On June 24, 2026 — the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade — the state of Tennessee did something no state in this nation had ever done before.
They put it in stone.
The Tennessee Monument to Unborn Children was unveiled on the southeast grounds of the state Capitol in Nashville — the first monument of its kind on the grounds of any state capitol in America. It took eight years from legislative approval. It was funded entirely through private donations. And when the moment finally came, state troopers had to stand between the monument and pro-abortion protesters who showed up to object to the very idea that these children deserved to be remembered.
Let that sink in for a moment. I hope it tells you all you need to know…
They protested a memorial.
I want you to read the inscription on this monument carefully. I'm so grateful for whoever wrote it. They weren't worried about politics - they were writing truth.
"In memory of the unborn: The baby whose life was lost; the mother who regrets; the father who couldn't protect; the child who lost a sibling; and society, which is coarsened by every deliberate attack on innocent human life."
Read that again.
This inscription does something the abortion debate almost never does — it refuses to reduce the tragedy to a single victim. It names the baby. But then it names the mother who grieves. The father who was powerless to protect. The sibling who grew up with an empty chair at the table. And then it names us — all of us — as a society that is coarsened, roughened, hardened in our soul every single time we look the other way while innocent life is destroyed.
That is not political language. That is prophetic language.
That is the kind of truth that makes people uncomfortable — not because it is cruel, but because it is complete. It doesn't let anyone off the hook. Not the mother. Not the father. Not the lawmakers. Not the church that stayed quiet. Not society at large.
Every deliberate attack on innocent human life coarsens us. Every one.
A woman named Regina Paulsen was present at the unveiling. She previously managed the National Memorial for the Unborn in Chattanooga. And she said something that every person who dismisses this monument as "political" needs to hear:
"I had an abortion 34 years ago, and I am very grateful that this state wants to honor children that have been lost to abortion, because it is something that grieves the soul of those of us who have had one."
Friends, I want you to let that sink in for a moment…
The left has spent decades insisting that abortion is simply healthcare — a private decision, consequence-free, nothing to grieve. Regina Paulsen is one of millions of women who will tell you from their own experience that is a lie. Abortion grieves the soul. Her words. Not mine. Not a pastor's. Not a politician's.
A woman who made that choice — thirty-four years ago — standing at a monument to children like hers, grateful that someone finally said out loud what she has carried in her heart for three decades.
Predictably, the opposition did not disappoint.
Democratic Sen. Heidi Campbell of Nashville was among those objecting, and she offered what has become the left's standard-issue dismissal: "The Capitol is not a pulpit. It belongs to all Tennesseans."
I'd like to respond to that directly.
Senator, the Capitol grounds of Tennessee already house monuments to soldiers, war heroes, Holocaust victims, and victims of slavery. Every single one of those monuments makes a moral statement. Every single one of them says: these lives mattered, this evil was real, we will not forget.
The only question this monument raises is whether unborn children belong in that company.
And the answer — according to Psalm 139, according to Jeremiah 1:5, according to every honest reading of what science now confirms about life in the womb — is an unqualified yes.
The Capitol is not a pulpit, Senator. But neither is it neutral ground on the question of whether human beings deserve to be remembered.
You don't get to memorialize the Holocaust and then tell us that the unborn don't qualify. Those are not two consistent positions.
The crazy thing: this monument took eight years. Eight years of legislative battles, fundraising campaigns, opposition hearings, and delay after delay — all to place a granite marker on the southeast lawn of a state capitol, in memory of children who never got the chance to see it.
In 2018, when the bill was first passed, abortion was still fully legal in Tennessee. The legislators who voted for this monument did so knowing it would be controversial, knowing it would be fought, knowing it would not be popular with the editorial boards and the progressive class.
They did it anyway.
House Majority Leader William Lamberth put it plainly: "The Monument to Unborn Children affirms the fundamental truth that every human life is created in the image of God and possesses inherent worth and dignity."
Genesis 1:27. On a state capitol lawn. In granite.
I am not ashamed to say — this is a good day for this country.
Tennessee is not alone. Arkansas erected a similar monument in 2023. Texas has passed legislation for one. The tide is moving — quietly, stubbornly, one state capitol at a time — back toward the acknowledgment that human life, from its earliest moment, is worth something.
It's worth protecting. Worth remembering. Worth carving in stone so that generations who come after us know that some of us, at least, refused to pretend it wasn't happening.
Proverbs 31:8 says: "Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction."
The unborn cannot speak for themselves. They cannot show up to the legislature. They cannot organize a protest. They cannot write an op-ed or post on social media or stand outside a Capitol building with a sign. Heck, for that matter, they can't even scream as the dastardly deed is committed. (Makes me wonder if they could, would it be done so frivolously?)
So… they need someone to speak for them.
Tennessee just did it in the most permanent way a government knows how.
They said it in stone.
And I pray the rest of this nation is paying attention.