It’s illegal to murder all women and men. It’s illegal to murder all Black people and all ethnic groups. It’s illegal to murder all immigrants and all citizens. It’s illegal to murder all poor people and rich people. It’s illegal to strip human rights from every group of people from everywhere in Canada and America—unless they are located in the womb.
It’s not illegal to murder pre-born babies at abortion clinics in Canada and America. It’s legal to kill pre-born babies.
Pre-born babies are the only innocent individuals in our society who do not have the right to life. Pre-born babies are the only members of humanity today who are essentially considered subhuman. They are the most innocent and most vulnerable members of our society, but they suffer the most killings and the most violent deaths in our society.
We Christians agree that abortion is a human rights violation. We agree that pre-born babies are made in the image of God, and we therefore agree that abortion infringes on their inalienable right to life. However, many of us are embracing social justice ideologies that (unintentionally) downplays abortion by elevating societal obstacles to the same degree as injustices like abortion.
A Christian organization named The AND Campaign recently released a short video about their role in the pro-life movement. And I think there’s a lot to admire about their organization. For instance, the organization seems like it’s mostly made up of Black Christians. I am grateful for that. Abortion kills Black babies at a rate that is three times higher than the rate it kills White babies. And yet there are relatively a small number of Black people committed to pro-life work. So I’m grateful for The AND Campaign.
Nevertheless, the video is much more harmful than helpful. At one point in the video, The And Campaign labels the pro-life movement as “protecting the unborn baby (but) ignoring the mother.” And they define the pro-choice movement as “protecting the mother (but) ignoring the unborn baby.”
This type of rhetoric was originally developed by pro-abortion activists to shame and brand the pro-life movement as an inconsistent and insincere group, and it’s disappointing that their rhetoric is becoming increasingly accepted in Christian circles.
There are a number of destructive and deadly problems with that rhetoric. That rhetoric accuses the pro-life movement of ignoring the mother but commends the pro-choice movement for supporting mothers. That’s neither a logical or accurate argument. The pro-life movement includes approximately 3,000 pregnancy care centres across Canada and America who use their limited resources to save babies and help mothers. There are actually 4 times as many pregnancy care centres than abortion clinics in Canada and America.
And protecting a mother’s baby is the best thing we could do for the mother. However killing a mother’s baby is the worst thing we could do for the mother. The pro-choice movement ignores the baby and the mother. Actually they do much more than that. The pro-choice movement kills babies and hurts mothers. The pro-life movement saves babies and helps mothers.
The And Campaign’s video seemingly suggests there is a moral equivalency between killing babies and failing to help mothers. That is a destructive idea. Even if it were true that the pro-life movement fails to help mothers, how is that equivalent to advocating for the killing of babies? How is that comparable to a movement that rips a baby’s body apart, limb-by-limb before their corpse is dumped as waste?
That happens to 100,000 babies in Canada and 800,000 babies in America every year. That happens 50 million babies in the world every year. How is that equivalent to the pro-life movement supposedly failing to help mothers?
That kind of reasoning is akin to a person in 1850s America complaining that abolitionists like Frederick Douglass protect slaves but ignore slave-owner’s problems. It’s akin to a person in 1950s America complaining that Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr protect oppressed Black Americans but not poor White Americans. It’s an accusation that distracts us from the defining human rights violation of our time: it’s legal to kill babies.
The abolitionists were primarily focused on protecting slaves because it was legal to own slaves. The Civil Rights leaders were primarily focused on protecting Black Americans because it was legal to oppress Black Americans. The pro-life movement is primarily focused on protecting pre-born babies because it’s legal to kill pre-born babies.
We cannot afford to be mistaken about this. Pre-born babies are the only innocent persons in our society who do not have the right to life. That is a human rights violation. That is an injustice. We shouldn’t conflate that with the societal obstacles immigrants, Black Americans, poor people, and vulnerable mothers might struggle with.
Societal obstacles are challenges that prevent individuals from enjoying some of the privileges other individuals enjoy. But these obstacles are not necessarily an injustice or a human rights violation. For instance, if the Canadian government had denied my immigration to Canada, that would be an obstacle, not an injustice. Immigration is a privilege, not a right. And when I suffered poverty in Ghana (and Canada), I wasn’t suffering an injustice. I was suffering an obstacle. Wealth is a privilege, not a right.
An injustice isn’t when a government refuses to grant a person privileges. An injustice is when a government refuses to affirm a person’s right to life and liberty—like legalized slavery, legalized segregation, legalized abortion.
We individuals—especially we Christians—should help all vulnerable people overcome their obstacles. But we shouldn’t blur the lines between obstacles and injustices. The government’s particular role in helping others overcome obstacles is debatable. The government’s role in establishing human rights for all persons, including pre-born babies is not debatable.
If we Christians continue to blur the lines between injustice and obstacles, if we continue to blur the lines between the pro-life movement and the pro-choice movement, we’ll downplay the horrific nature of abortion, and we’ll become sympathetic to politicians who “protect mothers (but) ignore pre-born babies“, and we’ll inevitably become even more apathetic over the reality that it’s legal to kill babies.