were already soaring.
While Republicans were in power, the Food and Drug Administration had released another
generic version of the abortion pill, which was approved by the Trump administration, adding to
already rising chemical abortion rates. Other setbacks followed—further evidence that political
majorities alone do not always produce the cultural and policy fruit we hope for.
Of course, it’s worth noting that we have seen a variety of pro-life wins. Idaho held the line in
the 2026 midterms, rejecting an amendment to its Constitution that would have loosened its near-
total abortion ban, almost certainly saving countless babies in the process. We should rejoice in
that. Other victories remind us that the work is never entirely fruitless.
There’s plenty to be thankful for. But there’s still so much work left to be done. And it’s not just
about passing pro-life legislation. It’s about reaching the hearts and minds of the culture in which
we live.
Ultimately, the enemy is going to be on the loose wreaking havoc until the Lord returns. And
he’s not one to flippantly let go of those who are under his control. However, neither is God, and
He is far more powerful. His will is what’s going to come to pass, His purposes shall prevail, and
His church will be built—believers find great hope in these truths. But we still have great
responsibility in being the salt and light the world desperately needs.
We’re called to get into the fight—to protect the vulnerable and, yes, to even love the unlovely.
We’re here to share the Gospel with the lost, to extend an arm to the broken, to give hope to the
weary. We’re here to confront evil and promote what is good. We’re alive, walking this earth, so
that we can do these things. And you know what? We have to, because the Bible teaches that
when a house or a heart is left empty, it will be filled with something. That something is either
going to benefit the kingdom of darkness or the Kingdom of Light. It’s either going to promote
death or promote life.
If you look around in our society, at the millions of babies murdered in the womb each year, the
countless people—young and old alike—being robbed of healthy body parts in exchange for
lifelong pain and regret, the people who genuinely believe violence is a justifiable means of
accomplishing their godless ends, you can see how so many hearts have been filled with
deception. Those hearts have been plagued by sin and the death and destruction it breeds.
Someone once told me, referring to the culture’s obsession with death and its disregard for
human sanctity, that “we cannot expect God’s blessing upon a nation that ignores the very clear
principles of Scripture.”
That is the part that should unsettle us more than any election result. Elections come and go.
Majorities shift. But a culture that pretends the babies being ripped apart in their mother’s
wombs are either irrelevant or serve as some kind of a political victory has crossed a line that is
hard to uncross.
So, perhaps the question these midterms force on us is not simply whether we will keep losing
ground in Congress and in the states. It’s whether we still possess the moral clarity to say,
without apology, that a child gasping for air in a plastic bag is a horror no civilized society
should tolerate—and then to act like we believe it.
