A few years ago, I had the honor to speak about the life issue at a church. At the end of the service, I stood outside of the sanctuary to greet some of the congregants as they left. As I was speaking to one woman, I noticed a young man out of the corner of my eye. He had a sheepish look on his face, and I could tell that he was waiting for the others to leave to speak to me. Once they did, he approached me and the first thing he said was, “I appreciated your remarks, but I wished I’d heard them last Sunday, because this week I took my girlfriend to Planned Parenthood to have an abortion.”
His regret was plainly written all over his face, and my heart went out to him. It struck me that his face probably looked like Judas’s face when he sought to return the 30 pieces of silver. Like this young man, Judas had essentially “aborted” Jesus, because abortion is an act of wrongly and unjustly sacrificing an innocent life for your own well-being. Indeed, like Judas, this young man was a Christ-follower—in fact, he was studying to be a pastor. He considered himself to be deeply pro-life, participated in the national March for Life, and often debated people who did not share his pro-life conviction. He was deeply pro-life… until he wasn’t.
I won’t share all the details of what he said to me, except this: he strongly influenced his Christian girlfriend to have an abortion, drove her to the abortion clinic, and sat in the waiting room while they took the life of his child.
God has used this situation to reinforce a perspective that has grown in my heart for a number of years: the need to address the sin of Christians having abortions and the problem of Christians supporting a pro-choice position.
Interestingly, this perspective was further reinforced when Roe v. Wade was overturned. I spoke to many pro-life Christians who were caught off guard by the sudden rejection and hostility they experienced at family gatherings, even from their own children, who (of course) they spared from abortion. They were also surprised as they experienced hostility in church and on social media at the hands of Christians who they thought and assumed were pro-life, but who—in reality—were pro-choice.
Their surprise shouldn’t have been a surprise, however.
If you look at the data on abortion that has been reported for years, you’ll find that the abortion rate in the church is close to the abortion rate in the culture. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which is closely aligned with Planned Parenthood, 54% of women having abortions profess to be Catholic or Protestant[1]. And, in two national surveys that Care Net conducted, nearly four in ten women and five in ten men shared that they were attending church at least monthly, and generally more when they had their first abortion[2]. Like the young man I spoke with that day in the church I visited, they too were in the church on Sunday and in the abortion clinic on Monday. As believers, this is the log in our eye versus the speck in the culture’s eye. And, as Jesus said, repentance and change must start in the house of the Lord.
There are two types of Christians who profess to be pro-choice. The first are those who are pro-choice by chance and circumstance, like the young man who approached me. Then there are those who are pro-choice by conviction and commitment, like those who were disappointed and maybe even outraged by the overturning of Roe v Wade.
As a result, God has put on my heart that we can’t truly expect cultural change if all brothers and sisters in the church are not right on the life issue in word and in ministry deed. Indeed, by God’s design, change and restoration must come through the church to the culture, not the other way around. When Jesus came, despite all of the clear injustice and sin in the culture, he started with the people of the Book for precisely this reason. If they were not righteous and just—if Jerusalem is not righteous and just—Judea, Samaria, and the rest of the world would never be righteous and just.
This is a critical discussion at this moment in our nation’s and the church’s history because it is very clear that there is disunity in the Christian community regarding the life issue. The evil one and injustice always thrive in such an environment. Moreover, it is not just enough that Christians are pro-life, but that they also understand why they are pro-life. There are those who are pro-life because of personal politics or family traditions. There are also those who feel called to provide material support for women in need. But the “why” for our pro-life position must be firmly anchored in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel alone provides the most Biblically durable and steadfast reasoning for the pro-life position. Only with the Gospel is our pro-life conviction capable of weathering the challenges of life, the storms of circumstances, and the press of temptation.
It is important for each one of us to proactively become ambassadors for the unborn to our pro-choice Christian brothers and sisters. The book of James reminds us that if a brother or sister “wanders from the truth,” we should seek to bring them back. So, I want to equip you to lovingly have these conversations. Indeed, you are uniquely positioned to have these vital conversations because you are in relationships with pro-choice Christians who may be your friends, family members, and even your spouse.
Accordingly, I will detail a Pro Abundant Life apologetic that I believe God laid on my heart, specifically for Christians, based on Christ’s own words and life.
The apologetic, or argument, is organized into four questions and responses:
1) How does support for abortion fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission?
2) When did Jesus’s human life begin and how should this fact affect a Christian’s view of abortion?
3) What does Mary’s unplanned pregnancy tell Christians about the abortion decision?
4) How should uncertainty about when life begins lead a Christian to view the abortion decision?
I will address each of these questions in posts over the next few weeks.
[1] Induced Abortion in the United States | Guttmacher Institute
[2] Two Care Net national surveys on abortion: https://www.care-net.org/mens-survey, accessed 4/27/2023
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