This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.

When should pro-lifers divide from one another? Is it ever justifiable? I’ll talk about that in this episode of the case for life. Welcome to the show, everyone. We’re delighted you’re joined us. We try to help you think clearly here on pro-life topics, and we’ll aim to do that today as well. A while back, I noticed something floating around the internet in the form of one of these short little statements that are often blocked out. I forget what they’re called, if they’re called memes or what they are.

I’m not trendy enough to know what they’re referred to, but the statement said the following. Abortion mindset is driven by a contraceptive mindset. In other words, what you believe about contraception drives the abortion debate. Or if you will, a contraceptive mentality leads to an abortion mentality. Now, this was posted on a pro-life website that I happen to like and that does a good job defending the unborn and a good job defending marriage and I would say an excellent job fighting for the rights of parents to have their kids in their home without the state trying to impose a gay agenda on the family or on the school.

So, I like this site. They’re not bad people. But I want to look at that claim that a contraceptive mentality leads to an abortion mentality. And I’m going to gently select suggest here that proifers should drop that from their vocabulary. And let me tell you what I’m not saying here right up front. Right up front. I’m not saying to you that I’m going to use this episode to refute the idea that contraception is wrong. I’m going to do no such thing.

What I want to point out though is it’s wrong to link it to the morality of abortion. And there’s a credential reason for that and there’s a moral reason for that. Let’s do the credential one first. How many times have I given pro-life talks at secular institutions or answered a question during a debate when either my opponent or someone from the audience says, “Why do you want to come in our bedrooms and take away all our condoms? Why do you want to ban contraception?” Now, this is their response to my pro-life argument.

Which, by the way, right away you should be going, “Wait a minute. The dude didn’t argue anything about contraception. He argued that abortion was wrong because it intentionally kills an innocent human being. What does contraception have to do with it? And by the way, that’s the right response because contraception by definition involves preventing a human life from coming into being, not ending one that’s already begun. So in that sense, contraception is different from birth control because some forms of birth control do in fact end a life once it’s begun.

Things like the IUD or drugs like Ella or RU46. These are drugs and procedures that do end the life of a child once they’ve begun. So they are not properly termed contraceptive. They’re properly termed abortive. Okay. All right. But in a secular environment, how should a pro-lifer respond when they’re charged with, “Oh, you want to just you just want to come in and take away all our condoms?” Here’s what I say, and I would encourage you to say when you’re giving a pro-life presentation that argues that abortion is morally wrong.

I respond like this. I am not here tonight, notice the key word, tonight. I am not here tonight to argue against any birth control that does not end the life of a human being once it’s begun. All right, that answer does two things. Number one, it takes away the charge that I want to take away contraception, but number two, it keeps the main thing the main thing. The topic of the night was abortion. It was not contraception. And by simply saying, I’m not here tonight to argue against any birth control that doesn’t take the life of an innocent human being once it’s begun.

I’m keeping it focused on the morality of abortion. All right? And that that kind of just diffuses all that rhetoric coming at me with all the heat behind it that I just want to take away people’s sexual freedoms. Now, regarding contraception, I want to speak to both my Catholic and Protestant friends. Okay? To my Protestant friends, let me address you first. I think it’s very important that when the issue of contraception is brought up in a one-on-one con conversation with a fellow pro-lifer, let’s say you’re Protestant and your friend is Catholic.

Okay? I think it’s very important for the Protestant not to dismiss or ridicule the Catholic position on contraception. It is not irrational. You may not agree with it. And I in fact don’t agree with it, but it’s not irrational. It’s not dumb. It’s not foolish. But here’s the point to keep in mind. The case against contraception is different than the case against abortion. They’re not on the same page. There’s no parallel there. And let me explain why. The Catholic Church teaching on contraception and there by the way there could be and are some Protestants who hold a similar view.

But it goes like this in the Catholic way of thinking. When a married couple has sexual relations, there must always be the procreative and the unitive aspects of that act in play. You cannot separate the procreative from the unitive without there being a structural break in the act of marriage. That is immoral. Now, you as a Protestant might think, well, I don’t agree with that. Fair enough. But it’s not an irrational argument. But notice something. The case against contraception is different than the case against abortion.

The case the case against abortion is this. It’s wrong because it intentionally kills an innocent human being. The case against contraception is this. It’s wrong because it represents a structural break in the act of marriage that is immoral. Okay, that may or may not be persuasive to you. But notice the key point here. They are both wrong if we say they’re both wrong for different reasons. And I don’t think it’s helpful either in a secular context or in a an environment where we’re trying to work with like-minded people who oppose abortion to bring up an issue that might become divisive and we end up fighting over the wrong things.

I think it’s perfectly fine to listen to your Catholic friends and hear what they have to say about contraception. Maybe you’ll be persuaded. But if you are persuaded, what should do the persuading is the moral force of their argument that the unitive and procreative aspects of sex must be present every time a married couple gets together. If that persuades you and you think there’s good reason to accept that, then you should accept it. But you don’t have to buy that argument to come to the conclusion that abortion is wrong.

And by the way, the idea that a contraceptive mentality leads to an abortion mentality is wrong on the face of it. And here’s why. There are millions of evangelicals who practice contraception for the purpose of spacing children. Maybe I don’t know their reasons within marriage. And those same evangelical and Protestant married couples would never consider abortion nor do they advocate for it. So the idea that that using contraception or allowing it morally leads to a mentality that favors abortion is just wrong.

And I think it’s very divisive. And I would encourage us as pro-lifers to drop that because one could be in favor of contraceptive use for married couples and still oppose abortion and there’d be no break in the logic involved whatsoever because both are right or wrong for different reasons. And I think we should keep the main thing the main thing. Remember if you’re in a secular environment and you’re asked or you’re charged with, oh, you just want to come take away our contraception.

Look the critic in the eye and very nicely but firmly say, “I am not here tonight to argue against any birth control that does not involved in involve intentionally killing an innocent human being.” That’s it. And you’re done. You can get back to arguing the morality of abortion, which is what you’re there to do in the first place. All right. Another area where I think we need to be careful to make distinctions so we don’t unnecessarily divide in this new year has to do with the legislative side of things.

There are bills going around now called equal protection bills that are getting hearings in states like South Carolina at the moment, Georgia, and other states. And I’m not going to debate the merits of those bills right now. Here’s what I want to talk about. Is it wise to say what I heard a Republican state senator say recently in a video clip? He basically told all the Republican members of the South Carolina state house, “If you don’t support this equal protection bill, you’re not Christian and you’re a rhino.

You’re just a Republican in name only.” And we have to be biblically responsible and do the right thing biblically and support this bill. Now, just so you know, equal protection bills do two things. Number one, they allow no exceptions for abortion, which in principle I’m totally on board with. There shouldn’t be exceptions. Now, there could be credential reasons why you would vote for an imperfect bill if there is not the political reality in place to protect all children, but we’re not going to go there right now.

What I want to point out is, is it possible that you could have credential reasons for accepting a bill that isn’t perfect, but gets you toward the perfect that you want? And the answer is yes, you could. But the next thing you need to know about the equal protection bills is they want the penalties for abortion, which they call murder, to be the same. If a murder, if a mother murders her toddler, the penalty should be murder. If she has an abortion, the penalty should be murder.

And again, one could say there could be credential reasons in a post in an immediate post Roie Wade world why that penalty might not be the most credential thing to do when the culture already believes that proifers hate women and want to kill them. So, I think we need to ask those questions. But what I want to get to is this. Is it wise to make this a biblical and theological litmus test when it comes to equal protection bills? And I don’t think it is.

And my reasoning comes down to this. I don’t think it automatically entails compromise that you might say, “Wait a minute. I think we need to rethink some of these equal protection bills.” All right. So, for example, it could be compromise if you have the votes to pass a bill, but you simply won’t do it because you want there to be exceptions. For example, let’s use the example of three governors. We’ll call one Abraham, we’ll call the other Jacob, I guess, and we’ll call the other one Steve.

I don’t know. I’m just making up names. I hope I remember them when I get to each of them. Abraham is the governor of a state where spousal abuse has been prominent for hundreds of years. It is deeply entrenched in the culture and he does not have the votes to ban it outright. He does not have the votes to prosecute it. However, he does have the votes to limit the evil done. And so what he does is he right away signs an executive order saying that all state workers involved in abusive relationships can leave those relationships without being prosecuted by the state.

And also they won’t lose the jobs they have with the state because they leave those abusive relationships. He also signs an ex executive order that says that if you have been abused, your testimony in a court of law has to be accepted as eyewitness testimony and not merely relegated to the level of hearsay. In other words, the victim will have the right to make their case in court. Okay? And that’s all he’s able to do when he assumes the governorship. Now, two years later, his party gets a majority in both chambers, the Senate and the House of State.

And so, he goes for more. He now gets a bill passed by both houses that says you cannot strike a woman over the age of 50. He also gets a bill passed that says you cannot hit a woman with a blunt object like a brick or a stick or a tool. All right? It doesn’t protect all women, but it does limit the damage done, limit the evil done in this case. He signs all of those bills into law while promising to continue to fight for more.

Okay, so that’s Governor Abraham. Governor Steve, oh wait, no, actually Joshua, I think we said his name was. Governor Joshua is the governor of a state where he has the votes to protect all women, but he won’t do it. And he won’t do it for this reason. He says, you know, guys are going to be guys. You know, men will be men, boys will be boys. There’s going to be times they need to just slap their women around a little bit to keep them in line.

And he didn’t want men to face criminal push back for giving their wives physical disciplinary action. You know, after all, if the wife burns the supper or fails to have the kids ready for church or withholds sex or whatever else could happen in a marriage, it should be okay for the man to discipline his wife corporately or physically. And he doesn’t want women punished for that or men punished for that. And rather than pass a law outlawing spousal abuse, he says, “Why don’t we do an incremental step?

Let’s just provide state funded counseling for men who struggle with violence. Let’s control the behavior that way.” So, that’s Governor Steve. Governor the last guy, Joshua, I think I said his name was. No, that’s Governor Joshua was the last governor. Steve is this one. Boy, I will get this right. Where’s my coffee cup? Governor Steve is a purist. He has made it very clear that he will sign nothing but an outright ban on spousal abuse and only if that ban prosecutes men who do it for the to the fullest extent of the law, including jailing them for life.

And he gets a bill passed by his state house that is identical to the one Abraham signed into law. Now, here’s the interesting thing. Steve’s state, like Abraham’s state, has always allowed spousal abuse. And Governor Steve does not have the votes to ban it outright. But he gets a bill that says, “We’re going to protect women over 50. We’re going to make it illegal to hit women of any age with a blunt object. And we’re going to make sure that women who work for the government can keep their jobs if they leave abusive relationships and they won’t be prosecuted for leaving those relationships.

However, Governor Steve vetos all of those bills on grounds that what they do is they say, “Well, it’s okay then to abuse all the other women that aren’t being protected by these bills.” And he calls these bills sinfully motivated, compromised, pragmatic, and he is going to have none of it. He demands equal protection for all women and therefore he’s not going to sign this bill even though his bill would protect 30,000 women in the state government alone who went to bed unprotected the night before. He vetos all of them on grounds of being a principled biblically grounded non rhino Republican.

Okay. So my question for you is which governor or governors did the right thing? Abraham did not have the votes to ban all spousal abuse, but he did the best he could with the realities confronting him. Did he compromise? No. In fact, he did the greatest good he could given the hand he was dealt. Now, the push back is, wait a minute, though, he was consenting to the abuse of those women he didn’t protect. And no, he wasn’t. That that’s just ludicrous.

Let me give you an example to prove why. Suppose it’s World War II and you are captured by the Japanese in a Pacific island and you were forced to participate in a batanstyle death march. The death ma march is 86 miles and you are the officer in charge of the men. You and 20 others are the ones leading the men that were captured by the enemy Japanese. And you as a colonel in that regiment or in that battalion that’s there, you get in front of the Japanese commander and you say, “Listen, I noticed that you’re shooting all the men who are too sick to continue the journey.

And if they fall down, you right away walk over and you execute them. Would you consider a compromise here? How about you allow me and my fellow officers to get 20 minutes of time to get those men up walking again so they can continue the march? Will you agree not to shoot them if we can get them walking again? Now, keep in mind, you don’t have as that officer the power to protect all of the men. You don’t. But however, you do secure the compromise that you can save the ones that you’re able to get up and walking again, that you’re able to revive.

Now, if somebody came to you and said, “Well, that’s morally bankrupt.” You’re consenting then to the men who get shot because you couldn’t get them moving again. No, you didn’t consent to their deaths. Rather, what you did is you were dealt an evil hand. You were powerless to do the best you could or the best good possible. You were only relegated to doing the best you could given the hand you were dealt. And so rather than leave all the men to die that were left behind, at least you saved hundreds who were able to get up and moving again and they were able to return to their families after the war.

That is not consenting to the deaths of those you couldn’t save because you were never in a position to save them in the first place. And the same would be true in some abortion legislation that’s passed. It could be the case that you as a lawmaker do not have the votes to protect all children. So you protect as many as you can given the political power you have. That does not mean you consented to the deaths of those you couldn’t protect.

That you were never in a position to protect. So I think we need to be careful that we don’t automatically say somebody’s a compromiser, somebody’s a loser, somebody is not biblical, somebody is not being responsible, they’re just a rhino. If they argue for prudence and do the best moral good they can given the hand they’ve been dealt. Look, if you have the power to pass a bill that protects all unborn humans and you won’t do it, then yeah, you’ve got a problem.

But when you don’t live in that environment, and the vast majority of states are not states where pro-lifers have the votes to protect all children, by all means, protect as many as you can. And I think we need to be more gracious with one another in discussing what that looks like and not automatically assume that the people who argue for prudence are just unbiblically grounded rhinos. I don’t think that’s helpful rhetoric at all. All right, we’re going to take a break.

When we come back, I want to talk to you about something I think we all need to commit to in 2026. I’ll tell you what that is right after the break.

Hello folks. I mentioned in a previous show an article that disturbed me greatly and it’s put out by the family research council and their study is titled churchgoers losing biblical clarity on life and family and the study is exceedingly disturbing to read and it mirrors what you see in pew research studies, Gallup studies and other studies that are showing a very visible decline in a biblical ical worldview among pro professed Christians. We’re not talking here about progressive Christians who intentionally water down biblical truth.

We’re talking about evangelical churches where people profess biblical Christianity, but their worldview is drifting further and further from it. And this leads me to something I think we all need to take responsibility for. And that means you, those of you watching this show, the days of leaving pro-life apologetics to a few hired hands. Oh, we’re going to leave that to Scott. We’re going to leave that to people like Mark Newman. We’re going to leave that to people who are pros who go out there and argue against the pro-abortion worldview.

We’ll let John Enzer do that work. We’ll let Abby Johnson or whoever you look to as your leader in the pro-life movement. Here’s the thing. There aren’t enough of us who do this full-time to impact the culture, especially where you live. All of us must become pro-life apologists if we’re going to see this culture change. The idea that we can just go to church, let the pastor preach, then go about our days without ever interacting with the culture around us. Those days are over.

If you want to win, folks, I got news for you. We are not getting better. We are getting worse. And we’re not getting worse because people have heard the pro-life argument and have rejected it. It’s that they’re not hearing it at all. They’re not hearing a persuasive argument for the pro-life position. Now, I realize on this show the vast majority of you that watch are probably conservative Christians, and that’s who I aim this content at anyway. So, that’s perfect. Why do I do that?

Because it is actually more effective if I can help equip you to engage the culture out there to make pro persuasive pro-life arguments than it is if I just go and stand in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic with a bullhorn and shout pro-life conclusions to an audience passing by. So, I would rather equip you to make that case for life and do it persuasively. And again, the place to start is with our course pro-life 101, which you can get information from on our sites.

We also have an advan an advanced course you can take if you would like to take that one. It’s almost like a graduate level field because you will take a deep dive into the arguments. Or you may say, you know what, I’m a book guy or gal. Well, then this is for you. The case for life, second edition. This is something you can find at bookstores everywhere and it will equip you to make a case for the pro-life view. But you know for too long we as Christians have bifurcated.

We’ve said you know what I got church on Sunday and then there’s the real world where I work where I go to school where I interact with my neighbors. And the two are not really the same. Listen, if you are a Christian, your Christian worldview should impact everything. Politics, your engagement with friends, the workplace, your cultural engagement, and how you think about the world. We can no longer just be people who keep our views to ourselves. This is what Francis Schaefer referred to as the great evangelical disaster.

The idea that Christianity would be set off over here as something that’s private, personal, but doesn’t impact the real world where we all live. And that’s disastrous. We can’t live that way. We have to be people who engage those around us. That may mean, for example, that you send your kids to Summit Ministries to learn how to defend a biblical worldview. It may mean you pick up a book like The Case for Life, second edition, and read the arguments and master them.

It may mean you take our course. It may mean you encourage your pastor to address these issues from the pulpit, and you help your Sunday school classes address them. But if we don’t take personal responsibility at the lay level, nothing changes. There are more people working full-time to kill babies than they’re all are working full-time to save them. And that’s because saving children is very costly. But guess what? We got to man up and pay that cost or nothing in this culture is going to change.