Pro-life progress has been long in the making

Texas’s new abortion law has been going back and forth in the courts and will likely make its way to the Supreme Court, and soon. That body is already set to hear another case related to abortion, Mississippi’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. This case represents a legitimate chance to overturn Roe v. Wade. If the Court does its job, that is exactly what must happen.

Of course, it’s hard to predict how the Supreme Court will decide any specific case. This is exactly the wrong time to become disillusioned or give up on pro-life activism and political work. The truth of the matter is that the pro-life movement in America is stronger than it has ever been. The continual passing of pro-life bills across various states and the sustained pressure on local and national levels is evidence of political success. But perhaps more importantly, we should see just how much the pro-life movement has transformed conservative and evangelical institutions.

That might sound like a strange boast, but history shows that many church bodies and political parties we now assume to be unquestionably pro-life were once rather wobbly on the issue. Former Republican President George H. W. Bush began his political career moderately pro-choice, and he even co-sponsored a family-planning bill, motivated partly by concern over overpopulation. The patriarch of the Bush political dynasty, Prescott Bush, was once a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood.

This isn’t only true of the politicians. As early as 1959, the situation was pretty bad in the churches too. There was, in fact, active support for abortion within conservative and evangelical church leadership. Alfred M. Rehwinkel was a long-time educator within the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and an eventual professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Mo. His best-known book is a defense of the history of the flood in Genesis. By the standards of his day, he was a thoroughgoing conservative. He also wrote a book in defense of Margaret Sanger. Rehwinkel not only defended Sanger and her view of birth control, but he also allowed for abortions on a variety of grounds.

The LCMS is not the only conservative church body with this history. When the Southern Baptist Convention issued official statements on abortion in 1971 and 1974, it too was moderately pro-choice. Perhaps most surprisingly is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, an old-school Presbyterian denomination founded by the great J. Gresham Machen. When its general assembly first called for a study report on abortion, the committee came back divided. In 1971, the majority was strongly pro-life, but a minority report defended abortion and argued that the church “may not” prohibit it. The minority report’s author was Paul Wooley, one of the original professors at Westminster Theological Seminary, a founding father of the OPC, and a personal friend of Machen’s.

It’s hard to imagine that denominations like the LCMS, SBC, and OPC could support abortion, even tepidly, but that was the reality in the 1960s and ’70s. We’ve come a long way. In 2021, not one of those denominations would tolerate a public theologian making pro-choice arguments, and they certainly would not put out pro-choice statements at their annual meetings. The transformation has been total.

How did this change happen? There was some quick reshuffling, to be sure. The OPC made a strong and unified pro-life statement in 1972. But the SBC took a few more years, as conservatives regained control of the denomination over the next decade. And while the LCMS put out a brief pro-life affirmation in 1971, it was not until 1984 that its more robust position was affirmed. This all came about through ongoing conversation and debate, better arguments from the Bible, improved medical knowledge, and a more consistent system of doctrines and ethics.

The pro-life movement has made great strides, and those strides continue. Conservatism in the United States has been transformed into a pro-life movement fiercely opposed to abortion.

Of course, there is much ground still to be gained. Important battles must still be fought, and nothing is guaranteed. But it is essential to see that evangelicals have been increasingly courageous and effective on this issue. So, let’s keep it up.