Jojo Ruba started his pro-life work in the Pro-Life 101 course, many years ago. Now he serves as the staff apologist for Students for Life of America, and the day before he sat down with Scott, he debated Bradley Pierce at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. The question on the table was how to end abortion, and the debate revealed key weaknesses in the self-styled abolitionist movement that you can use in your own activism and education.
Who the Self-Styled Abolitionists Are
The self-styled abolitionists have taken the name of the movement against slavery and applied it to themselves. Their abolitionism requires them to believe that God only endorses a ban on abortion if all abortions are banned immediately, and if women who have abortions are jailed at the same level as a criminal who kills a born person and convicted the same way.
It is a very strict perspective. They often talk about how they are the only biblical Christians fighting abortion. And they have been harassing, especially online, many of the student groups Students for Life works with. They have attacked the president of Students for Life, Kristan Hawkins.
Why Students for Life Brought Jojo In
Students for Life saw that Jojo had written his master’s thesis in Canada on abortion, and particularly on a strategy the Canadian pro-life movement adopted that is very similar to the abolitionists’. The debate came about because Students for Life wanted to show its students that there are good arguments against every part of the abolitionist perspective.
Bradley Pierce agreed to do it. He is a constitutional lawyer and the chief figure behind many, if not most, of the abolitionist bills introduced in red states across the US. The debate ran an hour and a half, with cross-examination, in front of an audience friendly to the pro-life side, mostly pro-life leaders.
It is interesting that Bradley said yes. His own communications director has blamed those same pro-life leaders for causing the most problems when it comes to abortion. He blames them more than abortion doctors and abortion providers for creating obstacles to passing laws against abortion.
Premature Abolition or Permanent Abolition
The debate was formal: opening statements, two rebuttals around the cross-examination, and plenty of back and forth.
Jojo opened with a formal syllogism of four points, and the key was the language. He distinguished premature abolition from permanent abolition. The goal is a path to permanent abolition as the best way to provide equal protection for pre-born children. Equal protection was defined this way: the laws that protect born children should also protect pre-born children. Students for Life agrees with that, because it believes it.
But the syllogism also said that we need to be culturally sensitive as well as politically sensitive. When we build a culture and create laws that are truly abolitionist, we will be able to create permanent abolition, laws that permanently protect children. If we don’t, those laws will be in place only temporarily, just like Prohibition. Or look at Poland, which tried to ban abortion under a conservative government. It is now under a liberal parliament trying to reverse those gains and make abortion legal for a vague health exception.
So the conclusion: if we want permanent abolition, we need to pursue it in a way that is culturally sensitive and legally wise, and then we can protect children equally, born and pre-born.
Jojo also laid a challenge before the audience at the start: listen for the strategies on both sides. Which side actually has a strategy moving forward? As the debate went on, it was clear that Bradley had none.
Bradley’s Case: God’s Way
Bradley did not open with a formal argument. He laid out his case the way he always does in his videos. The best way to protect children and provide equal protection is to do it God’s way. And he defines God’s way like this: because God has demanded that we stop killing children, the only way to do that is to pass legislation that bans all abortions immediately and jails every woman who has an abortion at the same criminal level as someone who kills a born person.
That was his argument.
Where Is the Plan?
There is what we might all want as a North Star, and there are the realities on the ground. So how would his bills get passed in the real world we are forced to live in?
He had no answer. Jojo made that his concluding remark: at the end of the debate, we still had not heard Bradley’s plan for the first step. How do you pass an abolitionist bill in the first place? And even if one passed, it would have to survive jurisdictional challenges, courts overturning it or a later election bringing in new legislators to overturn it. Then it would have to be enforced.
A Thousand Laws and the Numbers
One of Bradley’s moves was insidious. He cited statistics on the failure of state pro-life laws: a thousand of them passed, he said, and they are not saving any babies, because abortion rates have gone up.
Correlation doesn’t mean causation. In many of his own talks online, Bradley has already admitted that most of the increase is due to chemical abortions. It was technology that changed the numbers. Most of those state laws were passed to limit surgical abortions, and they have successfully done that.
Fourteen Percent
One of the key lessons of the debate, and many pro-life leaders came up to Jojo afterward to say it worked well, was about language. Jojo agreed that in the future, a pro-life legislature has the right to decide what the criminal penalties are, including for women who have had abortions. But we can only have that discussion, or should only have it, when we are ready to pass laws that are permanent. Not now, when 14 percent or less of the American public supports jailing women.
Bradley was misleading here too. He cited a study saying 39 or 40 percent believe women should be punished after getting an abortion. But that poll breaks down between people who think women should get a lesser penalty, maybe community service, and people who support jail. Again, only 14 percent or less support jail time at all.
The night before, Jojo did some research. He found about 33 countries where abortion is illegal, pro-life countries for many different reasons. Only one of them provides the kind of so-called equal protection the abolitionists are fighting for. The rest punish women at a smaller rate, if at all. Poland doesn’t punish women at all. In most of those countries, abortion providers get 30 years in jail, while women who have abortions get two years or less. These countries have had permanent abortion bans for decades. Bradley is demanding something that even the most deeply Muslim or Catholic countries have not been able to achieve.
Realism never came up in the debate. When you ask people who hold this view to lay out how unrealistic their position is, they don’t care what the polling says. And they have no plan to move the public from 14 percent to where they are.
Obedience or Lives Saved?
Many of the abolitionists and equal protection advocates you talk with really don’t care whether lives are saved. Their bigger concern is obedience to God: impose the Mosaic law on a secular culture, and as long as we do that, we are being faithful, and the results can be what they are.
Jojo began the debate with a picture of baby Jacob. Jacob is four years old now. When his mother gave birth to him, she told the pregnancy center that she had wanted to abort him. But Florida’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks saved him, because she was already 22 weeks pregnant.
So Jojo asked: Bradley, does baby Jacob deserve protection? Bradley calls laws like that one “hurry up and abort your baby” bills. He dismisses them completely, and he dismisses every bill saving babies now as the sin of partiality.
Triage Is Not Partiality
Jojo put a question to him. If we were in a burning building, and his child was in one room and Jojo was in another, would he show partiality in whom he rescued? Bradley answered, “Yes, I would show partiality.”
The abolitionists are not using the correct definitions of the words they use. When it comes to partiality, Jojo quoted the book of James. James 2 describes partiality as showing unmerited favor based on personal preference, particularly based on wealth. It is not about triage. That line was very well received: triage is not partiality, because it is not about personal preference. It is about saving who we can. The people committing the sin of partiality are voters, American voters, the ones we are trying to reach and change so that we can save all babies.
Bradley had no response. This is the kind of problem you run into with the abolitionists. They take Bible verses completely out of context, and they accuse pro-lifers of all kinds of things without actually engaging their ideas.
Attacks Instead of Arguments
The debate is already out on Twitter, and the early feedback is obvious. They are attacking Jojo’s character and attacking him personally, but not his ideas. He has already been compared to a demon, which he will check off as a reward in heaven.
What have they actually said in response? Still no plan to get their bill passed. Instead, they blamed Students for Life, saying its people have always opposed their bills. Jojo asked the Students for Life staff who work on the legal side. They have spent zero dollars opposing abolitionist bills, because those bills defeat themselves. They are written in a vague way. Bradley writes them to say, in effect, we want equal protection. Well, pro-lifers want equal protection too, but we can’t get it right now. So what are the steps to get there?
The abolitionists are skeptical of Jojo’s view of equal protection and of Students for Life’s. They tried to say Students for Life has changed its mind. But Jojo was representing Students for Life, and there is a reason they asked him to: they believe in equal protection. They are simply wise about how to get there.
Permanent, Not Premature
When we get there, it will be permanent, not premature. Premature is what happens with zealots. It happened with the zealots of Jesus’ day, who tried to overthrow the Roman Empire. It happened with the prohibitionists, who got a law passed and an amendment into the Constitution, only to see it reversed, because they never made the cultural change that was necessary for the injustice they were fighting to be defeated.
Think about the wisdom of Jesus. He did not correct Simon the Zealot’s passion. He brought him in as a disciple, because he wanted that passion, and he redirected it to the gospel. That is what overthrew the Roman Empire.
The abolitionists think, unfortunately, that the way to glorify God is to pass a bill that won’t pass, with no plan to pass it, and to keep introducing it anyway. But the law is a tutor. When they keep doing this, the lesson people are learning is that the abolitionist movement is a bunch of losers.
“You’re Just Speculating”
Bradley supplied a perfect line. When Jojo described what would happen if the pro-life movement followed the abolitionist path, not thinking strategically about passing bills now and demanding all or nothing, Bradley said, “You’re just speculating.”
Jojo is not speculating. He has experience, because this is what happened in Canada. The pro-life movement there embraced an all-or-nothing strategy, and for 40 years it has had nothing to protect pre-born children. Bradley had no response to that. He did say the law the Canadian government tried to pass was terrible, and Jojo pointed out that at least there would have been a law. Right now Canada has no law, which means abortion is unrestricted and publicly funded, and Christian pro-life politicians are censored from participating.
A friend in Quebec told Jojo about a Christian pro-life candidate in this fall’s election there. When it came out that he was a Christian, that he was pro-life, and that he supported traditional marriage, he was forced to resign as a candidate for those reasons alone. That is what pro-lifers are dealing with in Canada, and it is what will happen in the States if we follow the all-or-nothing strategy. The abolitionists will get nothing.
Two Admissions
Bradley is a good guy. He may be the most reasonable of the abolitionists, and in many ways we can have conversations with the Bradleys of this world. His point of view is no less extreme, but he comes across as someone you can talk to. And he admitted two things on video that were surprising.
First, Jojo asked whether he would charge a woman who takes the abortion reversal pill. She has taken an abortion pill, changes her mind, and takes the reversal pill to save her baby. The abolitionist bills are not really equal protection, because they can’t pass, so they won’t protect anyone. But under their bills, as Jojo had to remind him many times, that woman would have to be charged with attempted murder, because taking the abortion pill would be an attempted murder. Bradley said she should be exempt, or not included. So right away, it is not equal protection anymore, because he is not applying the law the way equal protection bills require. Jojo was shocked. Here was one of the leading abolitionists admitting that he cannot apply equal protection the way he has claimed.
Second, Jojo had earlier debated Jacob Miller, and in that debate Miller admitted that as soon as an abolitionist bill passed, he would feel free, and would actually be happy, to practice third-party self-defense and shoot abortion doctors. Jojo showed Bradley that clip, and Bradley did not deny what Jacob said. So now there is video of the key legal mind behind abolitionist bills saying third-party self-defense would apply under those bills.
That is going to resonate with lawmakers. Every pro-life activist working in a state capitol should show that clip to every legislator thinking about supporting an abolitionist bill and ask, “Do you understand this is what your bill will do?” This is not some fringe element. This is the man who wrote many, if not most, of these bills.
What Kind of People Are We Dealing With?
Jacob Miller posted a reaction to the debate: “Go watch the debate between an abolitionist man, Bradley Pierce, and the gay guy that is standing in the gap, so all women pro-life leaders don’t have to do a debate and throw hands.”
What kind of people are we dealing with? When you go on Twitter, you see someone’s heart, unfortunately. People don’t realize these are public statements, and they will be held to account for what they say. And it shows the weakness of their argument when they have to go to that level. The people who shout the most after a debate were on the losing side.
Twenty Years or a Hundred
The cross-examination question Jojo put to Bradley shows that the abolitionists are more concerned about jailing women than about saving babies. Jojo gave him two paths to stopping abortion: twenty years using the pro-life path incrementally, or a hundred years to ban abortion using his method of jailing women and doing it all immediately, with no incrementalism.
“If I can show you that we can ban all abortions in the next twenty years, but we would have to do it the pro-life way,” Jojo asked, “but if we used your so-called equal protection strategy of jailing women and banning abortion now, or trying to attempt to do that, that would take a hundred years. Which pathway would you choose, and why?”
Bradley first wanted to be clear that at the end of twenty years, both men and women would be subject to the law and face criminal penalties. Jojo answered that, as they had agreed, equal protection means the laws that protect born children would protect pre-born children. So Bradley said the result would be the same, with everyone equally subject to the law, and then gave his answer: “I think that we should pursue the path that obeys God. And if we have to put partiality into our law and put maternal immunity into the law, which God forbids, acquitting the guilty, then we should not do that. That’s disobeying God. That’s getting chariots and horses from Egypt, which God forbids. I don’t care how good the strategy is, if God forbids it, we shouldn’t do it.”
Jojo’s reply: “I don’t think pro-lifers know anyone in Egypt who has chariots, so I’m not sure why that passage applies to us today.” Then to the audience: you heard him. He is willing to wait a hundred years so that he can jail women and follow his strategy, and in those eighty extra years, all these babies will die.
That question settled the debate as to who had the better case. It was a knockout punch.
It shows the goal of the abolitionists, and they have said as much: it is not the same as the goal of pro-lifers, because they believe glorifying God requires that we jail women. Jojo pointed out that glorifying God requires us to save babies. That is the greater moral good. We can save babies, and then talk about jailing women after we have saved them. Focus on the most important thing first.
This is exactly what Abraham Lincoln did. He did not write equal protection into the 13th Amendment. He didn’t have the votes for it, and trying would have meant the slaves were not freed. So he did what he could do, freeing the slaves, and worried about equal protection later. There is a model there for us.
The Vision of the Anointed
To close the debate, Jojo read a passage drawing on Thomas Sowell: “My opponents operate on what he calls the vision of the anointed, the belief that pure intentions and sweeping declarations create a perfect world. But history tells a darker story. Incrementalism is not a compromise on our principles. It is the absolute prerequisite for real, lasting victory. We stand for permanent abolition. They stand for premature abolition, and babies will not be saved in their model.”
They Don’t Read Their Bibles
How did it feel in the middle of it? Jojo had spent three months listening to Bradley’s videos. He told Bradley it was a good thing he has a soft Texas accent that Jojo enjoys, because listening to him that much for that long drove him bananas.
But Bradley didn’t have any new arguments. They were all the same ones. And every time he made them, there had been no Christian pushback, especially from a Christian apologist trained to go through Scripture and say, “That’s not actually what the Bible says.” That should teach all of us to do better hermeneutics with our own people. The reason abolitionists have become so popular in the church and in many Christian circles is that Christians don’t read their Bibles.
Jojo did a slam dunk. You can find him at cornerstoneinstitute.ca (it’s .ca because he’s Canadian), on his public Facebook page, and on X. Visit, ask questions, watch the debate yourself, and decide who made the better case.