Coming to a ballot near you?

Missouri is currently engaged in a desperate battle for the lives of the unborn. Despite enjoying some of the strongest pro-life laws in the nation, Missourians now face the very real threat of having all of these laws annulled through a constitutional amendment cloaked in the message of “reproductive freedom,” or even more cynically, “constitutional freedom.” Last I checked, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were written to protect life—not to destroy it. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the ability of the cultural revolutionaries to appropriate the words of the Constitution and make them into their pagan image for their political purposes.

In response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022, the progressive left has organized to systematically enshrine abortion as a right in state constitutions. Rather than working through state legislatures—23 of which are Republican “trifectas,” with the GOP controlling 27 state houses and 29 state senates—the Democrats, aka the pro-abortion party, and their affiliates have gone straight to the people to enact constitutional rights to abortion.

Why wrestle through the legislative process when you can obfuscate your intentions with innocuous verbiage and seemingly moral sloganeering (“women’s rights,” “reproductive freedom,” etc.) to confuse and garner the support of the slightest majority of the population? After all, what kind of self-respecting American would vote against women’s “rights” and “freedoms”?

You have to admit, being able to rely on largely populated, left-leaning cities as well as the near-universal support of the media to assist in crafting the message, it’s an ingenious plan. All the while, the political right—all the way up to the leader of the Republican Party—flounders in asserting the same level of moral or political will.

Since 2022, this political strategy has been successfully executed everywhere it’s been tried. To conservatives’ chagrin, recent attempts to create constitutional protections against abortion failed in Kentucky and Kansas—both red states. To say that the pro-abortion political strategists have caught the pro-life movement and the Republican Party off guard would be a dramatic understatement. The pro-life cause has lost every ballot petition since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It appears we were politically unprepared for a post-Roe world.

This lack of preparedness extends to my home state of Missouri, where even the Republican-trifecta government has repeatedly failed to increase the threshold for passing constitutional amendments. Currently, a simple majority can vote to change the state constitution. Drawing on the genius of the Electoral College, Missouri Republicans during the most recent legislative session proposed a concurrent majority system for amending the state constitution as a way to protect citizens from bare majorities driven largely by densely populated areas such as St. Louis and Kansas City, which vote predominantly Democratic and favor pro-abortion policy. A concurrent majority in Missouri would have required not only a majority of the state but a majority within five of its eight congressional districts.

While the Missouri House and Senate both approved versions of Senate Joint Resolution 74 that would have required a concurrent majority for ballot initiatives, they ultimately could not agree on a final version to put before voters. And since pro-abortion petitioners successfully gathered enough signatures to move their proposed amendment forward, a constitutional right to abortion will be on a Missouri ballot in November and decided by a simple majority vote.

Herein is the situation pro-life Missourians now find themselves: Its Republican legislature has been unable to effect sufficient guardrails against a simple majority vote to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right. Meanwhile, the Democratic left moves swiftly toward its goal of legalized abortion. Under the guise of “constitutionality” and language drawn from the civil rights movement, the Democratic Party seeks to convince Missourians that the murder of unborn children empowers women. In reality, this modern barbarism transforms their potentiality for motherhood into a liability, effectively eviscerating femininity. In the pagan religion of the cultural revolutionaries, abortion is the holy sacrament, a child sacrifice to the god of self-expressionism—all in the name of enlightened progress. And we were told that modern man would transcend the delusions of religion.

In this crucial moment for Missouri—as well as other states—it is imperative that the Church rises up to protect the unborn. Given the opportunity, we should energetically steward our citizenship to engage politically in defense of the most vulnerable among us. Given the central importance of this matter, we should also not be content with half-hearted affirmations of the cause of life from leaders conditioned by calculations of “electability.” We should rather assert the moral convictions of the Christian worldview with a vigor equal to the revolutionaries who seek to demean women and destroy children. To do so is to be on the “right side” of God and, consequently, history.