A Debate Brewing Within The Pro-life Movement

 


There is a debate brewing within the pro-life movement and the debate is whether or not a woman who has an abortion should be charged with murder just as someone who murders a born person is charged with the same.  As an item from the Christian Post explains:
 
 
 
 On one side are groups such as the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, led by constitutional attorney Bradley Pierce. They argue that if preborn children are entitled to equal protection under the law, then laws against homicide should apply consistently to those who intentionally participate in an abortion. Their position is not that every woman who has an abortion should automatically be prosecuted or imprisoned. Rather, they argue that the law should permit questions of intent, coercion, culpability, and due process to be considered just as they are in other cases involving the taking of human life.
 
On the other side are organizations such as National Right to Life (NRTL), which has spent decades supporting laws that penalize abortion providers while specifically protecting women who obtain abortions from prosecution. NRTL and others like Americans United for Life and the Pro-Life Action League argue that women are often placed under enormous pressure by partners, family members, and the abortion industry itself. These organizations maintain that women should receive compassion and support rather than criminal penalties. [1]
 
 
 
 
Let’s be clear about something pro-lifers:  The Bible says that those who commit bloodshed are to be put to death (Gen. 9:6, Ex. 21:12) which means if unborn persons are to be given the same rights as those born, then they also are entitled to equal protections under the law which means the deliberate killing of an unborn needs to carry the same consequences as the murder of one who is born, which means everyone involved in the deliberate killing of an unborn child which would include the mother, doctors, immediate family members, and even boyfriends or husbands, by all rights would all need to face prosecution and receive the same sentence as those who would murder someone already born.
 
Until we are willing to do that, then the unborn will never really have the same rights as those born.  That is not to say, however, that we should be any less compassionate or empathetic towards women facing an unwanted or unanticipated pregnancy and we need to do all that we can to help them through those difficult 9 months of pregnancy; the latter months especially and beyond.
 
That is why I thank God that there are resources and organizations that are dedicated to helping women faced with an unanticipated or unwanted pregnancy through that difficult process and who will even assist unmarried mothers in acquiring the resources needed to properly care for their children and there have been many single mothers, with the proper help and support who have gone on to bettering their own lives and those of their children and have managed to succeed in living fairly self-sufficient lives.
 
But there will always be women out there who, despite being clearly shown what it is that they are about to kill should they follow through with an abortion, will reject any all help offered that might persuade them to spare the life of their child and who won’t even so much as give the baby up for adoption so as to provide that child with an opportunity to be given the love and care that they might not have been able to give and insist on murdering their child, and those types are the ones who then need to face the consequences for their selfish actions.
 
I understand that from a political standpoint, that the populace is not yet ready for the abolishing of all abortions, and even the day should come in which they are ready and have been persuaded that outlawing all abortions for any reason, with the exception of legitimate life-threatening healthcare situations (and even then, a removal of the fetus should not require an outright killing), not all will still be ready to prosecute women who willfully seek out an abortion.
 
If we were to outlaw abortion today and prosecute any women who persist in aborting their children, that victory would be a short-lived one because the populace would then vote in another administration who would just simply change the laws again, which is why before such legislation can be successfully implemented and maintained, the public at large is going to have to be first persuaded that abortion is morally wrong and should be outlawed, that the unborn are just as human as those who are born, and that anyone knowingly involved in an abortion in any way, shape, or form, needs to be criminally prosecuted and be given the same sentence for the murder of an unborn child as they would for the murder of one who is born.
 
But in order for the public at large to be persuaded against abortion at any stage of development, there not only needs to be a change of mind and heart, but there also needs to be change in the spiritual condition of the populace and one that will cause them to seek, fear, and submit to the authority of their Creator who regards all human life equal because He is the Maker of every human life; each life have his or her start in the womb of his or her mother, with the exception of the first man Adam and the first woman Eve; Adam being formed from the dust of the earth and then Eve who was formed from a rib taken from Adam (Gen. 2) with every human soul having its start in the womb of a woman from that day forth, beginning with the womb of Eve who is the mother of every living human soul. (Gen. 3:20)
 
We have already won the scientific argument against abortion as science clearly demonstrates that the life that begins in the womb is human from day one; it may very well start out as a clump of cells, but it quickly develops into a human being; it is never a fish, amphibian, or a reptile (that has been thoroughly exposed as a fraud and debunked though such teaching still continues to persist in science textbooks) but a human being from day one but winning the scientific argument is not enough. 
 
 
We still have to confront the emotional, medical, and social arguments as well which are the arguments that I have found abortionists commonly using and sadly prevailing, to a certain extent, in the hearts and minds of many.
 
They will argue how hard a pregnancy can be on a woman and list everything that could go wrong during or even after a pregnancy.
They will ask “what about in the cases of rape, incest, or when a woman’s health is at risk?”
They will contend that the outlawing of abortion infringes on a woman’s reproductive rights.
 
And the pro-life movement needs to be able to answer those questions effectively and provide the most reasonable and most logical answers that to those challenging questions and arguments as they can and I fear that there has been a failure in being able to do that.
 
Another failure cited by some professing Christians is that many pro-life organizations and ministries are leaving out the call to repentance to those mothers they are seeking to dissuade from killing their children and that is something that needs to change, because not only is it not enough to present the scientific case for opposing abortion or even to refute even the emotional, medical, and social arguments, but there needs to be a call to repentance and an active effort to persuade as many as possible of the truth of the Gospel message and to embrace Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of their life because since He is the Creator and source of all things (Jn. 1:1-3, 14:6) and the source of all truth (Jn. 14:6) and if He is the Creator of all, then He is also the decider of all that is right and wrong, good and evil since He is also the source of goodness itself and it is He Himself who has declared murder to be wrong (Gen. 9:6, Ex. 20:13) and because He is a God of life, He deems the needless destruction of innocent life to be evil in His sight and this would apply not just to the born but even the unborn and if there is one passage in scripture that gives a clear indication that the sin of murder potentially including the unborn, it can found in the laws of Moses in which it was prescribed:
 
 
 
if men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine, and if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life…
 
 
 
Now, the context of that passage is written with accidental harm in mind, but in the case of deliberate harm done, the penalty of death would be applied in the event that either the woman, the child, or both were to die; in either case, a penalty was demanded of the perpetrator for the death of the unborn child.  Jesus also stated that if any were to cause harm to a child, that it would be better that a millstone were hanged about their neck, and that they were drowned in the depth of the sea than to face the judgment to come (Mt. 18:6) and this could also potentially extend to the unborn and we are further warned that any committing murder will not be admitted into the Kingdom of Heaven (Rev. 21:8) and this would include any woman who unrepentantly aborts her child and anyone who takes part in any abortion which is why we need to urge repentance because the objective of the pro-life movement should be saving not only lives but souls as well; the lives of the unborn, but also the souls of those who have committed, taken part in committing, or are considering an abortion so that they do not find themselves shut out of the Kingdom of Heaven, but so that they might repent of their sins and call upon the name of the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, who came into the world to take away all sins from the world which He did by His death on the cross upon which He was crucified, and after having purchased our redemption in His death, was raised from the dead for our justification (Rom. 4:25) so that we, by our faith in Him, would be justified in Him in the sight of God the Father and the reason why it was necessary for Jesus to come into the world to take away our sins and why it was necessary for Him to take upon Himself the penalty of sin in His death is because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23) and the reason why we all sin and fall short of the glory of God is because we are all inherently sinful; that inherent sinfulness not being defined by just a bad act or even by what we say, but by the corrupted condition of our nature which we inherited from Adam and Eve (Rom. 5:12) into whom it first entered when they had committed an astronomically fateful and consequential act of disobedience against God when they had eaten of a fruit from a certain tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, having been warned of God that in the day that they ate thereof, they would surely die (Gen. 2:16-17, 3:3)
But before that fateful transgression, there was no sin and there was no death or suffering in the world because God had made the world to be a place of goodness and had created everything in the world, including man, to be good and in that world, there had existed a perfect harmony between God, man, and nature, but when Adam and Eve had eaten of that forbidden fruit, sin entered into them and disrupted that once perfect harmony and when sin entered into them, the sentence of death was pronounced upon them just as they had been warned (Gen. 3:19) and to which they eventually succumbed, but the consequences of Adam and Eve’s transgression did not stop with them, but extended to the rest of mankind because the sin that entered into Adam and Eve was then passed down to the rest of mankind because it is from Adam and Eve we all descend and because we are descended from them, we inherit within ourselves the sin that entered into them and it is this inherently corrupt condition of our nature not only influences what we say and do, but also influences the thoughts, motives, and attitudes behind what we say and do and it is due to this corrupted condition that we all sin and since we all sin, we all as a consequence die which is why it is written that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23) but not only does sin bring death, it also causes a separation and estrangement between God and man, and it is this separation that keeps any who are in sin from entering into the Kingdom of God and the reason why those who are in sin cannot enter into the Kingdom of God is due to the pervasiveness of sin because sin taints, corrupts, distorts, and perverts everything that it touches and it is due to its pervasiveness that the entire creation groans and travails in pain to this very day (Rom. 8:19-22) and if God allowed that which is sin into Heaven, then Heaven would become just as defiled by sin as the earth is and because sin is present within each and every one of us, we cannot redeem ourselves by our own goodness and our own righteousness because even our own efforts and goodness and righteousness are made to fall short of what God requires by the sin that dwells in us because God requires nothing short of absolute moral perfection.  He requires purity not only in what we say and do, but He also requires the purity of our hearts, minds, and thoughts; and if sin should even so much as dwell within our minds, that in and of itself is enough to keep us out of Heaven, for when the day comes for each and every one of us to stand before our Creator to give an account for all that we have said and done in this present life, even the very thoughts of our minds, the motives behind every act, and even what we harbor in our hearts are going to be called into account.
 
God does not require that there should only be a change in our outward performance for the better, but demands an inward change for the better within us, for as it is written, “cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also” (Mt. 23:6) for it is also written that we are not defiled from the things that are without, but we are already defiled by that which is from within (Mt. 15:11, 18-20) and that which defiles us from within is the corrupted condition of our nature that is called sin and it is for this reason and because it dwells within us, it is impossible for us to cleanse ourselves of it which is why it became necessary that Jesus should come into the world and cleanse us from all sin; that cleansing having come by way of the shedding of His sinless and untainted blood upon the cross on which He was crucified which was then followed by His resurrection that we, by our faith in Him, would be justified in Him and by Him in the sight of God the Father.
 
Jesus did for us what we were unable to do for ourselves and it is only in Him that we receive the forgiveness of sins when we call upon His name for salvation, (Rom. 10:13) and it is upon receiving the forgiveness of sins that we are made anew in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:17) by an inward transformation.  And it is this inward transformation that makes us to no longer desire to follow after selfish and worldly pursuits but after those things that pertain to the Kingdom of Heaven,
to no longer take pleasure in those things that are evil and displeasing in the sight of the Lord, but in that which is good, right, and pleasing in His sight,
to no longer desire to walk in the lies of this present world, but only in the truth that comes from Christ Almighty who is the source of all truth, (Jn. 14:6)
no longer placing our hopes in the things of this present world, but looking forward to that new and better world to come, (Rev. 21-22)
to no longer rely on worldly resources, men, or even our own power, abilities, skills, and wisdom for our needs and provision but upon God who is able to meet all of our needs, recognizing that the resources of this world and even the people He brings into our lives are but instruments and vessels through which God meets our needs and that the skills, power, knowledge, and wisdom by which we might acquire our provision are provided and instilled in us by God, (Mt. 6:25-33)
to no longer fear what men can do to us, but rather fearing the God before whom we will have to one day give an account for how we lived our lives, (Mt. 10:28)
to no longer look to corruptible institutions within our society for direction and order in our lives but to God who, by His written Word has given us laws and precepts to be applied to our lives and which serve to produce and maintain an ordered life, and who, by His Holy Spirit which comes to dwell within us upon repentance, establishes in our lives a course and direction in our lives to pursue for His glory,
to no longer seek our own glory but the glory of God,
to no longer rally behind corruptible men, but instead behind the incorruptible God in Heaven bearing in mind that those men and women God raises up for our edification are but instruments and servants of His for that respective purpose to which He has called them,
to no longer seek to align ourselves with the things of darkness but only with the things of the light,
to no longer trust in the wisdom of the world but only on the wisdom and knowledge that comes from above, (Jas. 1:5) nor depend on corruptible earthly authorities to swiftly administer justice, but only in the power of God to deliver us from evil.
 
 
We have all done things that we are ashamed of but there is a God who is faithful and just to forgive all sins confessed to Him (1 Jn. 1:9) if we will but call upon Him for the forgiveness of sins in sincere repentance and redemption is but a sincere prayer of repentance away:
 
 
 
"Lord Jesus I need you.
 
 
I realize that I am a sinner
who has fallen short of the glory of God
and that my goodness falls short
of your standard of Moral perfection.
 
Please forgive me of all of my sins.
Come into my heart and into my life
to be the Savior and Lord of my life.
Make me into the servant and follower
that you want me to be.
In your name Lord Jesus, I pray.
 
 
Amen."
 
 
Know that God is not concerned with the words that you use to call upon Him forgiveness, but with the attitude of your heart and if you have, with all sincerity, have asked Christ to forgive you of your sins, placing your trust in Him only for your salvation and in nothing else, then your sins are forgiven and your place in Heaven is certain.
 
 
 
End notes:
 
 
 
1.  Nelly Roach, “Pro-life infighting helps no preborn child,” Christian Post, October 11, 2026
https://www.christianpost.com/voices/pro-life-infighting-helps-no-preborn-child.html?utm_source=notifpush.com&utm_medium=web-push
 
 
 
Scripture references:
 
 
 
1.  Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:12
 
2.  Genesis 2
 
3.  Genesis 3:20
 
4.  John 1:1-3, 14:6
 
5.  Genesis 9:6, Exodus 20:13
 
6.  Matthew 18:6
 
7.  Revelation 21:8
 
8.  Romans 4:25
 
9.  Romans 3:23
 
10.  Romans 5:12
 
11.  Genesis 2:16-17, 3:3
 
12.  Romans 6:23
 
13.  Romans 8:19-22
 
14.  Matthew 23:6
 
15.  Matthew 15:11, 18-20
 
16.  Romans 10:13
 
17.  2 Corinthians 5:17
 
18.  Revelation 21-22
 
19.  Matthew 6:25-33
 
20.  Matthew 10:28
 
21.  James 1:5

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