She has not ruled out abortion.
It’s not that she believes it’s the right thing, she doesn’t. It is a baby after all. But she does think that some circumstances warrant a closer look at things. Those more extreme circumstances suggest that abortion could, maybe even should be an option.
Oh, and then there’s the matter of the support system the baby would be born into. If the quality of life is too impacted, well the option of abortion must be available.
No, she has not ruled out abortion. She is abortion vulnerable. She is the church in America. She is at risk for supporting abortion in the U.S., even, that is, if allowing for those extreme circumstances means abortion will be available, even protected, under all circumstances.
Voting for abortion
The church is voting for abortion. This year’s presidential election will likely follow the reality of Christians voting for abortion as they did in states like Michigan and Ohio. Ohio’s Center for Christian Virtue analysis shows that “1 in 3 self-identified weekly church-going Catholics and Evangelicals supported” the 2023 constitutional abortion amendment.
After years of working hard to elect pro-life politicians to enact common-sense protections for babies and moms, the church is lending critical support to abortion on demand that has or will undo those very same protections.
Ohio was especially vulnerable with a minimal threshold for approving a constitutional amendment of 50%+1. Even with a pro-life governor and legislature, the votes of Christians installed the radical abortion amendment into the state’s constitution.
Abortion extremes made the difference. Christian voters in Ohio empowered abortion through all nine months over concerns for the hard cases - which have always represented a minute percentage of abortions under Roe.
Perhaps the church has not truly ruled out abortion as a viable choice for certain circumstances; perhaps she’s like an individual expressing that abortion is not an option for her but can justify abortion for someone else for any reason potentially to eventually justify the life-taking act for herself.
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Silencing scripture
The church, it seems, has not truly embraced a principled regard for the sanctity of life established on the Imago Dei of Genesis 1:27 and Psalm 139:13-18. Indeed, a mindset established on biblical values and natural law would consistently hold without fail the value of human life as a unique work of the Creator among nature. Instead, the church seems to have embraced the same mechanistic mindset of a humanistic culture leading to accepting the culture of so-called “reproductive rights.”
This means the church, as a collection of voters, can somehow justify abortion under a subjective set of difficult circumstances.
For instance, church voters would be swayed to support abortion to protect the health of the mother.
By “health” churchgoers would typically mean when a woman’s life is threatened by the continuing pregnancy.
Unfortunately, the term “health” has a legal definition that extends far beyond that direct physical threat to encompass a panoply of subjective risks including relational, familial, financial, and more.
Abortion amendment messaging played on this misunderstanding of health. Even media reports of supposedly threatened expectant mothers have been used to conflate concerns with the intent to sway voters for abortion amendments and politicians.
In, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race,” theologian Francis Schaeffer noted that every abortion clinic should have a sign posted in front that says, “Open by permission of the church.”
The judicial activism that undergirded passage of Roe v. Wade the decision, arguably, subverted the permission of the church to establish abortion across the U.S.
Now the church, as voters, is granting, or poised to grant, permission in states that are otherwise “Life States.”
Handwriting on the wall
Voting for abortion is but a symptom of a church more persuaded by preferences and less on conviction from scripture.
Scripture calls us to “rescue those being taken away to death” - Proverbs 24:11. Instead, the church finds herself unable to vote to rescue the child in the womb.
If the church will not vote to protect life, will she be “weighed in the balance and found wanting” as the wayward king Belshazzar was in Daniel’s time (Daniel 5)?
Will supporting the destruction of innocent lives further infect the American church and damages its spiritual standing?
Tweet This: If the church will not vote to protect life, will she be “weighed in the balance and found wanting” as was King Belshazzar in Daniel 5:27?
Both Old and New Testaments speak of harsh consequences against the people of God who would not honor the commands of God.
Believers must not participate in the worship of Molech (Leviticus 20:2). Sadly, voting for abortion of any kind does just that. The church must cast aside the evil influence of a half-century of Roe and stand firmly on the only biblically sound position – the sanctity of every life made in the image of God. This message must resound from every pulpit and in every pew.
A remnant of the church has been doing this for more than five decades - the pregnancy help movement.
Pregnancy centers and maternity homes will continue to reach out with life-saving services to those trapped in the culture of death whichever way the vote goes. Harbors of hope and points of light, some 2,800 locations strong in the U.S., will continue to be the hands and feet of Jesus to those facing an unintended pregnancy.
Tweet This: Pregnancy centers & maternity homes will reach out with life-saving services to those trapped in the culture of death however the vote goes.
Yet, like the blight of slavery that this nation cast out of its laws and culture and onto the scrap heap of history, the church must see abortion as the same denial of the Image of God and human rights and continue to work to eradicate such evil from our land.
If someone, even the church, can imagine abortion for someone else, eventually she can imagine it for herself. That would move the church from just being abortion-vulnerable to actually abortion-minded. Surely a church in America that does not honor and cherish the Gift of Life will face the wrath of the Giver of Life.
Editor's note: Jor-El Godsey is the president of Heartbeat International. Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
