Coming next Tuesday …

Editor’s note: In the run-up to next Tuesday’s election, we have asked several Christian thought leaders to weigh in on what they are considering as Election Day nears. This is the first column in that series.

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022 was a monumental victory for life. It reversed the deadly and disastrous Roe v. Wade opinion that had for nearly 50 years painted motherhood as “distressing.” Overturning Roe allowed states to protect life. But as this election approaches, the polls are making clear what has always been true: Christians must create a culture of life, where every woman and her unborn child is supported and cherished.

This November will see abortion on the ballot in 10 different states. We see millions of dollars being dumped into promoting pro-abortion ballot initiatives across the country. Proponents say that they just want to get back to Roe and Casey. But many of the initiatives go much further. They talk about “reproductive care”—a term activists have long defined to include gender transition drugs and surgeries—and impose something called strict scrutiny. This means that commonsense protections for women and children that have been in place for decades are now being challenged—protections like informed consent, a modest waiting period, or the requirement that abortion drugs be taken under the supervision of a doctor.

The mainstream media has been complicit, telling women that their lives are in danger in states that protect life for the unborn. Take the tragic death of Amber Thurman, a young mother from Georgia who should be alive today. The media and politicians were quick to insinuate that Georgia’s pro-life law was to blame. But the Thurman family plans to sue her doctors. “Even under Georgia law, the doctors had a duty to act to save Amber,” Ben Crump, the family’s high-profile civil rights attorney, explained. “There was no viable fetus or anything that would have prevented them from saving her life while she suffered.”

Crump is right. No state that protects life allows doctors to shirk their duty to protect women’s lives. Every state allows a doctor to use whatever means necessary when a woman’s life is in danger. And contrary to a recently released ad, no state prevents treatment for a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy. At best, these untrue narratives scare women. At worst, they mislead doctors as to their legal responsibilities.

In creating a culture of life, we have our work cut out for us. As late-night host Bill Maher put it, to some, life is just not that precious. As disheartening as that sentiment might be, it was in a culture that viewed women and children as chattel that Christianity exploded onto the scene, radically transforming hearts and minds.

Infanticide, especially of female and disabled children, abortion, and child sex abuse were commonplace. As historian Rodney Stark explained, Seneca regarded the drowning of children at birth as both reasonable and commonplace. Plato and Aristotle agreed. One letter from 1 B.C. puts Roman thinking in sharp relief. Hilarion wrote to his pregnant wife Alis, “I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I receive payment I shall send it up to you. If you are delivered of a child, if it is a boy keep it, if a girl discard it.”

What changed? In a word, Jesus. Historians go so far as to say that Christianity invented childhood. It gave children—in addition to women and foreigners—worth and dignity. It taught that every child is valuable and created in the very image of God. In fact, the very gospel story gives meaning to childhood. Who would have expected a child born into an uninfluential family to save the world?

Jesus delighted in children. And He radically reformed culture. He called the little children to Him and flummoxed the religious leaders of the day when He said that the kingdom of heaven is made up of “such as these.” The conception—that every man, woman, and child is made in the very image of God and valuable to God—defined the way Christians related to the entire world. And it radically changed the entire world, and for the better.

We can take inspiration from the early Church in two ways. First, Christians spoke countercultural truth—that children matter. Second, they created a culture of life. As Stark explains, Christians famously cared for the vulnerable, from discarded children to those suffering from the two major plagues that devastated Rome. We know that many women today choose abortion for economic reasons. Many say that if they’d have had more support, either financially or socially, they would have chosen to parent.

In the tradition of the early Church, Christians can come alongside these moms, telling them that they are beloved daughters of the King most high. That they matter. And through pro-family policies that support moms through pregnancy and beyond, we can begin to transform culture, starting with one mom at a time.