Some key articles and a video debate by Scott Klusendorf on understanding the limits of the pro-life operational goals. Scott is also the author of The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture--2nd ed. (Crossway, 2023).
What does “pro-life” mean?
Jesus cared about all marginalized people, not just a few. As a Christian, then, my ethic should be broad and inclusive. I should do something to resist human trafficking, alleviate poverty, promote fatherhood, and welcome genuine refugees. But it doesn’t follow that the operational objectives of the pro-life movement must be broad and inclusive as well.
And yet critics like pastor confuse the two all the time. He insists that if pro-lifers were truly pro-life, they’d do more than prevent abortion. They’d take on hunger, poverty, illiteracy, child mortality, forced prostitution, racism, and homophobia—to name just a few. You see similar confusion in headlines like, “You Can’t Be Pro-Life and Not Be __________.” (Fill in the blank with some other issue pro-lifers are charged with resolving.)
Pro-life advocates should stop buying the premise that because we oppose the intentional killing of innocent human beings, we must take on other tragic societal ills under the banner of being “pro-life.” The criticisms are not only unfair; they are narrowly targeted. Is the American Cancer Society neglectful because it fights one type of disease rather than many?
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Whole-life Objectives Harm the Pro-life Cause (2022)
Pro-life advocates just won a monumental victory. With , pro-life legislation can move forward without being handcuffed by the federal courts. But the victory will be short-lived if pro-lifers let critics determine our operational objectives.
For years, pro-life organizations have routinely been told that saving children from abortion is not enough. To be truly pro-life, the argument goes, we must be “whole life,” meaning these organizations must show equal concern for all injustice and not single out abortion. After all, sex trafficking, poverty, the opioid crisis, and the unfair treatment of refugees are assaults on human dignity, and so they also qualify as pro-life issues. Anything less than a consistent whole-life witness is a betrayal of our fundamental principles and will fail to convert skeptics to the pro-life cause. This attempt to hijack the operational objectives of the pro-life movement is unfair and threatens to bankrupt organizations committed to saving unborn humans.
Suppose your church, eager to save young children from gang violence, opens an inner-city childcare ministry on the south side of Chicago. For three hours after classes on school days, you provide kids a safe place to go, taking them off the street and away from gang recruiters.
But instead of applauding your sacrificial efforts to save children, a television reporter slams your church with a hit piece.
If you truly cared about kids, you’d care about all kids, not just grade school ones. Middle school kids need help too, you know. Why are you only open for three hours on school days instead of 24-7? And what are you doing to address the underlying causes of gang violence such as gun sales and poor housing? Sorry, but if you’re going to call yourself a childcare ministry, you must care for all children K–12, not just cherry-pick the ones you like. After all, Jesus cared about all marginalized people, not just a few.
A reporter who said that about your childcare ministry would be sacked before the evening signoff. But if he conveys those same sentiments about a pro-life organization, he may win an Emmy. Pro-lifers should reject the unfair whole-life critique for at least five reasons.
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Should the Pro-life Cause Encompass "Womb to Tomb" or Focus on the Womb?--A debate between Scott Klusendorf and Karen Swallow Prior (2022
