Ryan Smith writes in The Wall Street Journal about the reality that awaits women in combat. Smith illustrates the problem by describing his own experience as a Marine during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Readers should be warned that what you are about to read is not for the faint of heart. But I think it is important for people to consider the reality of what will be required of female infantrymen.

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision—a monstrosity that has presided over the legal killing of over 55 million human beings since 1973. And yet in the wake of this horror, the pro-abortionists are feeling the wind at their backs. They’ve just reelected the most pro-abortion president in U. S. history. They received news this week that Roe v. Wade is more popular than ever with the American people. They’re doing touchdown dances in the endzone with creepy video tributes to abortion rights. And they’re convincing their political opposition to stand down.

When I graduated from college, I was too spiritual to worry about abortion. I was pro-life—no question about that. But I could see no reason to get all bothered about it. I had bigger fish to fry. After all, the abortion issue was for people who like to mix Christianity with politics. It was not for people like myself who were into theology and the gospel. I would leave the pro-life cause to those who didn’t know the difference between Christianity and the Republican Party. I had all but washed my hands of it. How short-sighted and foolish I was.

What does it look like when the culture of death runs head-on into a mother’s instinct. Sometimes mommy’s gut wins, but sometimes not. The latter was the case with Sarah Carpenter, a married woman with two children who became pregnant with a third child. After finding out that the child had a disability, she and her husband Andrew made the decision to abort the child in order to spare him from having a bad life.

Today, President Obama became the first President ever to mention the word “gay” in an inaugural speech (watch below). Given everything that has happened over the last year, this is not surprising. Nevertheless, his remarks do deserve some scrutiny because their implications are morally devastating for the definition of marriage. In a section of the speech devoted to equal rights for all, he said this:

Rev. Luis Leon delivered the inaugural benediction this afternoon. Leon was selected to deliver the prayer after Louie Giglio was forced out of the program by the White House. The White House dropped Giglio from the program after Giglio’s Christian views on homosexuality surfaced on the internet in an old sermon. Leon serves at a church that rejects the Bible’s prohibition on homosexuality, and that is likely why he was selected to replace Giglio.

All of us are sinners, and we all are prone to cover our works in darkness so that our deeds will not be exposed (John 3:19-20). But we can’t hide our own faults from ourselves, so we have a tendency to rebrand our faults so that they are not faults after all. In other words, our hearts tend to suppress what they know to be true so as to salve our guilty consciences (Romans 1:18). But sometimes, there’s no getting away from the guilt. Even after we do our best to deny the evil of evil, it nevertheless haunts us at a visceral level.

Russell Moore and Robby George respond to Matt Anderson’s essay arguing that evangelicals should “shrug off” the ouster of Louie Giglio from the president’s inaugural ceremony. They write: