In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr., offered a discourse on the nature of law. Dr. King was in jail after being arrested for violating an injunction that forbade protests without a permit. He argued the injunction was unjust because it was being used to enforce the unjust regime of discrimination. Further, the prohibition was an unjust denial of his First Amendment right of peaceful assembly and protest.

King wrote the letter to fellow clergy who criticized him for breaking the law. King responded that there are two types of laws, just and unjust, and that while one has a legal and moral responsibility to obey just laws, there is a converse moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. King agreed with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

According to King, “a just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” King also cited Thomas Aquinas, further explaining that “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.” King concluded that laws that uplift human personality are just, while laws that degrade human personality, such as those enforcing segregation, are unjust. In the coming months, America may see King’s analysis tested once again.

We just came through a midterm election that resulted in dramatic gains for Democrats in Congress and in state legislatures across the country. As I wrote three weeks ago, I suggested that if Democrats won, it would largely be a result of Trump’s sole decision to take us into a war that, in addition to raising constitutional issues, added inflationary pressures that are impacting Americans’ budgets. A Democrat victory should not be, I argued, construed as a mandate for the radical change some progressives were demanding, but rather, like most elections over the past twenty years, a call for an end to overreaching and a return to some semblance of normalcy.

Regrettably, two months before they take power, there are already signs that Democrats want to go radical. One Democrat working group is suggesting congressional action, in the first 100 hours of the new Congress, to impose nationwide abortion up to birth as well as national taxpayer funding of abortion. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro is anxious for similar action in his state. Before they go down that path, it would be good for these partisans to reflect upon what Dr. King wrote from a Birmingham jail cell.

Abortion advocates fail to realize that any law they put on the books that strips legal protection from any class of human beings, including unborn children, is unjust, and consequently, according to King, no law at all. These laws are not rooted in the eternal law or natural law or moral law. Rather, like laws that permitted slavery and segregation, abortion-expanding edicts are will-to-power exercises that not only degrade the humanity of the victims, but also the humanity of the advocates of such unjust practices and the greater society. If you doubt abortion degrades the society, take some time and observe the foul-mouthed malice that is hurled at those engaged in peaceful prayer vigils outside of America’s abortion clinics.

Why does abortion generate such vitriol from its defenders? The truth is that abortion, in addition to shredding rights recognized in our Declaration of Independence and protected in our Constitution, violates something deep within us. We know that an innocent human life is being ended and that the right to life is being violated, but we compartmentalize. The pain of the reality of what happens in abortion may be too great to bear. Rather than admit that an unborn child is being killed, abortion advocates opt for conscience-soothing euphemisms such as “it’s just healthcare.” But it is not. Healthcare is for healing and protecting life, not ending it. One day, I pray the culture awakens to this, and that we are all willing to walk with one another in our pain and seek restoration and reconciliation. And that reconciliation is offered freely from the one who came to heal broken hearts and set captives free, to save and not condemn.

Until that time, I expect to see many politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, flocking to observances on Martin Luther King Day next January. Those who reject King’s teaching might want to consider just what it is they are observing that day.

(Congressman Keith Rothfus served 3 terms in the U.S. House. He is a Notre Dame Law School graduate living near Pittsburgh where he and his wife raised their family.)