Article adapted from episode content.
Friends of the Case for Life podcast, as you all know, the recent election results have left many of us in the pro-life movement feeling a mix of relief and frustration. Relief, because we narrowly avoided a political landscape that would have been openly hostile to our cause. Frustration, because we know the fight is far from over. We haven’t achieved a decisive victory, merely gained a temporary reprieve – a “stay of execution,” as I’ve called it. This moment demands our attention. It’s time to capitalize on this opportunity to strengthen and advance the pro-life movement.
Refocusing Our Efforts: Resisting Mission Drift
This period of relative calm allows us to take stock of our movement and ensure we’re operating with laser focus. And that means resisting a dangerous trend I’ve observed: mission drift. Too often, pro-life organizations lose sight of their core mission – to protect unborn children from the tragedy of abortion – and spread themselves too thin by trying to tackle every social issue under the sun. We see pregnancy centers taking on discipleship programs, marriage counseling, religious liberty advocacy, fatherhood initiatives – all worthy causes, to be sure, but not the primary focus of a pro-life organization.
Let me be clear: Christians should absolutely care about these issues and work to address them. But pro-life groups, by their very nature, are specialized entities. Just as the American Cancer Society focuses on eradicating cancer, and an ER doctor isn’t expected to solve all the underlying problems of a drug addict, pro-life organizations can best serve the cause by concentrating their expertise and resources on their specific area of concern: saving the lives of unborn children. Diluting our efforts across a wide range of social issues weakens our impact and muddies our message.
This need for focus extends to our messaging as well. I was deeply disappointed by some of the pro-life campaigns I witnessed during the recent state ballot initiatives. Instead of directly confronting the issue of abortion, these campaigns chose to focus on peripheral concerns like parental rights or the “extreme” nature of the bills. This is “background noise” that distracts from the core issue. We need to be bold and unapologetic in our defense of life. The public needs to know exactly what’s at stake: the right of innocent human beings to exist. Let’s not shy away from the heart of the matter.
Breaking Through the Barriers: Reaching New Audiences
We face another significant challenge in reaching a broader audience: the Christian gatekeepers. These are leaders of large Christian organizations who, for various reasons, seem hesitant to engage with the issue of abortion, even when presented with well-crafted, persuasive arguments. They offer excuses like “our audience isn’t ready for this conversation” or “this issue is too divisive” – frankly, I find these rationales condescending and dismissive of their audiences’ intelligence and capacity for thoughtful discussion.
So how do we break through these barriers? We need to be creative. We need to find ways to introduce the pro-life message in contexts where it might not be explicitly expected. That’s why I’m a strong advocate for educational videos that focus on fetal development and maternal health. These videos can serve as “Trojan horses” of sorts, subtly introducing viewers to the humanity of the unborn without immediately triggering resistance. Remember Greg Cunningham’s insightful point: as long as people believe a fetus is just a “blob of cells,” they’ll never be open to the pro-life argument. We need to change that perception by showcasing the beauty and wonder of life in the womb.
But we can’t rely solely on large organizations or slick productions. We need grassroots action. That’s why I’m calling on each of you, my fellow pro-life brothers and sisters, to step up and advocate for this cause within your own spheres of influence. If your pastor has never addressed the issue of abortion, request a meeting. Show him a video of a child developing in the womb and ask him what the church’s response should be. We have resources available at Life Training Institute (LTI) to support pastors in crafting sermons and presentations on this critical issue.
Parents, I urge you to hold your Christian schools accountable. Inquire about their curriculum and how they equip students to address moral issues like abortion. Advocate for training that goes beyond simple doctrinal statements and gives them the tools to engage in persuasive dialogue and defend their pro-life beliefs in the public square.
Empowering the Next Generation: Social Media and Beyond
The younger generation is incredibly adept at using social media to spread awareness and mobilize support for causes they believe in. We need to empower our pro-life youth to become powerful voices for life in the digital space. Encourage them to create and share short videos and posts that articulate the pro-life perspective in a way that resonates with their peers. Imagine the impact of a well-spoken 16-year-old student regularly posting thoughtful videos and arguments defending the pro-life view. This is a generation that can reach audiences we may never be able to connect with directly.
These young people can leverage platforms like the ERF website, which features stunning visuals of fetal development, and utilize social media to spread these images far and wide, countering the harmful misconception of the unborn child as a mere “blob of cells”. We need to visually demonstrate the humanity of the unborn, and our youth are uniquely equipped to carry this message into the digital world.
Integrating Faith and Politics: A Holistic Christian Witness
We cannot, as Christians, compartmentalize our faith and our civic duty. We are citizens of both a heavenly kingdom and an earthly nation, and our beliefs should inform our actions in both spheres. The Bible clearly shows that God holds leaders accountable for protecting the vulnerable. In a democratic republic like ours, that responsibility falls on each of us as citizens. We cannot sit on the sidelines and pretend our political choices have no bearing on the moral fabric of our society.
Voting is not just a political act; it’s a moral one. Our laws shape our culture, and our culture shapes our laws. To suggest that Christians should abstain from political participation is to ignore the powerful influence our political choices have on the world around us.
Of course, navigating the political landscape can be challenging, particularly when we’re faced with imperfect candidates. But even in those situations, we can still choose the path that “lessens evil” and promotes the greatest good. Our allegiance to any political party should always be contingent, subject to reevaluation if that party betrays its principles and embraces policies that contradict our core values.
The Time to Act is Now
My friends, this “stay of execution” is not a time for complacency. It’s a time to mobilize, to strategize, and to act. We need to equip ourselves with knowledge and resources to effectively advocate for the sanctity of life. If you haven’t mastered the moral logic of the pro-life position, I urge you to seek out resources like “The Case for Life” book or consider taking a course through LTI. Now is the time to hone your skills and become a powerful voice for the voiceless.
Let’s not squander this opportunity. Let’s be bold, be strategic, and be relentless in our defense of life. Together, we can make a difference.
Episode Transcript
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.
Are pro-lifers going to be better off in a trump Administration than they would have been under Harris? I’ll answer that question on this episode of The Case for Life podcast. Great to have you with us today. Thanks for joining us. If you haven’t already visited our social media sites, please do so. If you haven’t gotten a copy of the book, the Case For Life Second edition, I hope you’ll get that. It covers all the topics we’ve been exploring on this podcast and more.
I hope you’ll do that if you haven’t already done so. Also, some of you might be interested in being a sponsor of this podcast. We’d be happy to take inquiries. We got a couple we’re looking at right now that have, sent to us a proposal, and we’d love to have yours on the table too as well to make a consideration. Well, what about this idea that pro-lifers are no better off under Trump than they are under Camala Harris? This has come up a number of times pre-election and now that the election is over.
I’ve had pro-lifer of some stripe reach out to me and say: we don’t think it’s going to be any better. After all, Trump walked back his pro-life convictions during the campaign, and that’s undeniable. And they’re right. It is undeniable. He did walk back his pro-life convictions, such as they were I’m not even sure we know for sure what they were before, but he certainly retreated from where he was in 2020 when he spoke very eloquently, based on first principles for the right to life, at the big March for Life rally in DC.
You may remember that from January of 2020. Well, what are we to make of all this then? How do we, go forward here? Here are the challenges I see moving forward. First of all, it feels like we’re exactly in the same place we were in 2016 when Trump was elected and we dodged a bullet there as pro-lifers. I think we’re pretty much in that same place. We’re not going to get everything we want, but we were able to limit the evil done.
I label this election more like Dunkirk than D-Day. I don’t think we’re going to see major legislative progress on the pro-life issue at the federal level. I do think we’ll get judges that are more committed to interpreting the Constitution as written rather than reading their own worldview into the laws they want to legislate from the Bench. That’ll be a good thing federally. I also think federally, it’s good that we’re not going to have an HHS secretary. At least, I hope not, though I think Robert Kennedy is problematic, as a nominee and I’m hoping the Senate does not approve him.
But even if he were approved, I think it’s true that he is not going to come after pregnancy centers the way that a Democrat appointed HH SEC secretary wood. In fact, we saw in the state of California back in 20145 pregnancy centers being told that unless they advertised for abortion or referred women two abortion clinics, they would be penalized and th this is just unconscionable that you would force a pregnancy center whose stated principles oppose abortion and now you force them to go against their stated principles to do what you want them to do in promoting abortion. So I don’t think we’re going to have that threat.
Pregnancy centers will not be under threat and thankfully, the Supreme Court has dealt with this issue and with a supreme court that is tailored toward recognizing the law as whether or not it’s constitutional, as opposed to making up laws from the Bench, I think pregnancy centers are going to be relatively safe. So that’s all good news. On the federal front, we’re not going to see a pro-life Bill introduced in Congress, that’s for sure. I don’t think the votes are there in the Senate and the president apparently would not sign it even if the votes were there, so I don’t think we’re going to see that, but if we’re able to stop evil from happening, that’s an improvement.
That’s kind of like Dunkirk, as I said, versus D-Day. However, I do think that there are some things we can do as pro-lifers in this new Administration that we need to step up our game and do better than we’ve done in the past. The first is this: we really need to, as pro-life organization, as pro-life organizations, resist Mission drift, and there is this tendency among pro-life groups I’ve noticed to drift into other areas that don’t deal directly with abortion. So you’ll get pregnancy centers, for example, that try to take on every social issue under the sun.
They take on discipleship of new believers, they take on building marriages, they take on fighting for religious liberty, they take on fatherhood initiatives. Now, all of these things are good things. There’s nothing wrong with Christians doing that work and, as we’ve said many times on this podcast, we as Christians have a much broader ethic than simply abortion. There’s a lot of issues we care about. We care about sex trafficking, we care about the poor. We care that Justice is given for the weak and vulnerable.
All of these things are certainly within the proper view of a Christian look at life and therefore we’re going to want to take on those issues individually as Christians. But it doesn’t follow that pro-life groups operationally need to devote system resources to solving other societal ills, as we’ve said many times. No, no one looks at the American Cancer society and says you’re not a legitimate medical organization cuz you only treat one disease, not all of them. No one would say to an doctor that graciously extends the life of a drug addict, okay, what are you going to do to pay for his counseling?
Moving forward, are you going to make sure he has a good halfway house to go to? Are you going to make sure he has a good job so he doesn’t fall back into the depression that led him to drug addiction in the first place? Nobody says that about a doctor Who graciously saves the life of an addict. But when pro-lifer save the life of a child scheduled to be killed by abortion, we’re told that unless we fix everything wrong with that child’s environment, we really haven’t done our job and that’s just plain nonsense and pro-life group should not fall for it.
I was dismayed to see that in some of the ads that were put on TV by pro-life groups for these ballot initiatives that would have written abortion into the state constitutions a lot of those ballot initiatives passed and some of the pro-life messaging not all, but some of the pro-life messaging against these ballot initiatives was so bad I cringed. They almost never talked about abortion. They talked about other things: the loss of parental rights, the bill being too extreme. That’s just background noise.
We need to get right to the point, make the main thing, the main thing. Everybody in the culture knows when we’re dealing with these ballot initiatives, the battle is abortion and nothing else. Well, let’s engage on that front and let’s make better arguments than our opponents do. So I think we’re going to need to avoid Mission drift over the next four years and get more concentrated on zeroing in on making our arguments for the humanity of The Unborn and the inhumanity of abortion.
We’ve got to stick to the abortion issue. A second thing we need to do is we are no better off now than we were the first time Trump was elected in 2016 in terms of overcoming Christian Gatekeepers that prevent access to audiences that need to hear the pro-life message. We have now large Christian organizations, I think, that have just dug in and said we’re never going to deal with this issue. In fact, I found that many of those that take that POS are drifting leftward.
They are now actually both subtly and, in some cases, overtly, advocating for abortion, or at least telling us to vote for candidates that, advocate abortion. This is a troubling new development and it again it reiterates the need for pro-lifer to stick to a very simple, clear message: it is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Abortion does that. Therefore, it’s wrong. What tends to happen with these Gatekeepers, as I mentioned in a previous podcast, is they will give us all the right lip service.
They’ll say: oh, your presentation is really good, excellent content, boy, just really well argued, I really like it. And then they’ll turn around and say: but it’s not right for our group at this time. Well, two questions. Why isn’t it right? If the presentation is so good? Why is it not right for your group? I mean, truth is truth. If it helps equip students or adults to defend a biblical worldview on a controversial topic, we ought to go forward and do it.
But no, they come up with reasons. Our people are just different. They want you to talk to everybody else, but not their people, because they’re convinced their people can’t handle it. I mean, I just find this massively condescending to suggest that your audience, the people you’ve been given charge over, can’t handle a fact, actual, logical presentation on an issue that they’re going to have to deal with in the Public Square, and this is something prol lifers are going to have to figure out a way around now.
One way around this is the production of videos, like what we talked about with Greg Cunningham a few episodes ago, where we’re using videos that educate about the humanity of The Unborn and educate about fetal maternal Health. The word abort isn’t even mentioned. But if you were able to get video clips like those we talked about in that previous episode, shared through social media, shared through influence channels you have, I mean, imagine if I go to a school and say, listen, I’d love to talk to your students about fetal maternal health, and I go in there and I show the videos of these children in the womb, including a child at 3 weeks post Inception, with a heart visibly beating where you can see it, and, you give that presentation.
If nothing else, you humanize that child in the womb for your audience. We may have to use Trojan Horse approaches like that in order to reach our audiences, which means prol liers are going to have to get a little wiser on how we approach. I think also we’re going to need individual church members who are pro-life to step up. Please listen to me if you’re Pro lifee and you attend a church where your pastor has never said anything about abortion, here’s what I would do.
I would request a meeting with your pastor, take your tablet or iPad in with you or, if you don’t have that, at least your phone, and run the short video we have at case forlife.com that short, 55 second video. Ask if he’d be willing to view it and, instead of just sending him the link, which he’ll never watch, sit there with him, hold your phone and show him the video and ask him what he thinks the church should do in response to what he just saw and see if he has some answers. Now it’s possible he might say: look, I just don’t feel equipped to deal with this.
Okay, give us a contact here at LTI. We’ve got speakers that can come and help you communicate that to the church. We’ve got speakers that are equipped to give mon give presentations at other churchwide events, and we can do that for you. Or we’ll help your pastor craft a sermon. We’ll send him materials to use. I’ll even go so far as to send him a sermon outline that is pretty much plug and play if he wants to use it. So we have resources to help that Pastor.
Secondly, I think we’re going to have to get a lot tougher with our Christian Schools parents. If your kids go to an even evangelical or Catholic High school and their school is not teaching Christian worldview, I think we’re going to have to take personal responsibility to see to it that there’s a change there. And that means the parents are going to have to group together and say: you know what? We’re going to start a conversation on this. We’re going to go ask why these topics aren’t being dealt with.
This is the kind of work that needs to be done at the grassroot level if we’re going to win. It’s no longer going to work to say, well, we’ll just wait for Scott and LTI to contact a school to see if we can get a pro-life presentation in there. It’s going to take parents saying we want this and we expect the school to equip our kids with the tools of thought they need to engage on this issue. That makes it personal to you as a parent to take responsibility to make this happen, even if you’re not a parent, you’re just a concerned Community citizen.
It can be worth it and helpful for you to go to that school and say: can you give me some overview of what you’re teaching your students when it comes to defending a Christian worldview on key moral issues like abortion? Take responsibility to see if that can happen. If they agree to that, you can simply then ask: well, what can we do to provide you with resources? Now, sometimes you’ll get an answer that goes like this: well, we’re already covering that.
The students all go through the catechism and they’re taught that abortion is not in alignment with church teaching. All right, that may be true and I’m grateful that teaching is happening. However, that doesn’t help the student out there in the workplace or on the University campus persuasively defend what they believe. They’re going to need more than just the church says. So they’re going to need the tools of thought of how to make a pro-life argument, how to convey that argument in 60 seconds or less and then defend it when the questions come now.
It doesn’t take a lot to equip a student to do do that, but we’re going to have to get very intentional about our students being able to get that kind of training, and it’s not going to happen if we just sit on our Laurels and say, well, we won an election in the sense that we pervert, we prevented a greater evil from happening. It’s true, we did prevent a perversion of Justice by electing Donald Trump rather than kamla Harris. However, that’s not a victory, that’s a stay of execution.
That is a matter of us buying some time to do better at our job, and we’re going to need to step up and take personal responsibility to see to it that our schools, our community groups, get pro-life presentations into them. A third thing I think we need to do and this is something that I’m still exploring, but I think it’s very helpful I think we need to equip our students to make short social media posts and video clips where they get their pro-life views out there. Imagine this: imagine we had a Wells spoken 16-year-old student who knew how to defend the pro- lifee view, who makes short videos and weekly, or maybe twice a month, post them on social media along with arguments defending the prif view.
This could be a major thing. Why aren’t we encouraging our students to do more of that? That reaches students you and I, as pro-life AP olist, will never reach, but these pro-life students can reach. I think we need to be intentional about encouraging them to do that. Imagine, for example, a student takes their phone and they go here to the erf website that talks about, these babies in the womb and has video of these children, developing in the womb and you share these over social media.
That that is increasing the reach of people who now know that that child in the womb is not just a blob of cells, which is what a lot of Americans think, and I think Greg Cunningham said something very helpful when he was on the show a couple of episodes ago. As long as the public thinks that what’s in the womb is just a blob of cells, they’re never going to consider the pro-life argument, and I think he’s right about that. So this is why at LTI, we show pictures both of the humanity of The Unborn and the abortion imagery.
But I think it’s okay to start with the humanity stuff and make sure they at least know what’s in the womb. A fourth thing that needs to happen: while we have this so-called stay of execution, where we have some time to perhaps recalibrate our pro-life efforts, we’re going to have to educate Rank and file Believers on how a biblical worldview applies to their political lives. There is so much nonsense out there that seeks to bifurcate a Christian witness from, what we do politically here and now.
Look, as Christians, we are citizens of two Realms. We are Heavenly citizens because God has selected us for salvation and we have been regenerated and now been adopted into his family through the merits of Christ, not our own. So we are certainly Heavenly citizens, but we are also Earthly citizens that belong to particular Nations. And it’s interesting: when you read the scriptures, it’s very clear to me that God holds sovereigns responsible for the execution of justice for the weak and vulnerable.
Well, who is The Sovereign in a constitutional republic like the United States? We, the people, are, which means we don’t get to sit elections out, and our pastoral leaders, our Christian leaders, need to help flush out what it means to work as a sovereign of a nation where you are held responsible for justice for the weak and vulnerable. And I think if Christians get a more holistic view of how their Christian ethics applies to the political realm, we’re going to be a lot better off.
And here’s the kind of topics. Here are the kind of topics we need to see looked at. How should we vote when we don’t have a choice between two perfect candidates, where both candidates are flawed and it’s simply, one will lessen evil while the other one will promote it wholesale? Is there a Christian way to approach that scenario? And I think there is. You vote to lessen the evil, but our people have been fed a lot of nonsense like: well, it doesn’t matter what we do political, Jesus is not a republican, he’s not a Democrat, he’s the lord of the universe.
Yes, he is the lord of the universe, and I agree, Jesus is not a republican, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be one if that particular party will do a better job limiting evil and promoting the good. Now again, our allegiance to any political party will necessarily be contingent, meaning we are never going to swear loyalty, as Christians, to any political institution with no strings attached. Our loyalty to any political Enterprise is always going to be contingent. And the minute they start promoting evil wholesale, well, we’re going to have to withdraw from that Allegiance.
That’s a biblical way to view this. Another way people need to look at this is that when they vote, they are actually doing more than just tapping the screen for a particular name. They are playing a role in what the culture does. Laws influence morality and moral ity influences law. There’s a synergistic relationship there. I think Christians for too long have thought that, well, politics is always Downstream from morality. It can be, but it’s also true that morality can be informed by our politics.
So we need Christians to know that when they vote, they’re not just doing something politically. When they push that that button on the screen, or punch that ballot, they’re also doing something that may affect morals. If the laws say, hey, we’re not going to use taxpayer money to intentionally kill fetuses in the womb, that law will send a moral message. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and I think a lot of Christians get this wrong. They think politics is just its own little thing over here.
It exists in a vacuum. It has no impact on overall culture and how I live my daily life. That’s not true. Laws inform morality and I think Christian leaders need to make sure our people know that. All right. So there’s some things we need to look at. As we look at the next four years, I am thankful we are not going to have to deal with an Administration that will be overtly hostile to pro-life efforts. But don’t think for a moment this means we can rest on our Laurels.
We need to get busy, very busy, getting pro-life apologists out there, learning all we can on the issue. If you have not mastered the moral logic of the pro-life position, why is that? What are you waiting for? Get a book, like the case for Life, the second edition, read up, or maybe consider taking the course we have available at scottus andorf dcom, where you can learn to defend your pro-life view at a very sophisticated level. What are you waiting for? This is the time for pro- lifers to step up and advance forward.
While we have the opportunity and we’re not hunkered down playing defense against a very hostile political environment. This is a chance for us to make some moves forward. I think we ought to do it and I hope you’ll help us do that. Thanks for joining us today. I appreciate you doing it. Look forward to being with you the next time.