Locking in pro-life successes

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

This week, the governor of Kentucky signed a law that makes Kentucky the 19th state to ban abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. The law makes no rape or incest exception, but it does offer an exception in the case of a life-threatening pregnancy while explicitly rejecting mental health as an excuse.

Another new Kentucky law requires abortion-minded mothers first to have an ultrasound by a doctor or technician. The abortion provider must include a detailed description of the unborn child and let the mother hear the fetal heartbeat, but she doesn’t have to look or listen.

The law took immediate effect and brought an immediate lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. They’re asking that the courts strike it down as an undue burden on women.

“It is just really spectacular to see so many more lives that are going to be protected because of this,” John Stonestreet said. Political opportunities for pro-life progress have increased dramatically in just the past three or four years, especially in state legislatures.

“There’s still a big leap between a state law like this one … and what’s going to happen on the national level at the Supreme Court,” Stonestreet said. “I’m not sure we know the answers to those questions as of yet.”

In the meantime, Stonestreet encouraged pro-lifers to continue working to fight abortion one step at a time.

“This isn’t the end law that we want, but we are seeing how effective it is to go about this incremental strategy,” Stonestreet said. Laws like those in Kentucky don’t entirely outlaw abortion, but they allow the pro-life movement to “lock in cultural wins … as we move back further and further and further to the moment of conception.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Jan. 13 edition of The World and Everything in It.