It is estimated that roughly 50,000 more babies will be born each year as a result of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last July.

For those who oppose abortion, every one of those lives is a cause for celebration. For those who think differently, that’s 50,000 women who will be forced to carry, and often raise, a baby that they didn’t want.

But while there are many stories of women who are grateful once the child arrives, most who feel inclined to get an abortion do so because their lives were difficult before adding a baby to the mix. Fortunately, an increasing number of people are taking steps to help make sure that being pro-life means more than just being pro-birth.

And, as Adam Macinnis profiles for Christianity Today, Christians are often at the forefront of such efforts.

Learning to cope with being uncomfortable

Embrace Grace is one such example of a Christian group that “supports single parents and women facing unplanned pregnancies.” Betty Hodge started a chapter at her church in 2019 because, as someone who had also faced an unplanned pregnancy and pressure to abort a baby, she can empathize with women who find themselves in a similar position.

She credits the support of her family for helping her to choose life for her child and now works to provide similar support for the women to whom she ministers.

As Macinnis notes, Mississippi—where Hodge lives and works—has “the highest rate of preterm births—over 30 percent more than the national average,” as well as “the highest infant mortality rate in the US, with nearly 9 of every 1,000 babies dying. And for the infants who live to be toddlers, 28 percent will live in poverty.”

There are understandable reasons that Mississippi often finds itself in the crosshairs of pro-choice advocates looking to justify their position by highlighting the additional dangers faced by women denied the chance to abort their babies. However, those increased risks also mean increased opportunities for those willing to step in and help.

Another ministry in the area attempting to meet those needs is Her PLAN. Anja Baker is the coordinator for the Mississippi chapter, and her team partners with 140 churches and organizations that are ready to offer support and help to mothers in need, with more partners still being added. As she describes, “We’re going to take a state like Mississippi . . . and we’re going to make it the champion of hope and life, hospitality and generosity.”

As Hodge cautions, however, such work can get uncomfortable at times: “You have to be ready for the f-bomb to come out of a mouth. You’ve got to be ready for someone to come in here in a short, short skirt.”

But learning to cope with being uncomfortable can be an essential first step to serving the parents as well as their children. And to be sure, helping both is crucial.

“Kids are unwell”

As Kate Woodsome writes for The Washington Post, “Kids are unwell. Worse than ever recorded, according to two new reports tracing depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in teens. . . . But if we want to make any lasting difference, it is us, the adults, who need an intervention.”

Woodsome goes on to describe how “American kids are unwell because American society is unwell. The systems and social media making teenagers sad, angry and afraid today were shaped in part by adults who grew up sad, angry and afraid themselves.”

Working to break that generational cycle of pain is an essential part of being pro-life as well.

The CDC reports that “preventing adverse experiences in childhood could reduce the number of adults with depression by as much as 44 percent.” As such, we see that one of the best ways to serve a child is to serve his or her parents. By working to help parents create an environment in which their children can feel safe and provided for, we can interrupt that cycle of pain and help kids avoid the trauma that so often defined their parents’ lives.

So how can the church help?

We can start by valuing people the same way God does.

The difference between a burden and a treasure

At a recent conference, pastor Chris Legg made the point that the only difference between a burden and a treasure is the value assigned to the object in question.

A fifty-pound piece of iron, for example, would be considered a burden to anyone who had to carry it. But what if it were fifty pounds of gold instead? To what extent would you gladly burden yourself to carry as many blocks as possible?

As Legg points out, the weight didn’t change, and the block would be difficult to carry in either case. However, your perspective changed because your assessment of the object’s worth changed.

How we choose to relate to the people God brings into our lives is similar in many ways.

Even in the best of times, other people can be difficult to work with, take us out of our comfort zone, and generally hinder the way we might prefer to live. But if we can come to see them as God does—as a treasure worth every bit of the exhaustion and exasperation they might require of us—then ministering to them as the Lord intends can become a source of joy rather than sacrifice and purpose rather than pain.

And if we can help parents to see their children, both in the womb and after they’re born, in the same light, then perhaps we can help to break the cycle of trauma and distress that is so often passed down from one generation to the next.

Treating every person God has created as a treasure of inestimable worth is what it should mean to be pro-life.

Are you?

Denison Forum

The Satanic Temple is launching an online abortion clinic that prescribes medication for patients who want to take part in its “religious abortion ritual.” The group named the initiative “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic” in reference to the Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

In related news, the Grammy Awards recently recognized “Unholy” as the best pop duo of the year; the performance of the song during the show included demonic costumes and depraved sexual themes. Prior to the show, singer Sam Smith tweeted a photo of himself in rehearsal wearing devil horns with the words “This is going to be SPECIAL” and a devil emoji. CBS responded: “You can say that again. We are ready to worship!” They later deleted the tweet.

While these stories are obviously tragic and disturbing, they are no longer surprising, a cultural fact which is itself tragic and disturbing.

Now consider a thought experiment: imagine that a group of pro-life supporters launched an initiative opposing abortion named for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s mother. Or that the Grammy Awards included a performance they knew would offend Muslims (or any other religious group except Christians).

What would be the response in secular culture?

“The biggest threat to American democracy”

George F. Will has been a conservative columnist for the Washington Post for the last half-century. In a fascinating recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, he laments the fact that “consciousness itself has become a political project.”

Here is his explanation: “You can blame Marx, or his precursor Hegel. Once you decide that human nature is a fiction, that human beings are merely the sum of impressions made on them by their surrounding culture, then politics acquires an enormous jurisdiction. Consciousness becomes a political project, and the point of politics becomes the control of culture in order to control the imposition of proper consciousnesses.”

In Will’s view, progressives think that “consciousness is to be transmitted by the government. And they’re working on it, starting with kindergarten. The academic culture, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to kindergarten in Flagstaff, Arizona, is the same now, coast to coast, as far as I can tell.”

This works because our secular society has jettisoned belief in objective truth and morality, viewing people as made not in God’s image but in the image of pragmatic consensus. As a result, politics are so crucial these days because political power can be used to inculcate a particular worldview across society. When political parties advance that consensus through cultural institutions, they ensure that they remain in power.

All that is necessary is for the worldview being advanced to appeal to our intrinsic desires and needs. An agenda that empowers us to define ourselves and our “truth” as we wish appeals to the “will to power” at the heart of fallen humanity (Genesis 3:5). A corollary agenda that defines morality as anything that doesn’t harm someone else appeals to the “works of the flesh” such as “sexual immorality, impurity, [and] sensuality” (Galatians 5:19).

At the end of his Wall Street Journal interview, George Will states, “People always ask, ‘What’s the biggest threat to American democracy?’ The biggest threat to American democracy is American democracy. It is the fact that we have incontinent appetites and no restraint on them” (his emphasis).

The great impediment to revival

We have been focusing this week on the revival still ongoing at Asbury University in Kentucky. I am praying for God to protect and bless those experiencing this remarkable movement of his Spirit and to make them a catalyst for the spiritual awakening our nation needs so desperately.

Here’s the great impediment to God answering such prayers: we must admit that we need what only his Spirit can do. If God’s people do not recognize how much we need the transforming power of God in our lives and our culture, we will not truly seek such a movement or pay a personal price to join it.

The 2 Chronicles 7:14 text so often connected to revival begins, “If my people who are called by my name . . . .” However, its call to humility and dependence on God is preceded by verse 13’s description of a day when drought, devastation, and disease have ravaged the land. In that condition, the people would clearly know that they needed to turn to God in desperation.

Here’s my point: American society is now in the same condition spiritually that the Israel described by 2 Chronicles 7:13 was in physically. The unbiblical immorality that began gaining cultural traction with the sexual revolution of the 1960s has become normalized and legalized. Those who stand for biblical morality are now stigmatized and such opposition is increasingly criminalized.

This movement is using the levers of cultural and political influence to advance its aims and ensure its continued power.

“Led forward by grace”

Let’s end on a positive note: God knows everything I have discussed today and is still on his throne. He is working to redeem the brokenness of our secularized society by using it to draw people to his amazing grace and love. And, as the Asbury revival shows, he is using all who will be used in his agenda of restoration and renewal.

An unknown writer in the fourth century noted that “those who carry Christ within them, shining within them and renewing them—these people are guided by the Spirit in various ways and led forward by grace working invisibly in the inner peace of their hearts.”

As we know Christ and make him known, the Christ within us will renew us and lead us “forward by grace.” However others respond to such grace, we will know we have been faithful to the God who is faithful to us.

And, as Mother Teresa observed, “When facing God, results are not important. Faithfulness is what is important.”

Will you do what is “important” today?

Denison Forum