The Secret Treachery of the Pro-Life Establishment
The Pro-Life Industry Continues to Block Abolitionist Victories
For more than fifty years, most American Christians have outsourced the battle to end abortion to the pro-life movement, a loose alliance of activists and institutions in general agreement that abortion ought to be curtailed through the legislative and judicial processes. The institutions that charter the political strategy for this alliance, which are dominated by Roman Catholics but have some significant Protestant figureheads, rely on evangelical votes and donations to place their ostensible champions in elected office.
In exchange for their ballots and their dollars, these well-meaning evangelicals in turn expect pro-life lobbyists to pass legislation that bans abortion and protects preborn babies from murder. Few of these evangelicals know, however, that the institutional pro-life movement has long been politically corrupted and ideologically compromised.
This week at The Republic Sentinel, we learned that a board member of Ohio Right to Life has been working behind the scenes to pressure lawmakers into shunning a bill that would immediately abolish and criminalize abortion. We also obtained audio of a Republican member of the Ohio House admitting that the Center for Christian Virtue, another pro-life organization, asked him to refrain from introducing the bill until after a November ballot measure that could enshrine abortion in the state constitution.
In essence, the bill which was so zealously opposed by the pro-life establishment would simply apply existing laws that already protect born people from murder to preborn babies, thereby establishing equal protection under the law for preborn children in the state of Ohio. This reality is the stated objective of most pro-life entities and the clear desire of the pro-life grassroots, a fact that makes the opposition from the pro-life establishment in Ohio all the more astonishing.
But to those who have been paying attention to the institutional pro-life movement, the covert spurning of the Ohio abortion abolition bill was no surprise. Christians who have sought to establish equal protection for the preborn have been universally opposed, even in the most conservative states, by the pro-life movement rather than the pro-abortion movement.
As exhibited by the squelching of the abolition bill in Ohio, part of this opposition is strategic: pro-life organizations usually take an incremental rather than an immediatist approach toward their purported objective of ending abortion, which results in hesitance toward making massive moves toward that end, especially in election season. Mike Gonidakis, the president of Ohio Right to Life, famously campaigned for several years against the Ohio heartbeat law, claiming the move was too aggressive. The end result, however, is the blood of thousands upon thousands of dead babies drenching the land as professional lobbyists like Gonidakis make their enigmatic political calculations. In other words, this is how abortion remains legal across the country, even after five decades of endless campaigns and lofty promises.
The other component of the opposition is ideological: pro-life organizations do not believe that women who willfully murder their babies should ever be criminally charged for their actions. The laws already passed by pro-life lobbyists in conservative states that have purportedly banned abortion explicitly give abortive mothers blanket immunity from prosecution. Mothers can therefore order abortion pills from blue states or foreign countries to murder their children without fear of criminal penalties. We covered at The Republic Sentinel how a nonprofit in Texas was able to open a storefront informing mothers how they could obtain abortion pills, and we obtained permits showing that the event happened with the full knowledge of local authorities. Current law in Texas, which bans manufacturers from distributing abortion pills through the mail, nevertheless states that a woman cannot be held “criminally liable” in the case of an abortion.
Abortion, despite claims from some conservative media outlets, is therefore not banned in any part of our nation. Some have regulated abortion clinics out of existence, but all permit the murder of preborn babies since mothers can simply turn to abortion pills, which have recently emerged as the most popular means of committing abortion, with complete immunity.
Even as abortion pills quickly become the preeminent threat to preborn life in our nation because of the legal immunity granted to their users, Gonidakis and several other prominent state lobbyists signed a letter last year directing all state and federal lawmakers to oppose any bills that “criminalize or punish women” who seek abortions. The letter was intentionally publicized as an abortion abolition bill advanced to the floor of the Louisiana House.
Brent Leatherwood, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, was another prominent signatory of the letter. He dodged a question at the most recent Southern Baptist Convention annual conference from Brian Gunter, the pastor in Louisiana who introduced the abolition bill to his state’s lawmakers, and doubled down on the claim that abortive mothers have been “preyed upon by a culture of death.” Leatherwood also contended that bills to abolish abortion would do “the bidding of Planned Parenthood” by “casting the pro-life movement and our churches, with our gospel convictions, as anti-woman.”
Despite these assertions, the Christian tradition has long recognized that women, like men, are fallen creatures with immense capacity for evil. Speak to any believer who regularly ministers to abortion-minded mothers or intercedes for preborn babies outside of abortion mills, and they will tell you that every woman they encounter ultimately knows they are murdering their children.
The law exists to restrain evil and ought not to show partiality: those who knowingly take human life in an unjustified manner, regardless of their sex, should be penalized accordingly. The law also exists as a tutor: equal protection of the law would teach our culture that preborn babies are equally human as born people by means of equal penalty under the law for their murder.
Beyond the realm of civil authority and the law, the blanket immunity granted to abortive women denies them the mercy and forgiveness found only in the gospel. To repent of sin and place faith in Jesus Christ for salvation necessitates a recognition of guilt before the judgment seat of God. Downplaying the sinfulness of abortion as murder therefore helps the one in four women who have had abortions in our nation to suppress the truth in unrighteousness rather than experiencing freedom from guilt and peace with God through the gospel. The supposed “gospel convictions” esteemed by Leatherwood are thus demonic deceptions that enslave millions of people, including the women for whom he claims to care, to the bondage of sin.
American Christians who outsource their responsibility to battle abortion to political operatives must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Many such operatives will gladly take millions in kingdom dollars even as they subvert the cause of the righteous, thereby executing the will of the devil by perpetuating the scourge of child sacrifice in our land.
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