Pro-life advocates just won a monumental victory. With Roe and Casey out of the way, pro-life legislation can move forward without being handcuffed by the federal courts. But the victory will be short-lived if pro-lifers let critics determine our operational objectives.
For years, pro-life organizations have routinely been told that saving children from abortion is not enough. To be truly pro-life, the argument goes, we must be “whole life,” meaning these organizations must show equal concern for all injustice and not single out abortion. After all, sex trafficking, poverty, the opioid crisis, and the unfair treatment of refugees are assaults on human dignity, and so they also qualify as pro-life issues. Anything less than a consistent whole-life witness is a betrayal of our fundamental principles and will fail to convert skeptics to the pro-life cause. This attempt to hijack the operational objectives of the pro-life movement is unfair and threatens to bankrupt organizations committed to saving unborn humans.
Suppose your church, eager to save young children from gang violence, opens an inner-city childcare ministry on the south side of Chicago. For three hours after classes on school days, you provide kids a safe place to go, taking them off the street and away from gang recruiters.
But instead of applauding your sacrificial efforts to save children, a television reporter slams your church with a hit piece.
If you truly cared about kids, you’d care about all kids, not just grade school ones. Middle school kids need help too, you know. Why are you only open for three hours on school days instead of 24-7? And what are you doing to address the underlying causes of gang violence such as gun sales and poor housing? Sorry, but if you’re going to call yourself a childcare ministry, you must care for all children K–12, not just cherry-pick the ones you like. After all, Jesus cared about all marginalized people, not just a few.
A reporter who said that about your childcare ministry would be sacked before the evening signoff. But if he conveys those same sentiments about a pro-life organization, he may win an Emmy. Pro-lifers should reject the unfair whole-life critique for at least five reasons.
1. Whole-life demands distort pro-life priorities.
It’s true that as defenders of human dignity, Christians should care about poverty, clean water, and the rights of people everywhere. A biblical Christian ethic is concerned with the whole life. But the organizational priorities of pro-life organizations must be narrow; we must stop letting our opponents dictate our operational objectives. After all, when governments set aside an entire class of human beings to be killed, it’s only fitting that pro-life organizations prioritize ending that evil.
Hijacking the operational objectives of the pro-life movement threatens to bankrupt organizations committed to saving unborn humans.
We won’t achieve pro-life victory by seeking to fix every wrong in society. That’s an impossible task. We’ll achieve it when our primary objectives are achieved, when each state no longer permits the intentional killing of pre-born human beings. Yes, our tasks in service of securing that objective vary. Pro-life work necessarily includes pregnancy centers, apologetics, political strategy, and educational campaigns. But the objective itself is singular. We exist to protect unborn human beings.
2. Whole-life demands exhaust battle-weary pro-lifers.
Some well-intentioned pro-life leaders are buying into the whole-life premise of our critics. They believe the pro-life movement as a whole—not just pregnancy centers—must shift from “pro-life” to “pro–abundant life.” That saving babies is not enough. Instead, pro-life organizations must devote operational resources to building strong families, securing religious liberty, promoting healthy marriages, encouraging responsible fatherhood, and helping families thrive spiritually.
How is this human-flourishing mandate possible operationally? This strategy saddles pro-life advocates with a backbreaking job description even Superman couldn’t pull off. It’s one thing for pregnancy centers to focus holistically on their clients. It’s quite another to tell the entire pro-life movement that saving children is not enough.
It doesn’t follow that pro-life advocates, who oppose the intentional killing of innocent human beings, must also take personal responsibility for solving other societal ills. In fact, improving the lives of living children presupposes their live births. We must save lives first—only then can we help those children with their quality of life.
3. Whole-life demands promote a false moral equivalency.
Biblically speaking, the shedding of innocent blood represents a preeminent moral crisis. It demands fearless intervention (Prov. 6:16–19; 24:11–12). It’s never one issue among equal concerns.
In terms of the evil done, what issue comes close to the state-sanctioned intentional killing of a million innocent human beings annually? During the five decades that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, 62 million human beings were legally killed in the U.S. That is the Holocaust times 10. That is Yankee Stadium filled 1,143 times over. And that’s just the United States. There is plenty of injustice to go around, but none so egregious and violent as abortion. That’s reason enough for pro-life advocates to make protecting unborn humans their top priority.
True, abortion is not the only issue, any more than slavery was the only issue in 1860 or killing Jews the only issue in 1940. But both were the dominant issues of their day. Demanding pro-lifers do more is like telling abolitionists in 1860, “You can’t be against slavery unless you address all its underlying causes.”
Slavery is wrong. Abortion is wrong. Neither statement requires further qualification.
4. Shifting to a whole-life approach will not convert critics.
When a critic says that pro-lifers are “pro-birth” rather than “pro-life,” we should call his bluff: “Tell me, if the pro-life movement takes on every issue that you demand we take on, will you join us in opposing abortion?” We already know the answer: “No! Abortion is a fundamental right!” To which pro-life advocates should reply, “Then why did you bring up all these other issues in the first place?”
Slavery is wrong. Abortion is wrong. Neither statement requires further qualification.
Of course pro-life advocates are pro-birth! What’s wrong with that? The alternative is the intentional dismemberment of innocent human beings.
Our critics have it exactly backward. It’s not pro-lifers who care nothing for kids once they are born. It’s pro-abortionists who don’t care. Without exception, every abortion advocacy group in the country from Planned Parenthood to the Democratic Party opposes legislation that protects children who are born alive after botched abortion procedures.
5. Pro-life advocates owe no apologies.
Why is the whole-life argument never used against other groups who target specific forms of injustice? Critics never demand that other organizations broaden their humanitarian efforts; they only demand pro-lifers do so. How many of these other organizations reciprocate by diluting their personnel and funds to help pro-lifers save children?
Meanwhile, pro-life advocates do care for those outside the womb. Pro-life pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics by a wide margin nationally. These centers are funded entirely by pro-life donors who give sacrificially to assist women both before birth and after. This shouldn’t surprise us. As Thaddeus Williams points out,
Conservative households donate substantially more money to charity than liberal ones. A 2018 Barna study found that practicing Christians outpace all other demographics in providing food to the poor, donating clothing and furniture to the poor, praying for the poor, and giving personal time to serve the poor in their communities and beyond U.S. borders.
In short, whole-life demands often amount to little more than a lazy slander of the pro-life cause.
Opposing the intentional killing of innocent humans in the womb is the very essence of what it means to be pro-life. As my colleague Marc Newman points out, “Individuals and organizations that make it their exclusive mission to save these human beings from a culture hell-bent on butchering them have nothing to apologize for. They don’t need additional causes; they need additional support.”
The Gospel Coalition