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By Scott Tibbs, February 12, 2018
What does it mean to be pro-life? Does it mean only to oppose abortion, or to embrace a wide variety of issues where human life is threatened or degraded? What should the pro-life movement do about issues like immigration, police brutality, and helping the poor? Are we truly pro-life, or only "pro-birth?"
I wonder if people who push for the pro-life movement to address a broader variety of issues understand what we are talking about when we oppose abortion. Do they really understand the gravity of the situation, and are they truly committed to saving the unborn from being murdered?
The answer to what the pro-life movement should do to on any issue other than abortion and euthanasia is "nothing." We should be laser-focused on protecting innocent human life from being terminated. This is not to say that other issues are unimportant, of course. But nothing else comes close to the slaughter of over one million innocent babies every single year. Nothing else comes close to an average of 19 babies murdered every week right here in Bloomington, Indiana.
But once we start moving away from abortion and euthanasia (where the pro-life movement is completely unified) we run the risk of splintering the movement and creating infighting. People of good conscience disagree on how to deal with illegal immigration, and the pro-life movement is split on capital punishment. The same could be said for numerous other issues. The more issues we address, the less effective we will be in opposing the murder of unborn babies. Ending abortion must be our primary goal.
There are other ways to address these other issues. There are groups that will lobby one way or the other on immigration policy, the opioid epidemic, social welfare policy, capital punishment, and use of force by law enforcement. We do not need to co-opt the pro-life movement when we have other avenues to address other issues we find important. We certainly do not need to water down our message because we are worried about what our enemies will say about us.
Abortion is the most critical moral issue of our time. If we truly believe abortion is the unjustifiable termination of a human life, then nothing else comes close. We have seen over sixty million defenseless unborn babies ripped limb from limb in their mothers' wombs since, a holocaust that ought to exceed our worst nightmare. If you add all the causes of death together, none of them come close to the death toll of abortion. How could the pro-life movement be anything other than exclusively focused on that one issue?
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