Do You Oppose Abortion Because You Are a Conservative or for Political Reasons?

I am liberal on some issues and conservative on others, and I don’t care a bit which label falls on me. I am seeking to follow Christ, and it doesn’t matter if I sometimes sound Democratic and other times Republican. As for abortion, I oppose it for one simple reason: that it is the killing of innocent children. I do not oppose it for political reasons or in order to be conservative, and this is true of most the prolifers I know, who volunteer untold hundreds of hours trying to help women and children, not to serve a political party.

We are commanded to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, to defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8-9). Whether or not somebody is a Republican, a political activist, or a bigot has no bearing on whether or not it is wrong to kill children. It just is.

Over the years I spent countless hours studying the biological and medical evidence for the humanity of the unborn children, discovering that there is a broad scientific consensus on when human life begins. Many biblical passages are relevant to the issue.

Abortion was an ancient practice, but the history of the Christian church, until modern times, was prolife.

The abortion issue, at its core, is apolitical. It has everything to do with the worth of a human child. If I were to jump today in front of a car to rescue a child, it would not be to lodge a political protest against reckless driving. It would be to save the life of an innocent child. Abortion became “political” when the law was changed to justify the killing of children.

Martin Luther King, one of my heroes, said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." My home state of Oregon legalized abortion four years before Roe v. Wade, and now we are the state people send their elderly parents to if they're interested in lethal injections from a physician. The slippery slope Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop spoke of has become terrifyingly real.

Photo by Sergiu Vălenaș on Unsplash

Randy Alcorn (@randyalcorn) is the author of over sixty books and the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries

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