Sometime in the mid-60’s, abortion rates in the US began a meteoric rise. When abortion was legalized in the early 70’s, go figure, they continued to climb. Conservative religious folks of that era declared the Supreme Court’s decision the Devil’s errand, pure evil, one that would result in the death of millions of unborn babies.
Not long after Roe v. Wade, in the midst of a liberal administration, abortion rates in the US somehow began an equally meteoric decline, one that continued all the way into 2020.
Today, with another historic decision, the Supreme Court has declared abortion illegal at the Federal level, leaving each state to decide how to proceed.
My fellow Evangelicals are celebrating. To this camp, abortion is the single worst sin in America. An unborn fetus, at any stage, is human, and should be afforded the same rights as any other human.
I’ll further complicate things by adding that a fetus is the only group of cells in mom’s body that doesn’t bear an exact match to her DNA. It lives within her body, but, at the same time, doesn’t seem to pass the “her body” test.
As a bible believing Christian, abortion has always been a tough issue. Being part of a culture that has historically placed so much emphasis on this one issue – ultimately voting a guy into office because he simply paid the right lip service to this while simultaneously lip servicing violence and sexual assault – hasn’t been easy.
What goes missing here is the fact that a big chunk of the liberal world, myself included, is not categorically pro-abortion. Hearing accusations of “baby killers,” and “they don’t care about human life” is frustrating. Not only is it untrue, it’s tone deaf, further evidence that the conservative Christian world has segregated itself from the people it’s supposed to be reaching.
I’ll argue/rant that this cross-section of American culture isn’t as concerned about abortion as it claims to be. According to the graph above, referencing data from the only two orgs that track abortion statistics, conservative administrations don’t do any better at stemming the tide of abortion than liberal ones. In fact, on average, abortion decline in the US falls more sharply when liberals are at the helm.
Again, the only rise in abortion since the 70’s happened under a conservative president, one considered to be nigh unto Christian America’s Marvel-level superhero. If these folks care so much about abortion, their politicians should be posting better numbers than the baby killers.
Having lived in this culture for so long, I can tell you that it’s not about the life of unborn babies. If it was, we’d be celebrating America’s journey into the lowest abortion rates since Roe was passed. But we don’t care about the actual numbers, and too few from the anti-abortion crowd do anything beyond voting and ranting on social media.
If we truly wanted less abortion, we’d be more actively involved. We’d fight, sacrifice, spend our time and money. We’d pay attention to the numbers, asking why those evil liberals seem to do a better job than we do. At the very least, we would have conversations with young women who’ve terminated a pregnancy. We’d gain a deeper understanding of what they’ve been through, and how this issue is much more complicated than “just get your shit together and don’t have sex.”
None of that happens because we just want the lip service, the laws, the in-writing declaration that we were right all along.
That’s one of the reasons why the decline in abortion rates flattens out during conservative administrations; throwing a bunch of laws at this issue has historically done nothing. But conservative politicians are under great pressure to do just that: declare it illegal, condemn it, vilify it, etc. If they don’t, they’re out of a job.
Liberals, on the other hand, place great focus on things like prevention, education, and resourcing would-be moms. Sure, we also push the right to terminate a pregnancy, but that, somehow, hasn’t resulted in the skyrocketing of abortion rates when a baby killer is in charge.
Again, according to the numbers, abortion rates somehow fall more sharply under a more liberal approach.
Don’t hear me claiming that liberals have some moral high ground over conservatives, there’s evil on both sides. But as a pro-life evangelical, I’ll continue to vote liberal because the conservative way simply isn’t as pro-life as it thinks it is. And I gain the added bonus of social justice, another issue that us alleged pro-lifers should be serious about.
I’m convinced: if America could somehow continue its focus on prevention, resourcing, and compassion, our numbers would continue to fall, and we could all celebrate.
We decided not to go that route, and have convinced ourselves that the overturning of Roe v. Wade is some kind of advance towards a more abortion free America, and a huge step away from injustice:
Friday’s ruling is a sober reminder of the 50 years of havoc that Roe v. Wade left in its wake. Sixty-three million children have been murdered in the womb since 1973. Without question abortion has been the single greatest moral stain on our nation in our history.
Even if abortion was banned at both the state and federal level, America’s abortion rate wouldn’t be much different than it is now. Note that rates began their first rise before Roe v. Wade, when abortion was illegal, and women were being charged with manslaughter.
Declaring this a lawless deed does nothing beyond forcing desperate moms to seek much more dangerous solutions, not because they’re hopeless sinners in need of some good-old-fashioned Evangelical morality. They’re stressed, afraid, many times alone, flat broke, in need of the more difficult things that scripture calls us to, the stuff that too many of us can’t and historically refuse to muster.
