The Pro-Human Movement > The Pro-Life Movement

Abortion is murder, but evangelicals need to understand that our future battles are about what it means to be Pro-Human, not Pro-Life.

Abolitionism, which calls for the total and immediate abolishment of abortion, is greater and more biblical than the often compromised and ineffectual pro-life movement. The so-called “Pro-Life Movement” has proven itself as incapable of ending abortion in the United States as the Department of Education is at raising literacy rates, and largely for the same reasons.

Ultimately, the difference between the Pro-Life Movement and Abolitionism is one of moral opinion, versus moral action. For far too long, squishy evangelicals - which is most of them - could placate our broken consciences by merely stating an opinion, “abortion is wrong.” In recent years, evangelicals like Russell Moore, have even replaced the “wrong” with “bad,” which is defined as merely being non-conducive to human flourishing or some such wording, emphasizing the negative effects upon the murderer rather than the murdered. But for the low-low price of a pro-life yard sign every few years, an evangelical could buy an indulgence, absolving their conscience from the guilt of never actually doing anything to end abortion.

Abolition, which is by nature uncompromising, eschews the pro-life approach of passing laws that incrementally red-tape abortion to death through the power of government bureaucracy. Called incrementalism, this strategy includes things like regulations requiring abortion clinics to be within a certain distance of a hospital that admits physicians from the abortion clinic, or heartbeat laws that define life differently from both God and science.

After the Dobbs Decision, effectively overturning Roe v Wade, I had wondered if pro-life incrementalism would enjoy a revival. It had appeared that incrementalism worked, as enough squishy evangelicals had put enough pro-life Presidents into office who, in turn, put enough good justices on the Supreme Court who then overturned Roe.

However, we are currently seeing the limits of pro-life incrementalism, as the number of abortions is up 11% nationwide in 2023 over 2020 (the most recent year stats are available), despite 14 states banning or semi-banning abortion. This might seem counter-intuitive, but in states that have not banned abortion, there’s been a 26% increase. And because squishy pro-lifers refuse to criminalize abortion, residents in states without abortion clinics are happy to become death tourists to other states. In the 2024 election alone, seven states voted to expand access to abortion as a constitutional right, only failing in Florida, North Dakota, and Nebraska.

Once again, using pro-life as a mere political position has proven a worthless tactic in ending legalized infanticide. The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), for example, in laying out their policy suggestions for Donald Trump, only requested that he stop federal funding for Planned Parenthood and abortion providers overseas. They did not request that his agenda attempt to abolish abortion at all.

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We’ve seen this undermining of the pro-life movement, which I chronicled at Pulpit & Pen, for years, in calling every dumb, liberal concept “pro-life.” For example, I reported how a Christianity Today contributor said that wearing masks was a pro-life issue. Danny Akin, of Southeastern Seminary, alleged that socialist economic policies were a pro-life issue. The ERLC said that welfare programs were a pro-life issue. Thabiti Anyabwile preached that adopting Marxist ideology was a pro-life issue. You get the point.

Being pro-life, essentially, means making a political decision to oppose whoever is the most pro-abortion. For example, the pro-life vote in the 2024 election was certainly a vote for Donald Trump. Despite Trump not agreeing with the definition of life given by both God and medical science, Trump doesn’t celebrate abortion, and the GOP doesn’t “shout your abortion” like it’s something to be proud of.

But, abolition is deeper than that. Abolition is a position for those who are repentant, or in other words, “agree with God” that what he calls sin, is sin and what he defines as life, is life and what he calls murder, is murder.

I don’t affirm the decision of abolitionists to boycott the 2024 general election, however, because (1) a primary election is the time to find the perfect candidate, not a general election and (2) the GOP is quickly becoming the Pro-Human Party, and that’s a good thing that should be supported.

Elon Musk, by all accounts, is an agnostic who - oddly enough, for a Rocket Scientist - isn’t a Socinian. This means, despite him not having his salvation yet worked out, he’s significantly closer to it than, for example, Tim Keller, for whom it’s now out of reach.

Despite Musk not being a Christian and not embracing most of the particulars of Christian ethics, he has a significantly more overarching Christian worldview than most evangelicals. Why? His worldview is emphatically Pro-Human.

Granted, Musk has 9 children with three different women, but as I’ve aforementioned, while not embracing the particulars of Christian ethics, he’s embraced the overarching worldview; humans are good.

No, I don’t mean “humans are good” as an ontological truth relating to our morality, per se. “Good” is not defined here, as “morally good.” I mean it in the sense that God looked at his creation and called it good (Genesis 1:25), but after creating mankind, he declared it very good (Genesis 1:28). Not only is humanity good, it is very good.

This is the single greatest dividing line between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, or God and the devil. Whether or not we are anti-human or pro-human is at the center of our theological epistemology.

From the beginning of creation, Satan has been anti-human. He tempted woman to sin, and man by extension, knowing it would hurdle us into an existence of pain and suffering. He enticed mankind to build a tower by which to climb into heaven and overthrow God, knowing what happened to him, when he had tried it. His demon-gods demanded infant sacrifice. He brought disease and affliction. He brought warfare and bloodshed. He brought genocide and widespread death. He hates humans, because humans are God’s good creation, and he hates God’s creation.

Satan brought us abortion and eugenics, the Holocaust and Planned Parenthood, AIDS and Monkey Pox, and without a doubt, the Atomic Bomb. When Oppenheimer (whose favorite poem was an ode to Satan) saw the first nuclear blast, he quoted a line from a demon-god of Hindu origin, “I am death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Tell me he wasn’t possessed, when he’s quoting a demon in first-person.

Consider leftist political theology. Environmentalism is predicated upon the notion that humanity is inherently bad. Bill Gates wants to lower carbon emissions to zero, which is pretty bad if you’re a human being who emits carbon. The needs of nature, if you’re Greta Thunberg - who is quite obviously on puberty blockers to keep her looking childlike and is overseen by a Rothschild nanny - transcend the needs of human beings. The environmental left have no qualms with “banning farming” to save the earth, with no plan to feed 8 billion people. It is fundamentally an anti-human proposition.

Musk, on the other hands, argues quite articulately that over-population is a myth, and that the world needs more humans.

Consider all of the policies of the left, and their implications for humanity.

Babies need aborted. Old people need euthanized. The chronically depressed need euthanized. In fact, they argue that anyone who suffers from chronic mental illness should be able to opt for euthanasia, unless that mental illness is a social contagion like gender dysphoria, at which point it needs to spread to as many people as possible. So far as procreation goes, the left hands out condoms like wafers at Catholic Mass. Like a contraceptive Mark of the Beast, they want the government to pay for devices inserted on the skin or in the body of women, to keep them from procreating. Human needs, like abundant and nutritious food or abundant energy, comes last in their hierarchy of global needs.

This is not to mention the incessant war-mongering of leftists, cheering military actions (like Biden approving Zelensky - in an already lost war - to fire American rockets into Russia), with absolutely zero regard for the possibility such an escalation could cause the end of the human race in a nuclear holocaust.

In this lens, it’s clear that the anti-human worldview of leftists is steered by demonic hands.

But then, compare this to the Pro-Human resistance made evident in figures like Musk. The reason for Musk’s intense focus on colonizing Mars is - if you listen to him - is his desire to make humanity an interplanetary species in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable. Why? He wants humanity to survive. This is in stark contrast to the goals of the global left.

Or consider, for example, Musk pumping the brakes on Artificial Intelligence, warning that technologies that displace human workers should be governmentally restricted. It is not enough to offer Universal Basic Income (UBI) as leftists posit as a solution to this coming crisis, because as Musk argues, humans need a reason to live in order to flourish. His positions are distinctly pro-human.

The overarching worldview of Republicans, or conservatives in general, is quite the opposite of the anti-human agenda of leftists. We believe, in greater numbers all the time, that babies are good, population growth is good, and humans - in general - are good. Therefore, war is bad. Medical “breakthroughs” that all mysteriously seem to reduce fertility, are bad. Even a new kind of environmentalism on the right has evolved, one that looks at the consequences of microplastics on sperm count, or views ocean ecology in terms of the eradication of edible fish species rather than the extinction of a spotted such-and-such minnow in a stream somewhere, or opposes chemicals in the water supply that make us dumber. It’s a kind of environmentalism that even this camouflage-American can get behind.

All of that should be vigorously supported politically by abolitionists and every kind of evangelical, even if it will require additional work to convince the rightwing to define life not only as “good,” but as beginning at conception.

As I’ve been arguing at Insight to Incite over the last month, God is doings something through our Populist Social Revival. He is doing big things, albeit they’ve come upon us so suddenly that we’ve not yet had time to consider their implications.

Our job as evangelists and polemicists is explain to the many people falling in line with the “humanity is good” ethos, that the reason for their worldview is the light of God’s General Revelation found in the things he has made. And then, if they can perceive great truth from that General Revelation, we must introduce them to the Special Revelation (Holy Scripture) that points them directly to the person of Jesus Christ.