The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

In 1968 presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey, declared: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”  As a Christian, it is difficult for me to disagree with that statement.

But, Carl Trueman, Biblical and Religious Studies Professor at Grove City College, captures the brutal reality of the current American culture when it comes to life issues: “Most Americans are in favor of abortion under certain circumstances. This is not all too surprising when one considers that, for many, the values and practices of the sexual revolution are an intuitive part of daily life. This is due in large part to the common intuition that human beings are autonomous, unencumbered individuals whose primary purpose is the pursuit of personal happiness. The widespread acceptance of no-fault divorce was the harbinger of many great changes, from gay marriage to transgenderism to the shift in abortion rhetoric; what was once a ‘necessary evil’ is now a ‘reproductive right.’”  In that spirit, most evangelical Christians welcomed the Dobbs decision in 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade.

Yet, writing in Christianity Today, Marvin Olasky argues that “Dobbs was a great opportunity for the pro-life movement to show our recognition that unwanted pregnancies are hard.  They are especially hard the small percentage of the time that rape or incest are involved, but they are hard all the time. A truly compassionate pro-life perspective shows that children need protection and their parents need support. But instead of emphasizing both, some politicians have talked so tough that it seemed pro-lifers might treat miscarriages as crime scenes . . . Pro-lifers had an opportunity to help women imagine meaningful lives even with unexpected babies. Our side should have acknowledged that Dobbs was scary to many women. We could have built a movement to support more generous family policies. Instead, many pro-lifers went for force first.  With Dobbs liberating states to legislate as they saw fit, some pro-life advocates competed to see who could back the toughest laws. Some pro-lifers in Oklahoma and elsewhere wanted women who had abortions to be charged with murder. The result was a transformation of popular narrative from concern for the unborn and their mothers to a thirst for power and control.  Some politicians used harsh language and aimed their scorn at abortion-minded women. Specific hard cases cast pro-life activists as hard-hearted.”

He goes on, “Today’s technological reality is that two-thirds of abortions occur via abortion pills, often ingested at home rather than in abortion centers. Closing down those centers is more and more like shuttering pornography stores rendered irrelevant by streaming services. Stopping pills by law would require opening mail, frisking visitors, and going after senders based in states (like New York and Massachusetts) that offer them legal immunity. Convincing parents, one by one and two by two, not to kill their unborn babies, is more important than ever.”

That brings us to the current dilemma many pro-life voters face. As evangelical Peter Wehner of the Trinity Forum observes, “The public is more pro-choice today than it was at the start of Trump’s presidential term, with pro-choice support near record levels. Approval for abortion is strongest among younger people, who will be voting for many decades to come. (Seventy-six percent of 18-to-29-year-olds say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.) Since the Dobbs decision, ballot measures restricting abortions have lost everywhere, including deep-red states such as Kansas and Kentucky. In addition—and this fact doesn’t get nearly enough attention—the number of abortions increased 8 percent during Trump’s presidency, after three decades of steady decline.”

• The most common argument made by former President Donald Trump’s evangelical supporters in defense of their support is that although Trump may not be a moral exemplar, what matters most in electing a president is his policies. Wehner:  “Trump is a great pro-life champion, they say, perhaps the greatest in history . . . But the pro-life justification for supporting Trump has just collapsed. Trump, who described himself as ‘strongly pro-choice’ in the 1990s—including support for so-called partial-birth abortion—has returned to his socially liberal ways. ‘My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,’ he recently declared on Truth Social. Kamala Harris couldn’t have stated it any more emphatically.  It’s true that Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court played an essential role in overturning Roe v. Wade. But ending Roe is not the same thing as reducing the number of abortions in America. In fact, the number of abortions has increased since the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe. As Philip Klein wrote in National Review, ‘overturning Roe was only the necessary first step of a much longer battle to protect the lives of the unborn. And on that battle, it increasingly looks like Trump is joining the other side.’”

“From a pro-life perspective, though, it’s actually worse than that. Trump has done what no Democrat—not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Mario Cuomo or John Kerry, not Joe Biden or Barack Obama, not any Democrat—could have done. He has, at the national level, made the Republican Party de facto pro-choice. Having stripped the pro-life plank from the GOP platform, having said that Governor Ron DeSantis’s ban on abortion after six weeks is ‘ and a ‘terrible mistake,’ and having promised to veto a national abortion ban, Trump has now gone one step further, essentially advocating for greater access to abortion.”

One additional comment about the utter confusion now thriving in our political culture.  Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has been mobilizing evangelicals against in vitro fertilization (IVF), where the eggs from a woman are fertilized in a Petri dish with the sperm from her husband (or from a donor).  The most robust embryos are then implanted in the woman’s womb.  Opposition to IVF is consistent with the view that life beings at conception.  However, in late August Donald Trump declared that “I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump Administration your government will pay for—or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for—all costs associated with IVF treatment.”  As the Wall Street Journal observed editorially, “The irony is that Mr. Trump is mimicking Barack Obama and his Affordable Care Act, which demanded that insurers offer the federal government’s preferred benefits regardless of expense . . . The cost could run into the tens of billions annually, not least if Medicaid had to cover to IVF, which it inevitably will if Obamacare plans do.”

• But the Democratic Party is “no haven for jilted pro-lifers.  While Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in her acceptance speech moved to the center on many questions, she moved to the left on abortion. Much as Dobbs fueled a triumphalism on the pro-life side, seven straight victories on state referenda concerning abortion have excited abortion supporters—and more referenda are on the ballot two months from now. As The New York Times reported, Democrats have ‘recast Republicans as the party of control and theirs as the party of freedom.’”

So the final hard reality is that American pro-lifers do not have a party.   As Olasky contends, “For Republicans, many of whom still consider themselves pro-life, recognition of “sorrow” leads to greater moral sympathy and economic creativity. They should advocate cultural and economic changes that make more women and men feel it possible to have and raise a baby well.”

To that end, Olasky offers this historical observation:  “One of my favorite pro-life leaders in American history, Mary Gould Hood, graduated 150 years ago from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. She moved to Minneapolis and became a founding doctor at the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers. She also practiced at the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, staffed by female physicians with an all-woman board of 50 directors.  Hood and many other late-19th century pro-life doctors, including Elizabeth Blackwell, Rachel Brooks Gleason, Alice Bunker Stockham, Prudence Saur, Jennie Oreman, and Mary Melendy, labored for decades to do exactly what we need to do now: show how it’s possible to have and raise a baby well, whether the mother is married (a great positive) or not.”

“Hood eventually moved to Boston and joined the executive committees of New England Baptist Hospital and Vincent Memorial Hospital. She culminated her 40 years in pro-life work by publishing in 1914 For Girls and the Mothers of Girls: A Book for the Home and the School Concerning the Beginnings of Life. ‘What experience can be more sacred, or more marvelous, than that of the mother who understands that a new human has begun within her,’ she wrote. ‘Motherhood brings with it cares and responsibilities, but it also brings the greatest of earthly joys.’ That’s what today’s pro-life movement needs to convey, not by might but by light that can illuminate an inner and outer glow.”

See Carl Trueman “We Need Good Protestant Ethicists” in First Things (5 September 2024); Marvin Olasky “Triumphalism After Dobbs Was a Mistake” Christianity Today (3 September 2024); Elizabeth Dias in The New York Times (15 August 2024) and Wall Street Journal editorial (31 August-1 September 2024).