When a sanctuary city isn’t a sanctuary at all

As soon as the leaked draft majority opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health hit the streets in early May, some cities in pro-life states declared themselves “sanctuary cities,” saying they won’t enforce protections for the unborn despite state regulations. Now that Roe v. Wade has indeed been overturned, putting an end to federal recognition of a “right” to abortion, you can expect to hear even more about so-called “abortion sanctuary cities.”

Prosecutors in Nashville, Tenn.; DeKalb County, Ga.; Fairfax County, Va.; and Durham County, N.C., to name only a few, have either stated directly that they will not enforce abortion laws in their jurisdictions or that they will not make abortion-related prosecutions a high priority for their departments. But the term “abortion sanctuary city” is not only misleading, it’s a tragic and ironic reversal of what a sanctuary city is and should be.

While some might believe that abortion sanctuary cities are merely an adaptation from sanctuary cities declared against the enforcement of immigration laws, the provenance of the term is much older than when it started appearing in those contexts in the 1980s, going back thousands of years.

The idea for sanctuary cities is Biblical, rooted in the Old Testament. Justice requires retribution, a repayment for a wrong done. In the case of intentional killing, the killer’s life was to be forfeited. As Exodus 21 says, “If there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. …” But what if the death came by an accident? Out of mercy, God provided a refuge for those guilty of manslaughter to preserve them from retribution.

“Appoint the cities of refuge,” the Lord says in Joshua 20, “that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there. They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood. He shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city and explain his case to the elders of that city, then they shall take him into the city and give him a place, and he shall remain with them.”

Sanctuary cities were for the protection of those who committed what our law recognizes as “manslaughter,” the unintentional (though still unlawful) killing of another human being without forethought or planning. Their purpose was to prevent an endless progression of bloodshed (after all, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”) and to offer refuge for someone who had unintentionally shed another’s blood. God created the sanctuary city to protect His creation from complete tragedy by curtailing the consequences of unceasing human violence.

The Biblical world was aware of man’s capacity for wanton violence against the young. The Canaanites, enemies of the people of God, sacrificed their children to the pagan deity Molech. The Israelites were warned against emulating the Canaanites: “You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:31).

An abortion “sanctuary city” is oxymoronic, a reversal of the Biblical model. It doesn’t prevent an endless progression of bloodshed—it enables it.

The real sanctuary cities are those that break the cycle of violence against the unborn. And these Biblical sanctuary cities exist. According to the founder of Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn, there are nearly 50 “local governments across the United States that have adopted ordinances banning abortions,” as well as thousands of pregnancy resource centers, of which there are five for each Planned Parenthood location. Even in cities where abortion reigns, Christians can support sanctuary for the unborn by supporting these centers, many of which have been hard hit in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

In Biblical times, Christians were known to rescue infants from the cliffs on which they’d been deserted, bringing them into their families as one of their own. No matter what some say about pro-life Christians, believers today are doing the same thing they’ve done for thousands of years: rescuing children from a culture of death. Pregnancy resource centers, adoption agencies, churches, and countless other pro-life organizations, both private and public, are the real sanctuaries for life and they deserve the name.