We are years removed from the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade, and yet abortion has only continued to worsen in America.
We were told by pro-life leaders and lawmakers for decades that Roe was the primary obstacle standing in the way of completely ending abortion. But abortion has by no means ended, and oceans of innocent blood continue to be shed every single year.
The national abortion rate has surged past one million annual abortions, largely because of an increased prevalence of abortion pills, which are usually cheaper and more convenient to obtain than surgical abortions.
This trend is not only driven by blue states with permissive abortion laws. The conservative states, which have largely shuttered their brick-and-mortar abortion mills, are collectively witnessing the murder of nearly a quarter million preborn children each year, marking a massive increase since Roe was overturned.
Even as states with Republican legislative supermajorities watch abortion numbers rise, the pro-life groups with influence in those states are not providing a consistent answer on how abortion can truly be abolished. They are instead taking victory laps and even falsely claiming that pro-life regulations have made some states abortion-free.
The pro-life establishment has failed to abolish abortion. In many cases, they have even stood directly opposed to that objective. The time has come for Christians to pursue a better way.
The Problem of Pro-Life Dogma
For several decades, faithful everyday Christians who truly wanted to end abortion have supported pro-life groups at the state and national level, assuming that such groups are indeed striving to end abortion once and for all.
But many of these organizations are not even attempting to bring about an end to abortion. In many cases, they have rejected Christianity as the fundamental guide for their efforts, instead working under secular assumptions and relying on misguided pragmatism.
The pro-life establishment lacks a distinctly biblical foundation.
Scripture is far from silent about the legalized murder of children. God clearly detests child sacrifice, and He prescribes that anyone who commits such an atrocity “shall surely be put to death” (Lev. 20:2). He also vows to personally set His face against all who “close their eyes” when child sacrifice happens in their midst (Lev. 20:4).
Beyond the sixth commandment prohibition on murder (Exod. 20:13), God prescribes the same standards of justice concerning people outside and inside the womb, expressing through case law that “if there is harm, you shall pay life for life” (Exod. 21:22–25). The civil magistrate has the central duty to enforce these standards as they “punish those who do evil” (1 Pet. 2:14) as well as “bear the sword” (Rom. 13:4) against wicked conduct.
Christians also rightly understand abortion as an issue of sin. When sinners rebel against God, they are marked by “envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness” (Rom. 1:29). The act of murder flows from a sinful heart (Mark 7:21–23) and from unfulfilled desires (Jas. 4:2). In the vast majority of abortions, the desire for convenience or prosperity is the driving motivation for shedding the innocent blood of a preborn child.
Rather than opposing child sacrifice from these foundations, pro-life establishment groups do not usually center their public rhetoric or legislative efforts on the solid rock of Christianity, even if their leaders claim the Bible as their source of authority and moral guidance.
Driven by a functionally secular humanist worldview, these groups assert that improved education or more resources for women can meaningfully deter abortions. They neglect the reality that sin flows from the fallen human heart and downplay the purpose of the state as deterring such conduct with the sword.
When they craft legislation, they are therefore driven by pragmatism rather than principle, treating abortion as healthcare to be regulated rather than murder to be criminalized. Very few pro-life legislative proposals center on criminalizing abortion as murder, but instead focus on regulating the time, place, or method in which an abortion is permitted to occur. This approach fails to end abortion and encourages the state to keep their sword sheathed.
Instead of meeting women who have murdered their preborn children with a message of repentance and faith through the gospel of Jesus Christ, they meet them with therapeutic victim language that leaves them in the guilt and shame of their sins.
Without a distinctly biblical foundation and worldview in their cultural and political advocacy, pro-life establishment groups are not only rendered ineffective, but they are even led to directly oppose Christians who are sincerely working to end abortion.
The pro-life establishment opposes equal protection.
With the overturn of Roe, there is no reason why conservative states with Republican supermajorities cannot abolish abortion. Planned Parenthood and the Democratic Party simply do not have the power in such states to kill anti-abortion legislation.
What is the main obstacle to abolition in these states? The answer is often pro-life groups, who (sadly) oppose abolition both in word and deed.
Christians have spent the past decade proposing equal protection bills across the country, essentially seeking to abolish abortion by applying the murder and assault laws already protecting born people to protect preborn people as well.
This standard would ensure that everyone made in the image of God, whether they are born or preborn, enjoys the same legal protections. But the main opposition to such bills in conservative states has shockingly been pro-life establishment groups, which think women who willfully murder their babies are categorical victims who should not be held legally accountable. Because of this stance, these groups oppose preborn children receiving equal protection of the laws, which would criminalize all parties willfully involved in abortion, including the pregnant mother.
This opposition was made clear when an infamous national letter meant to subvert an abolition bill in Louisiana was released only weeks before the overturn of Roe.
The controversial letter, signed by more than seventy pro-life establishment groups such as National Right to Life, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, March for Life, and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, proclaimed that “women are victims of abortion and require our compassion and support.” The organizations therefore said “unequivocally that we do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women” for willfully murdering their preborn babies.
This letter has become a significant weapon against abolition bills nationwide, having been directly used to subvert abolition not only in Louisiana, but in other conservative states like Missouri, Kentucky, and North Dakota. But those examples are far from outliers: pro-life establishment groups have played leading roles in subverting at least twenty-four abolition bills before the overturn of Roe, and at least twenty-eight abolition bills after the overturn of Roe.
When pro-life groups consistently oppose abolition bills even in conservative states with Republican governmental control, there is simply no other way to see such actions as anything other than a confession that they do not actually want abortion to be abolished.
Christians are realizing that the pro-life establishment is not merely weak, compromised, or ineffective, but is ardently opposed to the objective of abolishing abortion. This realization has driven an increasing number of Christians toward the abolitionist movement.
The Answer of Biblical Abolition
There is no obvious way that our nation, which murders well over one million babies each year, will completely abolish abortion in the foreseeable future. The act of child sacrifice is aggressively promoted by our institutions and broadly accepted in our culture. That is why we must look to God, who alone has the power to abolish abortion in our land, and diligently seek to obey His precepts as we work to protect preborn children.
Even as many pro-life groups fundamentally reject a biblical foundation for their work, the abolitionist movement recognizes that without such a foundation, our efforts will neither receive the blessing of God nor actually end abortion in any meaningful way.
The abolitionist movement seeks biblical fidelity.
Scripture contains innumerable passages about the wickedness of child sacrifice, as well as the application of civil justice in alignment with the character and nature of God.
He not only “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow” (Deut. 10:18), but also is “not partial and takes no bribe” (Deut. 10:17). Beyond a mere prohibition on “unequal weights and unequal measures,” He calls “both alike an abomination” (Prov. 20:10). God expects that His people will neither “pervert justice” nor “show partiality” (Deut. 16:19).
God also pronounces warnings to “those who decree iniquitous decrees” (Isa. 10:1) which work to “turn aside the needy from justice” (Isa. 10:2). Scripture also teaches that “wicked rulers” who “frame injustice by statute” cannot be allied with God, as they “band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death” (Ps. 94:20–21).
In writing legislation and publicly advocating against abortion, the abolitionist movement strives to honor such principles, affirming the centrality of Scripture and explicit adherence to the Christian faith while opposing abortion.
That is also the fundamental reason why abolitionists not only support equal protection bills, but decline to support compromised legislation purporting to limit at least some abortions. Beyond concerns about their efficacy in actually reducing abortions, such legislation violates unchanging principles of justice established in the Bible, meaning that Christians who support them are compromising on precepts that should simply never be abandoned.
Scripture is filled with examples of God prospering the most humble works of His people when they are attempted in sincere faith and obedience, even if the immediate fruit of those works are not always evident. The very same God who broke ancient Egypt and led His enslaved people to freedom, conquered the army of Midian with three hundred soldiers (Judg. 7:1–25), and turned the Roman world upside down (Acts 17:6) with a handful of fishermen, a tax collector, and a few other Jewish peasants has always delighted to bless His people as they obey Him.
The story of the Great Commission has been the power of God displayed in the humble work of His church slowly but surely turning the nations to Himself. Christians who rightly see the work of ending abortion in America as an extension of this Great Commission, by which the dominion of the risen and ascended Jesus Christ is asserted over every domain of life, must also see the critical importance of obeying God and submitting to His precepts in the process.
The abolitionist movement demands practical efficacy.
Beyond an insistence on adhering to Scripture, the abolitionist movement alone offers a solution to ending legalized abortion once and for all, which includes patching loopholes in pro-life laws.
Many conservative states have closed their brick-and-mortar abortion mills and sufficiently deterred third-party abortionists from helping to murder preborn babies. But without actually criminalizing abortion as murder for everyone willfully involved, they have merely shifted the types of abortions that occur in their states, even as they falsely claim victory.
Rather than murdering their babies in abortion mills, women in such states have become their own abortionists, ordering abortion pills to the comfort and anonymity of their own homes. This trend toward self-induced abortion has facilitated an increase of abortions from women in conservative states that have pro-life laws protecting women who obtain abortions from any prosecution.
More pro-life establishment groups are now forced to recognize rising self-induced abortion levels, and as a result, they are shifting their focus from abortion mills to abortion pills. Several pro-life groups are writing and advancing new restrictions on abortion pills from third-party providers. But such laws retain immunity for mothers who willfully have abortions, as well as ignore the inability of conservative states to limit the flow of abortion pills from liberal states and from foreign countries.
Even as pro-life laws described as abortion bans facilitate this rise in abortion by codifying blanket immunity for women, the abolitionists alone recognize that equal protection is the only means to effectively end abortion. There is no other movement calling and working for legislation that would treat abortion as an act of murder and criminalize such conduct to the fullest extent of the law.
Many pro-life groups are content to pass an unending series of abortion regulations that fall short of abolition. But only the abolitionists are demanding equal protection of the laws for preborn babies and expecting such a standard without exception or delay.
The Distraction of Smashmouth Incrementalism
While the main tension in the anti-abortion debate centers on the pro-life establishment and the abolitionist movement, some well-intentioned Christians have adopted the equal protection and criminalization aspects of abolitionism as they downplay the call for immediate abolition.
These self-described “smashmouth incrementalists” agree that equal protection should be the objective of anti-abortion Christians, but they are also willing to support legislation which they admit falls short of abolition while purporting to decrease abortions in the interim.
One such articulation for this brand of incrementalism can be found in Life After Roe, a book authored by David Closson, the director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at the Family Research Council. Closson also wrote an article for Christ Over All defending an incrementalist approach to ending abortion.
While he is well-intentioned in his expressed desire to save some babies on the way to truly ending abortion, Closson overestimates the efficacy of pro-life increments, and he overlooks how those pro-life increments delay abolition.
Many pro-life increments save few lives.
Closson makes clear “both sides agree that abortion is sinful and ought to be outlawed,” and he describes the incrementalist view toward the right to life as a “war of attrition.” Closson explicitly identifies “heartbeat protections, fetal pain statutes, ultrasound requirements, and parental consent provisions” as examples of helpful “incrementalist measures.”
Closson also contends that “every pro-life measure chips away at the abortion industry’s power and makes it harder to kill unborn children,” warning against making a “perfect law” to end abortion “the enemy of good, albeit imperfect, legislation that saves lives.”
This claim presupposes that incremental pro-life legislation actually saves a substantial number of lives. While some abortions may be deterred by incremental laws, pro-life legislation at best shifts behavior toward explicitly sanctioned methods of abortion, and at worst sanitizes abortion by preserving the legality of murdering preborn babies in most cases.
In the example of a heartbeat or fetal pain law, women are legally permitted to murder their preborn children when they are somewhat younger, meaning that the law protects the murder of babies more than truly saving those babies. In the case of an ultrasound or parental consent law, the murder of babies is permitted as long as the mother views the child she wants to murder, or the grandparents approve the murder of their grandchild.
The pitfalls of assuming that incremental legislation is effective can be seen clearly in the current abortion landscape. The murder of preborn babies has not only continued, but has actually increased in states with purported abortion bans. Closson nevertheless frames such laws as imperfect but effective for saving at least some preborn babies.
The incremental strategy relies on legislation that falls short of biblical requirements for justice, leaning on pragmatism over providence while seeking to accomplish the will of God. The past fifty-three years of opposition to abortion since Roe has been marked by incrementalism, and the corpses of countless millions of preborn babies testify to the failure of such a strategy.
If anything, incrementalism has allowed the normalization of abortion over the course of multiple generations, neglecting to offer a potent Christian answer to abortion while enshrining the continued presence of at least some baby murder into our laws.
While pragmatic strategy is an important component of politics, the reliance on pragmatism in a way that compromises biblical principle is an entirely different matter. God should not be expected to bless compromised legislation that violates His precepts, even if the proponents of such legislation are understandably motivated by saving at least some babies.
Many pro-life increments delay abolition.
Closson similarly bemoans that “when abolitionists lack the votes for an abolition bill,” they refuse “on principle to support anything else,” a strategy which has “not resulted in the successful passage of a single law.” In his recent article, he also rejects the claim that incremental laws are in many cases sinful because “much of the Old Testament’s civil legislation regulated sinful practices, such as divorce or slavery, without endorsing them, precisely in order to limit harm in a fallen society.”
Even if one can successfully argue that God allows the regulation of divorce, slavery, or other sinful practices in Scripture, the extension of this stance to the regulation of murder is not defensible. With respect to the specific sin of child sacrifice, God clearly expects immediate abolition without exception or compromise (Lev. 20:1–5). When child sacrifice is mentioned, Scripture demands nothing short of complete and immediate abolition, and God inevitably judges nations that fail to pursue justice in this way.
Closson more broadly fails to recognize that incremental legislation decreases the pressure on lawmakers to fight for the end of abortion. Rather than supporting more controversial abolition bills, the presence of incremental bills written by pro-life groups enables lawmakers to posture as opposed to abortion, while distracting them and their constituents from the task of accomplishing true abolition. When lawmakers run for office, they use the incremental laws as examples of their anti-abortion credentials, but this only misleads conservative Christians into believing that progress has truly been made.
While no abolition bill has been passed into law, abolition bills continue to make progress across the country. In the past year, more abolition bills have been filed in more states than ever before, with more lawmakers endorsing the bills, and more bills than ever advancing to committee hearings and votes.
The abolitionists recognize that ending legalized abortion is a marathon and not a sprint. Instead of relying on the quick fixes of incremental legislation, which can appear effective in fundraising emails or letters while actually saving few babies, abolitionists are committed to the much more difficult process of winning support for bills that would meaningfully end abortion.
In a way that very much resembles the overall Christian life, the work of abolishing abortion requires faithful obedience and patient endurance, as well as a humble reliance on God to establish the work of His people when pursued for the glory of His name.
Christians who desire to serve Jesus Christ in their opposition to abortion should become abolitionists. They must reject the compromises of the pro-life establishment, refusing to support organizations uninterested or even opposed to ending abortion. They must look to Scripture as the guide for calling our nation to repentance and establishing justice for the fatherless. They must contribute their time, talent, and treasure in a way that relies not on their own strength, but on the character of God, who loves preborn babies and hates child sacrifice. In this way alone will abortion ever be abolished in America.
