[Distributed by Troy Newman at City Hall, Wichita, Kansas, on Dr. Martin Luther King Day January 17, 2005. Adapted from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech given August 28, 1963 in Washington DC on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.]
Years ago, Abraham Lincoln, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. One hundred year later Dr. Martin Luther King fought to finish what Lincoln had started. But today 32 years after the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion all people, tragically, are not yet free.
For 32 years later, the pre-born child has been stripped of its right to live and crippled by the manacles of Choice and chains of the abortionist. For the past 32 years, the babies have been languishing in the wombs of American women and they find their selves in exile in their own land. Well over 45 million babies have been “put to sleep” like unwanted dogs all across our great land.
So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to this city’s seat of government to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her pre-born citizens are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the pre-born children a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day all of our sons and daughters will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Kansas, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they could not be murdered by the hands of the abortionists because of their age, their disability, infirmity, or color of their skin but they will be judged only by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
This will be the day when all of God’s pre-born children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s pre-born children, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
There will be a Roe v. Wade Memorial Service held on January 21, 2005, at 7 PM at Central Christian Church, 29th and Rock, Wichita, KS. Please come and remember the victims of abortion with us.
