Acknowledgements to T. Russell Hunter and FreetheStates.org
Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, a day we celebrate life, human life, and more specifically, pre-born life.
If you are not familiar with this special day, Sanctity of Human Life Sunday is held on the 3rd Sunday of January and was started by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. H.W. Bush continued it during his presidency. Bill Clinton discontinued it for the 8 years he was in office. George W. Bush re-instituted it for his two terms, but Obama eliminated it when he was elected. Thankfully, President Trump brought it back again. Most likely, when Joe Biden becomes President, he will discontinue it.
The worst day in American history was January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized the killing of unborn children in the womb. That infamous ruling is known as Roe v. Wade. If you are not familiar with the case that changed abortion law in America, it is this: Norma McCorvey (her pseudonym, Jane Roe), sued the state of Texas to obtain the right to an abortion since it was illegal in this state at the time if the mother’s life wasn’t threatened. Since that decision, nearly 62 million babies have been aborted in our nation. The leading cause of death last year was not Covid-19, but abortion, with over 42 million lives lost for mostly selfish reasons. 42,655,372 to be exact.
Mobilization of a wide-scale anti-abortion movement began immediately in 1973 with the creation of the National Right to Life Committee. Though well-intentioned, the Pro-life Movement hasn’t been very successful in stopping the wholesale slaughter of the most innocent among us.
Even under the most pro-life President ever, Donald Trump, funding for Planned Parenthood increased from an Obama high of $554.6 million in 2016 to a record $616 million as of 2020.
Under a Republican, pro-life administration, Planned Parenthood should have been completely defunded, but never was.
The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act passed the House but fell 9 votes short in Republican-controlled Senate.
The Hyde Amendment, which prevents taxpayer funded abortions, passed the House when Republicans had the majority, but there was no vote in GOP-led Senate.
The Trump administration has allowed Native Americans to be prosecuted for selling eagle body parts, while Planned Parenthood still peddles baby body parts.
Every ‘heartbeat ban’ bill has been overturned by Federal courts. Every one.
There is another anti-abortion Movement that was started in 2011 and is slowly gaining steam: The Abortion Abolitionist Movement.
Abortion Abolitionists seek the total and immediate abolition of abortion with no exceptions and is not be achieved incrementally.
There’s much confusion about what the Abolitionist Movement looks like and stands for, so I’d like to give a brief overview of who they are so that you might consider becoming an Abortion Abolitionist.
Let’s start with why do they use an archaic word like abolitionist?
The abolitionists of the slave trade in 18th century Britain defined abolition as seeking to remove evils. They didn’t connect it to only slavery, but to every evil.
Thomas Clarkson wrote a book called The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave–Trade by the British Parliament in 1808. He said he wrote it “so that future generations dealing with subsequent evils will know what we did, what worked, what didn’t work, and become abolitionists themselves because every age will have its evils and every age its abolitionists.”
When William Wilberforce, after 40 years of advocating for the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, finally accomplished his task, he asked, “What do we abolish next?”
The term “abolitionist” does not just refer to slavery, but to whomever wants to end grave dehumanizing evils being legally protected among us.
But the reason for abolitionism ultimately comes from the Word of God.
The most cited verse for abolitionism is from the prophet Isaiah who stood up in his culture of child sacrifice and pronounced this in Isaiah 1:16-17:
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
17 Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
God is very concerned with justice, especially, justice for the fatherless.
William Lloyd Garrison was a famous American abolitionist who defined abolitionism as “refusing to go with the multitude to do evil.”
He was simply echoing Exodus 23:2 (KJV): Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil;
That’s the foundation of abolition: Christians doing what God wants them to do.
Amos 5:15: Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Abolition defined: to do away with; put an end to; annul; make void.
When there’s an unjust law, we should abolish it. Christians are to remove all evils.
With that in mind, I want to briefly give you 6 tenets of what Abolitionists believe.
You may disagree with how they view things, but it’s important to understand what Abolitionism is about.
To explore these further, go to the Abolitionist website, FreeTheStates.org.
We need to be aware of what is happening within the Abolitionist Movement. My hope is that the church would get more involved and advocate more fully for the life of the unborn.
#1: ABOLITIONIST, NOT PRO-LIFE
Abolitionists agree with the pro-life position that abortion is bad but believe abortion is murder and should be treated as such. While many who call themselves pro-life agree that abortion is murder, abortion has not been opposed by the pro-life political establishment in a manner consistent with its being murder.
For 48 years, the pro-life movement has opposed abortion by compromise. Pro-life strategists have accepted Roe v. Wade as the “law of the land” and have focused on trying to regulate the murder of children in the womb. These strategists have set themselves up as political “experts,” leaving the word of God on the sideline, only to fight abortion with worldly wisdom.
Abolitionists attempt to bring the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ into conflict with the culture of death, bringing the Gospel into conflict with the evil laws that sanction and regulate abortion. Most importantly, Abolitionists bring the Gospel into conflict with an apathetic Church. When the Church takes its rightful place in the battle to abolish abortion then abortion will be abolished.
The Christian abolitionist seeks to lead people to Christ and rescue as many babies as possible from being taken away to death.
Abolitionists proclaim the Gospel, pleading with mothers and fathers to repent of abortion, for Christians to repent of abortion apathy, and the culture at large to repent of legalizing child-sacrifice and reject abortion as the evil of our age.
The abolitionist calls for the total and immediate criminalization of abortion as murder and never attempts to simply regulate or reduce abortion by treating it as healthcare. Abolitionists believe they will never abolish abortion by compromising and will never end it by allowing “incremental abolition” laws.
The abolitionist does not think that you can write laws to “protect babies because they feel pain,” then write laws to “protect babies because they have beating hearts,” then write laws to “protect babies because they are human.” By writing such laws, pro-life legislators train the culture to believe that abortion is permissible up to the point of pain or a beating heart instead of instructing the culture to abolish abortion because it is the murder of a human being created in the image of God.
As an example, one man met with the office of Ohio State Senator Andrew Brenner. He explained to Brenner’s aide the importance of introducing and passing a bill that nullifies Roe v. Wade and treats abortion like murder from the moment of conception.
At the end of the man’s presentation, the Senator’s aide said, “This was very interesting, but it’s Senator Brenner personal religious conviction that life begins at a heartbeat.”
Where did Senator Brenner learn that? From the Heartbeat Bill which had just passed in Ohio a few months earlier.
Another example was from a young mother who went to a clinic to have an abortion. A street minister pleaded with her not to have the abortion. She replied, “It’s okay. My baby won’t even feel any pain.”
Where did she learn that it’s acceptable to murder your baby as long as he or she doesn’t feel pain? From the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act which highlights pain as the reason abortion should be illegal.
Abolitionists are not trying to make abortion safer for women, more rare, or a little less legal. Abolitionists are seeking to criminalize abortion because it is murder and the laws against murder should be applied equally to all people.
At the same time they preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ declaring that there is forgiveness for the sin of abortion, and all repentant post-abortive mothers and fathers can be redeemed and restored in knowing Jesus Christ as Lord.
Simply put, abolitionism is nothing more or less than the practice of consistent biblical Christianity in a culture that practices child sacrifice.
#2: ABOLITIONISTS ARE IMMEDIATISTS, NOT INCREMENTALISTS
Abortion cannot be abolished by allowing it all along the way.
Abolitionists submit to God as their Ultimate authority, so the abolitionist response to the Supreme Court ruling that child sacrifice should be legal is defiance. Many assume that there is no earthly power higher than the Supreme Court. Abolitionists cry, “No King but Jesus!”
While the foundation of abolitionism is God’s word, the Constitution is also on their side.
The federal government, the states, and all other subdivisions thereof are Constitutionally barred from providing unequal protection of the law. They cannot allow the murder of certain classes of human beings meaning Roe was sedition against the Constitution.
Abolitionists call Roe v. Wade what it is: illegitimate, wicked, and not binding on the states. Abolitionists demand abortion be immediately abolished because it’s murder.
#3: ABOLITIONISTS PROVIDE NO EXCEPTIONS FOR ABORTIONS
Abortion is murder, always and everywhere murder.
Abolitionists demand abortion’s total abolition. That means no exceptions allowing for the murder of babies because of the circumstances in which they were conceived like rape or incest.
No exceptions that allow for murdering babies because they have a disease or disorder. No exceptions whatsoever.
If abortion is murder, and we all know it is, it must be abolished entirely.
#4: ABOLITIONISTS IGNORE ROE V. WADE
Abolitionists believe that no government possesses the rightful authority to legalize child sacrifice.
The moment Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun delivered the majority decision in Roe v Wade in 1973, the decision was legally null and void and should’ve been treated as such. By complying with the Supreme Court’s order to allow mass murder for 48 years, the states have made themselves complicit in the shedding of innocent blood.
Christians can either do what Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” or submit to the Supreme Court which says that the murder of certain humans is legal. We cannot do both.
The only appropriate response to an order allowing mass murder is non-compliance and resistance—in this case, ignoring Roe and abolishing abortion. This requires less concern over what people will do if we outlaw murder and more concern about what God will do if we don’t.
#5: ABOLITIONISTS WANT ABORTION CRIMINALIZED
Establishing justice for the preborn requires criminalization.
If abortion is murder, and we all know it is, it ought to be treated as such.
#6 ABOLITIONISM IS BIBLICAL, NOT SECULAR
Abolitionism is more than working to end something, it is about bringing the truth revealed in God’s word into conflict with the evils of the age and the worldly wisdom of man.
Abolitionists maintain that abortion is wrong because human beings are created in the image of God and because the Creator Himself became a man to rescue mankind from sin, death, and eternal separation from God.
American slavery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison said, “My fanaticism is to make Christianity the enemy of all that is sinful.”
Being Biblical means relying on God’s words rather than worldly tactics and strategies. Abolitionists proclaim the truth that abortion is murder and that justice demands it be abolished immediately leaving the results to God.
Abolitionists, when presented with the choice between obeying God or obeying man, obey God.
When the Supreme Court orders our state to allow the mass murder of preborn children, they boldly bring the Gospel into conflict with the court’s rebellion against God.
Being Biblical means that abolition is the duty of the Church.
Proverbs 24:11-12: Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
12 If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
What can we do as the church?
- Actively bring the Gospel into conflict with the practice of child sacrifice by going to a local abortion center and preaching the Gospel to those stumbling toward slaughter.
- Schedule meetings with state senators, state representatives, state executives, city councils, and any other magistrates to explain to them their duty before God and Constitution to immediately abolish abortion.
- Pray for and help financially pregnant single mothers in our community.
- Share abolitionist ideas with your friends and family.
- Share abolitionist articles, memes, and videos on social media.
- Encourage your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to join you in all of that.
- Attend an Abolitionist Conference to learn more.
- Watch this video to see the history of the Abolition Movement juxtaposed with the slavery abolition movement.
- Lastly, go to www.FreeTheStates.org and read “What We Believe” for a fuller understanding of their Movement.
Benediction: Proverbs 24:11-12: Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
12 If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Laurie
Catherine Ramey