I just read the following observation in an Axios newsletter: “Abortion rights have yet to lose since the end of Roe when the decision has been up to voters instead of legislators or courts.” This is a sobering reality that pro-lifers need to come to terms with. It’s why many Republican politicians are now treating the pro-life cause as a political liability. See Donald Trump’s statement yesterday, and Kari Lake’s statement today. And of course, we know where the Democrats stand. They are even worse by supporting abortion rights through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy. The politicians are simply reflecting public opinion at this point. The majority of…
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Not One Solitary Mention of the Child Being Killed
The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Erica Komisar about “The Human Cost of Restricting Abortion.” It’s not a pro-life piece, but I’m still astonished by the argument. Komisar writes: As lawmakers consider enacting restrictions on abortion, they should be mindful of the consequences. Unwanted pregnancies become unwanted children, and unwanted children are prone to depression, anxiety, addiction and other social and emotional disorders. That’s especially true when their mothers are young and immature, unable to handle the responsibilities of parenthood… If a mother feels forced to bring a child into the world, the child will bear the brunt of her resentment. Children who are neglected and unloved…
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The Illiberal Left and Abortion
Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the consequences of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision in Dobbs v. Jackson. The Democratic majority called three pro-abortion witnesses, and the Republican minority called two pro-life witnesses. I watched most of the hearing and listened to sworn testimony from all five witnesses. You would be hard-pressed to find a more stark expression of the division in our nation than what is on display in this testimony. Three witnesses lamented the overturning of Roe and argued in favor of new federal legislation to ensure abortion rights through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy. They also argued that restricting abortion rights in…
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Doubling-down on Abortion Rights on Independence Day
This morning I received an e-mail from The New York Times advertising a new 8-minute documentary they have produced about what abortion in American looks like after Roe. It’s a first-person narrative of a 27-year old woman who puts herself through a “self-managed” abortion. The film is a how-to guide for anyone living in a state where abortion is illegal. It shows women how to order the drug mifepristone from out of state so that they can put their unborn child to death in the privacy of their own home. This is naked advocacy on the part of The New York Times. The Times is making no pretense to objectivity…
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The End of Roe in the Bright Light of June
On January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade and its companion decision Doe v. Bolton effectively made abortion-on-demand a Constitutional right in the U.S. through all nine months of pregnancy. Since that time, the regime of Roe has presided over the legal killing of 63 million children. That is more than ten times the people killed in the Jewish holocaust. Roe formed the legal basis for what has become without question the greatest human rights crisis of our time—that a whole class of human beings have been excluded from the human community by our legal system. Today, all of that changed. The Supreme Court of the United States has spoken in…
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Eyes Wide Open about Abolitionism
Tom Ascol has written a long essay in which he makes the case for the Abolitionist resolution passed at the 2021 SBC and against pro-life dissensions from it. He also engages my last two posts on the subject, so I thought I would write a brief word of response here. Tom Ascol frames our differences in term of class struggle—the SBC “elites” versus the average man in the pew. He writes: It is the elite class that is woefully out of step with the rank-and-file believers who are working hard to see the scourge of abortion brought to an immediate end in our nation… Six times Ascol uses the language…
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An Appeal to Southern Baptists To Support the Pro-life Cause
I am writing this short essay as an appeal to Southern Baptists who care about the pro-life cause. Right now, there is an effort underway by what I believe to be a tiny minority in the SBC to reverse the SBC’s longstanding commitment to the pro-life cause. They call themselves “Abolitionists,” but they are not the only ones who support the abolition of abortion. All sides of this debate want to see abortion abolished. The Abolitionists, however, condemn and repudiate the pro-life movement’s efforts to restrict abortion in whatever measure possible. After the Roe decision in 1973, the pro-life movement eventually coalesced around an incrementalist strategy to abolish abortion. Pro-lifers…
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Why Pro-Lifers Support Laws to Punish Abortionists but Not Mothers
One of the perennial points of debate between pro-lifers and abortion advocates is why pro-lifers don’t support laws to punish women who obtain abortions. Some abortion proponents even argue that this is some sort of inconsistency on the part of pro-lifers—as if not prosecuting women who get abortions reveals that we don’t really believe an abortion actually kills a human being. More recently, abolitionists have agreed with abortion advocates on this point. Abolitionists contend that consistency requires pro-lifers to support the prosecution of the women who subject themselves to abortion procedures. So what’s going on here? Are pro-lifers inconsistent? Should we be passing laws to prosecute post-abortive women? I don’t…
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Overturning Roe and the Attempt To Delegitimize SCOTUS
I’ve been watching the fallout from last night’s bombshell leak of a draft opinion from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Of course, this is only a draft and not the court’s final ruling. We won’t know for sure how the court has decided this case until the Court releases it final official ruling. But if this one holds, all I can say is Hallelujah. Roe v. Wade has presided over the legal killing of over 60 million human beings since 1973. That is the holocaust times ten. The regime of Roe v. Wade has effectively given us abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy. And with the body…
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Abolitionism vs. Incrementalism: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Doug Wilson has posted an interesting article today about the abolitionist and incrementalist approaches to opposing abortion. If you are unfamiliar with this debate, then I direct you to a piece I wrote about it last summer (here). Wilson and I both hold to incrementalism—that is, while we both want to see the abolition of legal abortion, we support policies that would reduce abortion along the way to that ultimate goal (like the new “heartbeat” law in Texas). Incrementalism is the mainstream pro-life position. Incrementalism does not entail an endorsement of every incrementalist measure. Indeed, some such measures could be ill-conceived and imprudent or perhaps surrendering too much on principle.…
