Abortion on the Ballot in November

If abortion is evil, and if it destroys a human person made in God’s image, it doesn’t leave political wiggle-room.

Please read to the end of this one, because the takeaway matters. A lot.

I’ve often considered it ironic that the aisle between partisan platforms has separated advocates for unborn life and advocates for racial justice. Abortion and racism both grow from the same rotten root. That root denies the reality of the image of God in an unpreferred group of human persons.

Both racism and abortion are fought on the basic spiritual battleground of the image of God. The principalities and powers want to destroy the image of God, and the Prince of Peace arrived to restore the image of God. I believe that the abortion industrial complex has been a flowering of our nation’s history of defining certain groups of human persons as sub-human. A continual thread in the national story.

Christianized American culture too often thumbed its nose at the doctrine of the imago Dei, turning persons into property for profit. This failure seeded weeds into our social soil that still multiply and bear the rotting fruits of abortion, sexual revolution, and continued racial injustice.

Slavery objectified person and said they were “things” to be owned. Abortion objectifies unborn persons and says they are “things” (“fetuses”) to be discarded.

Though flawed (like any human system), the best of the founding principles of American political life and culture have prevailed and reversed some of the most horrid decisions of the past.

The American Constitution defined black slaves as “3/5” of a person in the 1770s, but the 13th Amendment declared them free humans in 1865. Plessy v. Ferguson encoded “separate but equal” doctrine into American life in 1896, but Brown v. Board of Education began dismantling it in 1954. Roe v. Wade allowed access to abortion in 1973, but Dobbs v. Jackson reversed the decision in 2022.

Legal change took decades.

Cultural change has taken even longer.

Many resisted the full dignity of black persons in American life, including Christians who should have known, believed, and done better. They argued for “states’ rights,” fighting against the “Reconstruction Amendments” (13, 14, 15) that ended slavery, recognized due process, equal protection, and voting rights for all American persons.

Legal change has always sailed into a strong cultural headwind. Laws are easier to change than hearts and minds.

A Federal Abortion Ban

With the monumental decision to reverse abortion rights, the cultural wind pushes back again. The reversal of Roe has put the abortion question back to the states, and a federal ban on abortion has become a political third rail that national politicians refuse to touch. The Democrats celebrate abortion, and the Republicans want to avoid it altogether.

But if abortion is evil, and if it destroys a human person made in God’s image, it doesn’t leave political wiggle-room. Ending slavery and Jim Crow required federal intervention, and ultimately abortion will require a federal ban as well. As theologian and lawyer Matthew Martens has pointed out, the 14th Amendment declares that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” All persons, black and white, born and unborn, bear the image of God and fall under the umbrella of this protection.

Taking Local Action

Right now the political will and wind don’t promise much progress on a national abortion ban. So, in the meantime, we have a lot of local work to do. For example, “As of August 27, 2024, 11 statewide ballot measures related to abortion were certified in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Nevada, and South Dakota for the general election ballot in 2024. This is the most on record for a single year.”

While almost everyone knows who the major presidential candidates are, many pro-life voters don’t know about these measures. They will have a massive impact.

Here in Florida, Amendment 4 would enshrine abortion rights and the elimination of parental consent into the state constitution. The Amendment is worded ambiguously to sound reasonable, but make no mistake: it is a radical pro-abortion measure. It would make abortion a state constitutional right and eliminate parental authority.

As a pro-life Florida voter, defeating Amendment 4 is likely my biggest priority in November. Other things matter, but this matters a lot. Those with influence in Florida need to educate those within their spheres about what Amendment 4 would really do. So do those in all of the states with significant pro-life or pro-abortion measures on the ballot in November.

Likewise, we must continue to engage pro-life causes and ministries in our local communities. The fight for life is primarily cultural and a quest for the hearts and minds of the people in the culture. We must love single moms, foster kids, adopt babies, and continue to disprove the silly and untrue narrative that “evangelicals only care about kids before they’re born.”

Let’s continue to advocate for a federal ban on abortion, and in the meantime let’s get to work locally.