Here is an idea for a printable sheet you can have with you in case you encounter someone who is against abortion but still uneducated about the status of the prolife movement at large.

Greetings! Someone who cares about you and the preborn gave you this so that you could have information that you may have never seen or heard before. This is information about how the pro-life movement normally operates. Because you care about God and the preborn, you may notice and be properly bothered by how contradictory the prolife movement really is to your Christian beliefs!

Of course, no movement is truly monolithic; you and many other pro-life people may not think or operate the way described below. This is meant to describe in general what some of the major pro-life organizations hold as their official stance and demonstrate how the behaviors of these organizations contradict what you yourself believe.

  1. The pro-life movement is not gospel-centered. The pro-life movement welcomes people of all faiths who call themselves pro-life and profess to hate abortion or love babies. But yoking yourself with folks of other religions in a spiritual battle such as this is a violation of 2 Cor 6:14-17 and the call to Christians to do ministry work through gospel means with the Church.
  2. As the result, proclaiming the soul-saving gospel of Christ is relegated to secondary importance (if allowed at all by some of these orgs) and “making abortion unthinkable” through any other means is the primary task of these organizations. In some cases, pro-life organizations even prohibit their Christian members from sharing the gospel or using scripture to defend their anti-abortion stance. How can you go to battle without your sword or your Lord?
  3. The pro-life movement is largely Roman Catholic. Roman Catholicism is a false religious system that uses the Bible and Jesus as a means to their end, but as a system it fails to recognize Christ alone as sufficient for the pardon of the sins of men. One of the mainstays of this religion is their use of icons or idols. We cannot fight a culture war where we expect God to bless us and turn hearts from abortion by partnering with folks committing idolatry: the very sin that abortion/murder is rooted in. Additionally, pro-life organizations sometimes claim that we have a “shared faith.” By calling the protestant faith a shared faith with Roman Catholics we are committing a soul-damning lie.
  4. The pro-life movement teaches ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION that mothers are not to be treated as perpetrators of the crime of murder when they seek or procure an abortion but identifies mothers as “second victims” of the abortion. This error results in women being completely immune in the eyes of the law to prosecution for murder, as long as the child was in their womb. As long as mommy commits the murder according to government regulations (read: as long as someone got paid for it), she is a priori not guilty of a crime. This error denies justice to the fatherless AND hides the reality of their sin from women, making it harder to convince them of their need for repentance and the gospel to take root. If you support a movement that lies to women about their guilt, how can you then turn around and convince them of it for evangelistic purposes?
  5. The pro-life movement pushes for incremental changes to the abortion laws for a couple of reasons: they believe they will chip away at abortions and save some babies immediately that would otherwise not be saved. Many pro-lifers who make this error are what we would call “well-meaning,” but the Bible tells us that we should not sin so that good may come. That is, it is not OK for Christians to regulate murder in the hopes of reducing it (even if that were the likely outcome). We should call for the criminalization of preborn homicide and let God handle the results. Besides, we have the advantage of seeing 50 years of doing things the pro-life way…and abortions are at an all-time high as pro-life regulations have only served to inculcate the culture into thinking abortion is “ok sometimes,” and drive our neighbors to greater technology to detect and end pregnancy earlier (to do abortions within the regulations). Rather than make abortion unthinkable, the prolife strategy has empirically only served to make abortion more efficient.
  6. The pro-life movement, despite their stated convictions of wanting to end abortion has been the greatest opponent to bills to abolish abortion in multiple states. This is well documented, and a letter was written and signed by several pro-life organizations stating their reasoning, which amounts to their unwillingness to allow women to be prosecuted for murder.

The pro-life strategy has failed because it is both irrational and unbiblical. This does not mean that we do not praise God Almighty for the thousands of success stories of babies being saved through prolife efforts. We celebrate if any abortion-minded mother has been turn away from carrying their infant to be murdered. And we are thankful that God has used people who have not perfectly followed his precepts to bring about good ends.

But it is time to be clear that the pro-life strategy is not an acceptable strategy for Christians to support, and I fear most support the movement in ignorance of what it is really doing. We invite you to investigate abolition and learn about how the Bible commands us as children of God to engage in cultural battles. For more information, please contact the person who gave you this pamphlet or Heritage Restored.