What Does It Mean to Be Pro-Life?

Pastor J.D. defines what it means to be pro-life and explains what it requires and the responsibility for Christians.

A glimpse inside this episode:

Last week, we covered some answers to pro-choice arguments, and if you missed that one, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to it.

So, now, what does it mean to be “pro-life?”

• From womb to tomb, but that includes when the womb is a tomb. We must be pro-abundant life.
  • And BTW, just so you know, Christians have always been like this. Sometimes I hear people say, “All you Christians care about is the pre-born!” But that’s not true. Since 1973, for every 1 abortion clinic in America Christians have built 3 pregnancy centers to assist women in crisis. They are buying groceries and helping young mothers get housing and whatever else they need. Go into foster services and adoption agencies and there you will find the group represented most are pro-life Christians and their friends. Christians have built more hospitals around the world than any other single group–for a long time in sub-Saharan African there was not a single hospital that hadn’t been built by a Christian mission. So don’t believe the tired trope that followers of Jesus only care about the pre-born. It’s just not true, and a lot of people use that to excuse the fact that they are virtually silent about the tragedy of abortion. It’s hard to say that you’re pro-life from the womb to the tomb if you’re apathetic when the womb is a tomb.
• Right now, children are most vulnerable, statistically speaking, when they’re in the womb. Listen to this:
  • In 2018 abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide, with 42 million victims. That is roughly seven holocausts in a single year.
• I agree with Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile who says, “It’s staggeringly clear that the largest scale injustice, the most morally outrageous thing happening in our society today is the killing of children in the womb..”

To be consistently pro-life, you have to want to change the law

• People say, “It doesn’t matter if we change the law… abortions happen just as much with pro-life justices and pro-life presidents, let’s work on the system.”
• The counting is skewed by things like the morning after pill. 
• Also, really shortsighted. This is only a 47 year question. How many lives would be saved if we truly as a society acknowledged the value of the pre-born and made it illegal to take their lives?
• Most importantly, we oppose Roe because it is an inherently unjust law. In 1973, we codified into law a Constitutional right to kill an innocent human child. As long as that law is on the books, we live in an inherently unjust country, no less than when we had a stipulation in our Constitution that blacks counted as only 3/5 of a human. To arrive at this “more perfect union,” that 3/5 compromise needed to be eradicated, and Roe, in my view, does as well.

The worst position: I’m pro-life but think people should be free to choose for themselves. 

So, what does being pro-life require of us? What’s MY responsibility?

• The African American pastor Thabiti Anyabwhile says that this passage is crucial in instructing us how to respond to the abortion crisis because it tells us  what God’s requirement is and the scope of that requirement 
• First, WHAT is our responsibility?  Proverbs 31:8 “Speak up for those who have no voice…”
• What better description of the preborn could there be than “those who have no voice”? No one hears their screams as they’re slain in the womb–We know they feel pain. Through microscopic cameras we see them flinch as they are injected with poison; we see their heartbeats SPIKE as they’re killed. But we don’t hear their voices. Some of them are old enough that if they were just 6 inches further out of the womb we could hear their screams. But because they’re left in the womb when their life is taken we don’t hear them. 
• So, we are obligated to speak for them. “Speak up” is repeated twice. Once in vs. 8; once in vs. 9. Speak up, the King says. Speak up. Say something. As with the story of the Good Samaritan, not speaking up in the face of injustice makes you guilty of injustice.
• It’s like Martin Luther King, Jr, said in regards to racial injustice: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Silence IS support. Speak up. ((Everywhere in the world our flag flies right now it represents this. And that is tragic.))
• And hey, I want to stop here and say something: I want to ask you to seriously consider whether or not God might be leading some of you to take on the mantle of government leadership for causes like these. We need godly people (in both political parties) advocating for this. As I said, this should not be a partisan issue–much like care for the refugee or respect for the immigrant should not be partisan issues. I don’t care what your political party is–all Christians should be united in seeing the removal of this scourge from our land.

Second, Proverbs 31 shows us the SCOPE of that responsibility: vs. 8 …Speak up for the justice of ALL who are dispossessed. All: If your love for the vulnerable is sincere, this won’t be the only life issue you care about. For some people, pro-life is like a moral club they use in the culture war, even as they ignore the suffering and needs of other vulnerable groups around them. If you really care about the vulnerable we’ll see you advocating for life everywhere– the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten of all ages and all races. Maybe most of all you’ll be brokenhearted about those around the world with no access to the gospel. The greatest tragedy in our world is people dying with the gospel; and the greatest injustice in the world is the failure of the church to get it to them. It’s like I said: A real commitment to life is demonstrated by advocacy for the vulnerable from the womb to the tomb. But don’t tell me you’re pro-life if you’re apathetic about life in the womb.

A lot of our ministry to our community here centers around this issue. Speak up and offer help! Not just pro-life, pro-abundant life.