Maybe it’s the social media friends I keep. Because over the weekend and, in conjunction with the 47th annual March for Life, I noticed several Evangelical friends post head-scratching comments about the pro-life movement. Their general sentiment was that, while they believe life is sacred, Christians need to do more than march.
A former church member of mine began a post with “yes every life matters,” before quickly adding, “other problems need addressing” and “the church of Jesus should do more to help moms in crisis.”
Boiled down, in my view, it’s a “pro-lifers don’t really care about babies or women” narrative. Phrases like “a more nuanced approach” usually accompany this line of thought. I know it’s not a new narrative, but it does seem to have gained popularity among some of my Christian friends this year.
It’s a tired narrative. And also a bit embarrassing.
Because here’s the hitch: Christian pro-lifers are the ones doing more than marching (or grumbling on social media).
Who is it that critics of the March for Life expect to show up and march? Just a bunch of DC-based lobbyists and politicians? Hardly.
Most of the folks participating in the March for Life are the ones providing tangible assistance to expectant mothers and post-abortive women. And they are Christians. Protestants and Catholics are caring for women and their babies.
Many March for Life participants are pregnancy care center staffers (largely volunteer-based).
At the march, you see hundreds of handmade signs held by adoptive parents, foster care providers, birth mothers who chose life, and women recovering from abortion.
Other participants include Christian counselors, physicians, and lawyers who offer legal aid to expectant mothers and their children.
Adoption service workers show up too.
As do clergy who provide prayer, moral clarity, and help moms in crisis find the ministries and resources that they need.
Pro-lifers who march are the ones doing Gospel-centered day-to-day work to assist women in crisis.
According to the 2018 Pregnancy Center Service Report, pregnancy care centers provided 2,000,000 people across the country with free assistance. And they did so with 67,400 volunteers that gave up their time to help women in crisis.
Heartbeat International refers to this work as a “Christ-centered pregnancy help movement.” Heartbeat International was the first pregnancy care network founded in the U.S. in 1971. They have 2,700 affiliated pregnancy care centers across 60 countries and answer 650 calls each day through their 24-7 pregnancy helpline.
Here’s how Heartbeat International describes the role of the Church: “Christians and local churches have always been the engine behind the life-saving pregnancy help movement.”
This past weekend was Sanctity of Life Sunday. My pastor kindly asked me to speak on the sanctity of life, by telling the congregation where the Church has gotten the pro-life message right and where we can still improve.
These centers provide expectant mothers with baby clothes, diapers, training to care for their babies, counseling, and point them in the direction of other resources that can help their situations. No question this is one of the most profound ways the Chruch sends the message that every life is precious.
I want to add that churches and Gospel-centered ministries like MOPs (mothers of preschoolers), Mugs and Muffins, and local church ministries to moms offer tangible pro-life assistance to mothers in need too.
Not all of the women who attend these mom ministries experience crisis pregnancies. But some do. And most others experienced some sort of crisis after giving birth. Post-partum depression, isolation, extreme exhaustion, and loneliness, and faltering self-worth. (I’m raising my hand here too.) Some others grieve miscarriages and painful divorces.
These ministries to moms offer tangible support to women in our communities. And where do you find them these resources for mothers? The Church. They are tucked away in church Sunday school classrooms and basement fellowship halls midweek.
Come on, guys. It’s not the American Atheists who are providing support groups and pregnancy assistance to struggling moms. It’s the Church.
Some might take issue here and disagree that ministries to mothers is not technically a pro-life effort. That’s okay. But I would encourage those who disagree to visit a MOPs group or ministry to moms sometime. There you’ll find women from all socio-economic backgrounds, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Some moms are young moms who had unexpected pregnancies, some are adoptive moms, foster care moms, post-abortive moms, and moms grieving miscarriages, and exhausted, weary moms. Together, all finding Gospel-centered support.
My point here is that the Church is getting a lot right in sending a holistic message that all life is precious. So I would disagree with my Christian friends who dismiss participants of the March for Life.
I would, however, point out that there areas where some Christians get abortion wrong completely.
Last year, Nadia Bolz Weber, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) public theologian, asserted that life begins at breath, not conception. She made this claim on NPR radio’s All Things Considered show.
Here’s what Bolz-Weber said:
[F]or a very long time, the Judeo-Christian thought held that life began with breath. In Genesis, it says that God breathed into dust to create humanity, that that was the moment that we had a living soul.
And:
So this idea of life and breath being connected is something that people can sort of hold on to, if they still have an attachment to Judeo-Christian thought, and still allow for, hey, women need to be able to have the decision around family planning and whether they’re going to go through with a pregnancy or not.
The sanctity of life is not a gray area, according to God’s word. There’s no room for a more nuanced approach to abortion here, despite Nadia’s stretched claim.
Psalms 139:13-16 testifies that God is the giver of life and knows us personally, even before we enter the womb.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
We cannot pretend we didn’t know abortion is wrong.
Some Christians making the “we should do more to help moms than march” argument are already on a pro-abortion trajectory. For others, the misinformed comments come from folks who won’t give the sanctity of life much more thought once photos of the March for Life stop scrolling through their newsfeeds.
Comment by annita parmelee on January 28, 2020 at 7:12 pm
Excellent commentary, Chelsen! Thank you.
Comment by Douglas E Ehrhardt on January 28, 2020 at 9:34 pm
Thank you for telling the truth Chelsen.
Comment by Mike on January 30, 2020 at 5:53 pm
This article deserves many more kudos and comments – thank you for writing it and defending the many Christians who serve behind the scenes in life giving ways.
One of our four children is adopted (when my wife experienced infertility issues after our first child was born). Now my daughter, a nurse, works at a women’s center offering screenings, ultrasounds and other support to pregnant women.
Another area of ministry is crisis centers that help (primarily) women and children who are facing physical, sexual and other harm – our church is involved financially and in other ways helping this center do its ministry.
God bless you for reminding us once again of what goes out without much fanfare – but Jesus says, “As you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.”
Comment by Ted R. Weiland on January 31, 2020 at 7:46 pm
I’ll believe the right to life and abolitionist groups are serious about ending in utero infanticide (wrongly termed “abortion”) when they stop promoting and begin identifying and addressing the genesis of government-promoted and -financed infanticide:
“…3. Every problem America faces today can be traced back to the fact that the constitutional framers failed to expressly establish a government upon Yahweh’s immutable morality as codified in His commandments, statutes, and judgments. (Would in utero infanticide and sodomy be tolerated, let alone financed by the government, if Yahweh’s perfect law and altogether righteous judgments [including Exodus 20:13, 21:22-23, Deuteronomy 27:25, etc.] were the law of the land? Would Islam be a looming threat to our peace and security if the First Amendment had been replaced with the First Commandment?…
“On February 27, 2009, James Dobson conceded that we have lost the culture wars. This is the consequence of Christians having spent the last two centuries lopping at the rotten branches of our culture’s corrupt tree while watering and fertilizing its roots.
“We should lop away at the tree’s corrupt branches (infanticide, sodomy, the economy, etc.). However, until the root of these problems is Biblically addressed, we will never shut down the infanticide mills, we will never defeat the sodomites, and we will never fix the economy. In short, we will never win the culture wars. This issue is more than important for anyone concerned about God, our nation, and the future of our posterity, it’s the cutting- edge issue of our day….”*
“[B]ecause they have … trespassed against my law … they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind….” (Hosea 8:1, 7)
Today’s America is reaping the inevitable ever-intensifying whirlwind (including every infant slaughtered in its mother womb) resulting from the wind sown by the constitutional framers and fanned by today’s hoodwinked Christians and patriots who have been bamboozled into believing today’s whirlwind can be dissipated by appealing to the wind responsible for spawning the whirlwind.**
*See our Featured Blog Article “5 Reasons the Constitution is Our Cutting-Edge Issue” at https://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/
**For more, google free online book “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective,” in which every Article and Amendment is examined by the Bible.
Comment by Ralph Weitz on February 2, 2020 at 5:57 pm
Chelsen, Outstanding article and you state what pregnancy centers do day in and day out, and for free. Staff, board members, volunteers, donors, churches, professional medical staff, and others make such a difference. As you note, they provide so much more than counseling. The only addition I would suggest, there are men at the pregnancy centers – fathers, mentors, professional staff and others. Yes, the fathers receive input into their lives to help sort out issues and resources. Thank you for your caring support.
Comment by John Schuh on February 4, 2020 at 1:38 am
The pro-choicers are rather like those who supported slavery. They really do think that the awful deeds they support are good things.