A String of Losses for the Pro-Life Movement and Our Message of Hope

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The first line of the 2001 movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is a whisper in Elvish: “The world is changed.”¹ This rings true for a community of Christian believers committed to the idea that every human life, no matter how physically immature, deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health² overturned Roe v. Wade³ on June 24, 2022, the world is changed. That stunning Supreme Court victory led to unexpected referendum defeats in states formerly believed to be majority pro-life. It led to a renewed collective effort by abortion advocates to change the narrative in how they discuss early human life and laws that restrict abortion. Abortion advocates are winning elections championing the bodily autonomy of “pregnant people,”⁴ while the Republican Party, demoralized by unexpected losses, removed advocating for a federal abortion ban in the 2024 Republican Party Platform.⁵ Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump pushed for the party message to reflect a pragmatic approach to abortion, looking to win the larger war by accepting certain realities about the current unpopularity of abortion restrictions.⁶ Pro-life Christians are losing state battles, losing the media war to frame the message, and appear to be losing allies. The world is changed.

Yet the mission stays the same. Borrowing the words of the apostle Paul in his letter to the church in Galatia, we must “not grow weary of doing good” (Galatians 6:9 ESV). Author and Pastor Daniel Darling observed that we can’t take for granted that we have reached this younger generation with our message.⁷ They are new; they have heard one message, powerfully delivered by abortion advocates through both traditional and social media, and we run the risk of forgetting our duty to find creative ways to help them see the equal dignity of all human life, even embryonic and fetal humans. As abortion advocates seek to dehumanize early life through insisting on what they deem medically accurate terms, we must make the argument that true medical and scientific accuracy strengthens the case for equal human dignity. And our allies need to be reminded that protecting life is not a policy issue to be evaluated by its likelihood of leading to favorable election results, but a principled stand intended to secure a better future for all people including those with a misguided devotion to the idea the world needs abortion.

Framing the Debate: Unborn Children, Embryos, and Fetuses

The defeat of Roe v. Wade raised uncertainty in the public, and abortion advocates seized this opportunity to frame the language of the debate through the lens of women’s bodily autonomy and unfair suppression of rights. A New York Times article, “‘Unborn Child’ or ‘Fetus’: Parsing Word Choices on Abortion at the Supreme Court,” by Kate Zernike, accuses pro-life legislators, lawyers, and justices of dishonesty and using provocatively humanizing language when referencing early life in their laws and decisions.⁸ She criticizes pro-life advocates for using terms like “unborn child” to describe an embryo or fetus. She frames her article around a Supreme Court case argued in April concerning the legal responsibility of doctors in Idaho, which has restrictive abortion laws, to offer abortions in emergency situations. Zernike writes, “The lawyer for Idaho and the conservative justices including Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, employed the term ‘unborn child,’ a term used in the federal law at issue. The lawyer for the Biden administration tended to say ‘fetus.’”

According to her critique, the language used to defend the Idaho law is intentionally humanizing for the purpose of prejudicing the public into believing the act of abortion kills something like us. Abortion advocates claim that in the act of abortion, an embryo or fetus is destroyed, and killing an embryo or fetus is nothing like killing one of us. Thus, abortion advocates contend we must not restrict women from controlling their own bodies to protect embryos or fetuses, whom they view as only potential humans.

First, this assumes without argument that to be a full member of the human family, early human life must exhibit certain value-giving properties and capacities. A life must look a certain way or be able to do certain things to be considered morally valuable. But why should we accept that assertion without argument? Second, the assertion is factually incomplete. The terms “embryo” and “fetus” don’t identify a type of being. The embryonic and fetal stages are developmental stages, which beings mature through. It is misleading to declare them merely embryos or fetuses. Are we talking about dog embryos, dolphin embryos, or elephant embryos? No, the issue of abortion involves the destruction of embryonic and fetal humans, and contrary to the claims of abortion advocates, they look exactly like us, exactly as we all did as we matured through those stages of development. Also, the Supreme Court of Alabama provided a compelling case in a 2024 decision centering on a wrongful death suit involving the destruction of human embryos stored in a facility for future implantation that the unborn meet a clear definition of children: “the immediate progeny of parents.” This view has been recognized as far back as William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England published in the late 1760’s.⁹ The pro-life advocate is not using provocative and unnecessarily humanizing terms as abortion advocates charge. Embryonic humans are the children of their parents.

From the moment it comes into existence as a single cell, the zygote exists as an independent life pursuing its own maturation and not operating as a constituent part of either of its parents. This independence manifests, for example, in the way the young human life protects itself. The zona pellucida prevents polyspermy, “the fertilization of the egg by more than one sperm…a source of significant abnormalities, forming either disorganized nonembryonic entities or severely damaged, nonviable embryos.”¹⁰ The hardening of this glycoprotein shell happens immediately as the sperm penetrates the shell of the egg, at the earliest moments of the fertilization process. The cells of the embryo then cleave, multiply, and change without the organism growing beyond the protective shell that formed the instant the new life began. The new, unique, unified human life is not a clump of undifferentiated cells. From the outset, important information is expressed in processes guided by a genetic identity that is entirely new to the human family. As Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen explain,

The zygote does not herself serve a functional role in the biological economy of either parent; she is a separate organism, distinct and whole, albeit at the very beginning of a long process of development to adulthood. If she is provided with the resources needed by all organisms, namely nutrition and a reasonably hospitable environment, she will continue (assuming adequate health) to grow and develop. Her growth and development is, from this point, determined from within. She contains within herself the “genetic programming” and epigenetic characteristics necessary to direct her own biological progress. She possesses the active capacity for self-development toward maturity using the information she carries.¹¹

Zernike’s criticism of the language of pro-life advocates shares a remarkable similarity in her language with other criticisms among abortion rights advocates. Is there a reason why?

ACOG’s Guidelines

Any discussion or reporting about abortion invites emotional responses from the audience. According to National Public Radio (NPR), neither side is ever happy with the way their position is portrayed in the news.¹² Both sides accuse NPR of using prejudicial language or unfairly characterizing their views. Because of this, NPR established and published their protocol in discussing the issue of abortion and the advocates for both sides. They focus on actions, abortion advocacy versus anti-abortion advocacy, rather than using terms like “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” Some of their decisions can be quibbled over, but the concept of a disciplined approach to language throughout a news organization to avoid the appearance of bias is understandable.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) claims to be operating in that same spirit in their “ACOG Guide to Language and Abortion.”¹³ Their expressed purpose in providing the guide is to help “those writing about reproductive health to use language that is medically appropriate, clinically accurate, and without bias.” All the language choices made in the New York Times’ editorials written by abortion advocates are consistent with this guide that was crafted to counter “anti-choice rhetoric.” For example, the guide identifies “Heartbeat Bill” as a “Term to Avoid.” In another New York Times article, health reporter Roni Caryn Rabin quotes an ACOG fellow explaining that what we hear as a heartbeat in more mature humans is the sound of the heart valves opening and closing.¹⁴ These valves and the chambers of the heart are not present as early as six weeks, so the sound of the electrical stimulation of a six-week cardiac tube is not identical to the sound of a more mature beating heart. ACOG’s guide suggests “embryonic cardiac activity” is more accurate. The word “cardiac” means having to do with the heart, so essentially the ACOG guide suggests that claiming to hear an early heartbeat is medically misleading, but hearing embryonic activity having to do with the heart is accurate.¹⁵ ACOG advises writers to avoid the term “heartbeat bill” and, instead, identify any bill or law dealing with detecting embryonic or fetal heart activity as “gestational age bans” and to identify them with gestational age markers “such as ‘15-week ban’ or ‘six-week ban.’”

Six Week Bans v. Heartbeat Laws

Multiple New York Times articles characterize heartbeat bans as unjust six-week abortion bans, criticizing state legislators for establishing laws setting the limit on when a woman can get an abortion so early most women won’t know they are pregnant till right at the time the restrictions set in.¹⁶ A woman will have just realized she missed her period at approximately the same time the nascent life’s developing heart can be detected via ultrasound.

The problem with this narrative is that the laws in question, particularly Georgia and Texas, are not written as six-week bans. State legislators designed these laws to protect early human life, which requires doctors to restrict their actions toward any nascent human life developed to the point that embryonic cardiac activity can be detected. The Georgia law explicitly states the intention is to recognize all human life as natural persons under the law. It is named the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, or LIFE Act, distinguishing natural persons from legal persons, which can include corporations, while stating natural persons are due all constitutional, legal, and moral considerations.¹⁷ The Texas law makes it clear the purpose of detecting a heartbeat is to demonstrate the viability of the life and high likelihood it will mature along a healthy trajectory, stating, “fetal heartbeat has become a key medical predictor that an unborn child will reach live birth.”¹⁸ It states further, “Texas has compelling interests from the outset of a woman’s pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the unborn child.” Even with this clarity of purpose, New York Times authors adhere to the recommendations of ACOG and exclusively reference these laws as six-week bans.

ACOG condemns the use of “baby,” “unborn child,” or “preborn child,” preferring “embryo” up to ten weeks completed gestational age, and “fetus” from ten weeks to birth.¹⁹ This all sounds familiar. ACOG objects on the grounds that an existing thing should not be defined by a future state. However, other medical professionals who reject abortion as immoral embrace the identification of early human life as children without ACOG’s concerns about medical inaccuracy.²⁰

Interestingly, there is another term which fails to appear anywhere in the “ACOG Guide to Language and Abortion”: “woman.” They prefer the term “pregnant people.” ACOG’s claims to be above bias and to express themselves solely in medically accurate terms appears suspect, especially since they actively advocate for the freedom of doctors to perform abortions as a public good. Their influence over writers in the New York Times and other publications defending the practice of abortion, however, appears obvious.

The Republican Party Platform

On July 8 the Republican Party released their platform for the 2024 election.²¹ The platform simplified its approach across the board, eschewing specific policy goals for broader declarations of agenda items, including a repeated focus on the theme of America first. The platform broke with 40 years of tradition and rejected language that called for a federal ban on abortion and that affirmed the unborn have a fundamental right to life, instead choosing to emphasize that abortion is now a state issue. The previous 2020 platform contained over 500 words discussing the party’s commitment to appoint pro-life judges, expressed concerns over euthanasia, condemned dismemberment abortion, and opposed embryo-destructive research.²² The 2024 platform used a sparse 90 words to declare abortion an issue for states to sort out, affirm a commitment to protect IVF and contraception, and condemn late-term abortion. The difference between the two platforms is startling.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) supported the language of the new platform as “grounded in reality.”²³ At the same time, Donald Trump appealed to Republicans to communicate “correctly” on the issue of abortion,²⁴ by which Mr. Trump means Republicans ought to talk about abortion in a manner that recognizes the electorate is currently against restricting access to abortion and continues to make their feelings clear on that issue by handing abortion advocates one victory after another. It would be hopeful to believe this is merely an election strategy, but Mr. Trump reserves his strongest criticism on this issue for governors who pass laws restricting abortion. There have also been reports from participants in the platform ratification process that Mr. Trump’s team sought to marginalize pro-life voices while pushing through the new platform without discussion or amendments.²⁵ It is possible that those leading the Republican Party into this general election believe what they are doing is best for the party and the country. The most obvious explanation, however, is that abortion is no longer understood as central to the mission of the Republican Party. If that is the case, we are now faced with one party committed to enshrining abortion into federal law as a fundamental right and another party who is just not that into the pro-life movement.

Perhaps it is the hope that the Republican Platform containing a limited reference to the 14th Amendment and the constitutional right to life still stands in stark-enough relief from the Democratic position that pro-life voters will continue to find their home in the GOP. Senator Rubio said as much when claiming it is not what is missing from the Republican Platform that matters as much as what is included in the Democratic Platform, a full-throated commitment to the idea that abortion is good and necessary.²⁶ Mr. Trump is also correct when pointing out that the pro-life movement fought since 1973 to return the issue to the states and that is exactly what he delivered.²⁷ It is now in the states, and it ought to stay there. The American people ought to be able to sort this out through crafting law and finding a compromise they can all live with. As Mr. Trump’s vice presidential pick recently said, it makes sense that different states would govern abortion differently.²⁸

Where Do We Go from Here?

The goals of any political party and the goals of the church are never perfectly aligned. The Great Commandments are to love the Lord our God with all that we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:36–40). There are times when pursuit of loving our neighbor drives us to work in cooperation with the government to seek policy that helps human life flourish in our communities. There are other times when we act in such a way as to limit evil in our society through strategic voting. This is not voting for the lesser of two evils, but voting to oppose a great evil by limiting its power through the election of officials who will frustrate that evil. What we can never do is diminish the importance of obedience to God and our Christian duty to our neighbors by overly fixating on electability and the unpalatability of our deepest convictions to the American culture. Our commitments to God are rarely convenient, but they are always elevating, both to us and to our community.

Embryonic human lives are the direct progeny of their parents. In other words, they are children. They are physically immature children, but children nonetheless. Humanizing them with our language isn’t dishonest, it reflects our realization that being immature does not disqualify nascent human life from being the image bearers of God and our neighbors to be loved as we love ourselves. Humanizing them is exactly what we should do.

We must also recognize our responsibility to transmit the Christian values faithfully passed to us to the next generation. We must never grow weary of doing good. Teaching our children about the imago Dei, the image bearers of God, and the equal dignity of human life is good. As Dan Darling writes, we don’t have to reinvent the institutions or the arguments, they already exist. We need to embrace the opportunity to make our case to a new generation.²⁹ The New York Times opinion sections are often full of misinformation and misunderstandings centering on bodily autonomy arguments, expressing incredulity over the value of embryos, and declaring those who hold pro-life views to be forced birthers. We have intellectually satisfying answers to these challenges and existing institutions to provide those answers.³⁰

Finally, as editor of First Things, R. R. Reno writes, just because the Republican Party moderates its position on abortion does not mean that we must do the same.³¹ We can continue to speak boldly and prophetically into the world on the issue of abortion without feeling compelled to go to war with every conservative politician who is not vocal enough to suit us. If they believe their highest priority is getting elected and securing power, then we remind them that whatever power they gain must be used to protect the innocent. Whatever compromises others make politically to curry favor, we must be prepared to be disliked. The world needs to hear a life-affirming message from all who see God’s image in our fellow man, even if the world rejects that message. Not so conservatives can win elections and beat liberals, but because we all need to hear a message of hope, conservative and liberal alike. A world where all human life is treated with dignity and respect is better for us all.

Jay Watts is the founder and president of Merely Human Ministries, Inc., an organization committed to equipping Christians and pro-life advocates to defend the intrinsic dignity of all human life.

NOTES

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, directed by Peter Jackson, screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson (Burbank, CA: New Line Cinema, 2001).
2. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), Majority Opinion Justice Samuel Alito, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf.
3. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113.
4. “ACOG Guide to Language and Abortion,” ACOG: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, accessed July 23, 2024, https://www.acog.org/contact/media-center/abortion-language-guide.
5. See “2024 Republican Party Platform,” Ballot Pedia, accessed July 26, 2024, https://ballotpedia.org/Republican_National_Convention,_2024#2024_Republican_Party_Platform.
6. “Republicans Move at Trump’s Behest to Change How They Will Oppose Abortion,” Associated Press, July 8, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/republicans-abortion-party-platform-trump-rnc-5561e857c5501df9864ab8ca666d8bc5.
7. Daniel Darling, “The Pro-Life Movement’s Aspirational Moment,” Dispatch, January 21, 2024, https://thedispatch.com/article/the-pro-life-movements-aspirational-moment/.
8. Kate Zernike, “‘Unborn Child’ or ‘Fetus’: Parsing Word Choices on Abortion at the Supreme Court,” New York Times, April 24, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/us/politics/abortion-law-emergency-ban-fetus-unborn-child.html.
9. James Lepage and Emily Lepage v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine, SC–2022–0515, Supreme Court of Alabama, February 16, 2024, 12–13, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/21/us/alabama-supreme-court-embryo-ruling.html.
10. Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, second ed. (Princeton: The Witherspoon Institute, 2011), 36.
11. George and Tollefsen, Embryo, 40–41.
12. Elizabeth Jensen, “Reviewing NPR’s Language for Covering Abortion,” NPR, May 29, 2019, https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2019/05/29/728069483/reviewing-nprs-language-for-covering-abortion.
13. See “ACOG Guide to Language and Abortion.”
14. Roni Caryn Rabin, “Abortion Opponents Hear a ‘Heartbeat.’ Most Experts Hear Something Else,” New York Times, February 14, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/health/abortion-heartbeat-debate.html.
15. For clarity, the previously mentioned laws also include terms like embryonic cardiac activity. It is the nature of definitions under the law to include as many synonyms for important terms as possible.
16. Alisha Haridasani Gupta, “The First Six Weeks of Pregnancy, Explained,” New York Times, April 30, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/well/live/pregnancy-abortion-six-weeks.html; David W. Chen, “Georgia’s Supreme Court Allows State’s Six-Week Abortion Ban to Remain In Effect,” New York Times, October 24, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/us/georgia-abortion-ban-supreme-court.html; Patricia Mazzei, David W. Chen, and Alexandra Glorioso, “DeSantis Signs Six-Week Abortion Ban in Florida,” New York Times, April 13, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/florida-six-week-abortion-ban.html.
17. HB481 Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, Georgia General Assembly, 1-2, https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/55445.
18. Texas Senate Bill 8, 2021-2022, 87^th Legislature https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB8/id/2395961
19. See “ACOG Guide to Language and Abortion.”
20. See, e.g., “About Us,” American College of Pediatricians, accessed July 23, 2024, https://acpeds.org/about; “About Us,” American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, accessed July 23, 2024, https://aaplog.org/about-us/.
21. “2024 Republican Party Platform.”
22. See “The Republican Party Platform, 2020” [and 2016], Ballot Pedia, accessed July 26, 2024, https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2020.
23. “Bash Presses Trump’s Potential VP Pick on His Claim against Biden,” CNN, July 7, 2024, YouTube, 11:59, https://youtu.be/Bdd15dYV9qQ?si=0i4rNONUHyVuz_aZ.
24. Andrew Solender, “Trump Warns Republicans to Talk about Abortion ‘Correctly,’” Axios, June 13, 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/06/13/donald-trump-house-republicans-abortion-roe.
25. Jonathan Van Maren, “Is the Republican Party Becoming Pro-Choice?,” First Things, July 16, 2024, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/07/is-the-republican-party-becoming-pro-choice.
26. “Bash Presses Trump’s Potential VP Pick on His Claim against Biden.”
27. Lalee Ibssa and Soo Rin Kim, “Trump Says Abortion Should Be a States’ Rights Issue, Republicans ‘Must Also Win Elections,’” ABC News, April 8, 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-abortion-states-rights-issue/story?id=108976038.
28. Adam Nagourney, “J. D. Vance on the Issues, from Abortion to the Middle East,” New York Times, July 15, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/us/politics/jd-vance-abortion-immigration-issues.html.
29. Darling, “The Pro-Life Movement’s Aspirational Moment.”
30. Richard J. Poupard, “Suffer the Violinist: Why the Pro-Abortion Argument from Bodily Autonomy Fails,” Christian Research Journal 30, no. 4 (2007), https://www.equip.org/articles/suffer-the-violinist-why-the-pro-abortion-argument-from-bodily-autonomy-fails/.
31. R. R. Reno, “The Republican Party Sidelines the Pro-Life Cause,” First Things, July 15, 2024, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/07/the-republican-party-sidelines-the-pro-life-cause.