Bittersweet Day for Abortion Abolition as Ground is Gained in North Carolina and Lost in Ohio
Election Day 2023 was a bittersweet day for abortion abolition, as delegates to the North Carolina Baptist Convention gave their stamp of approval to an abolitionist proposed resolution, and Ohio voters enshrined the right to murder the pre-born into their state constitution.
Since the fall of Roe V. Wade last June, the battle over abortion has heated up on the state level, as the Supreme Court gave individual states the power to decide whether or not they would allow baby murder within their own borders. Three different camps exist in the abortion debate, each one seeking to steer the conversation and legislation: pro-aborters, pro-lifers, and abolitionists.
While the first is well understood, bloodthirsty murder advocates careening to death clinics under the mantra of choice; the other two deserve a bit of delineation.
Pro-Life advocates, armed with well-intentioned motives, believe that abortion is an issue they must incrementally address, freely granting temporary or permanent compromises to prevent some children from being murdered. To make anti-abortion legislation palatable, many Pro-Life groups have softened their language toward abortion in the last thirty years. They’ve shifted away from calling abortion “murder” and actively promote the idea that women who have abortions are victims in the same sense as their butchered children, taking any punishment or consequence for planning and executing their demise entirely off the table.
Abolitionists, on the other hand, maintain an uncompromising, Biblically-based position that opposes abortion because it violates the scriptural command not to murder. Permeated with a ‘No Peace With Child-Sacrifice” attitude, Abolitionists believe that killing a two month old in the womb is no different from killing a two month old out of the womb, and all those who are involved in the act are complicit in murder and need repentance and the grace and forgiveness of Christ.
In the Southern Baptist Convention, Abolitionists face an uphill battle to convince their pro-life brothers and sisters in Christ to adopt an anti-abortion playbook that reflects the impartial judgments of scripture.
On a national level, the 2021 national gathering of the SBC passed an abolitionist resolution that was opposed by many establishment pro-lifers in the SBC. The resolution was also ignored by the Pro-Life institutionalists at the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (the lobbying institution of the SBC), who have since used the dollars of SBC pew sitters to successfully defeat bills that would have abolished abortion in Louisianna and Missouri while rebranding the rogue ERLC’s pro-life efforts with the mantra “Make Abortion Unnecessary.”
Abolish Abortion North Carolina, a grassroots abolitionist state movement, convinced the 2023 delegates to the North Carolina Baptist Convention to adopt an abolitionist resolution at their November 7 meeting. The resolution received some minor edits that were opposed by abolitionists, but nevertheless remains the strongest abolition statement by any Baptist State Convention in the SBC. Pastor Matthew Tarpley described the implications of the passage of the North Carolina Baptist Convention’s abolition resolution in a statement following passage of the resolution:
I think that this is probably the strongest resolution that’s been put forward by any Southern Baptist State Convention. To put language out there publicly to say, “whatever laws there are on the books to protect us as born human beings, we want those same laws to protect pre-born neighbors in the womb, and I’m so greatful that this resolution passed. I don’t think I saw a single negative vote in there.
The rank and file Baptist in our State, and I think around this country, is ready for this. We are ready to end child sacrifice, and this is a statement to all the magistrates, especially in our own state, this is the time to bring Molech worship down. This is the time to exalt righteousness and say ‘Jesus Christ is King’, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ and he demands that our pre-born neighbors be given equal protection under our laws.
At the same time on election day that North Carolina Baptists declared their resolute opposition to the murder of children, the voters of Ohio were swift to shed the innocent blood of their pre-born neighbors, enshrining a right to abortion from conception to the 24th week of pregnancy in their state constitution. The state of Ohio had recently passed a pro-life-backed ban on all abortion after the 6th week of pregnancy, but the law was blocked by the courts in anticipation of the state constitution ballot initiative.
The stark contrast between the unapologetic, uncompromising stance of abolitionists at the North Carolina Baptist Convention and the way that the Ohio pro-life movement pragmatically gained some ground with an incremental abortion ban, only to lose that ground and much more within a matter of months, reveals the choice that believers face in the future.
Will we live, lobby, and, as God sovereignly places believers in places of authority, legislate as though Jesus is Lord, with the governing principle that says we must follow God’s law, and he most assuredly hates all abortion? Or will believers choose the way of pragmatism that compromises with the world, only to see that ‘progress’ dissolve in a single ballot initiative?
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Nothing makes a Democrat feel more alive than the unfettered mass slaughter of unborn children. Congratulations 🙂