Scott Tibbs
Abortion is an unwinnable political battle
By Scott Tibbs, November 17, 2023
The election results in Ohio last week, which were part of a string of losses at the ballot box for the pro-life movement, should make one thing very clear: Abortion is an
unwinnable political battle. The secular conservative movement, the Republican Party, MAGA and the Tea Party movement are totally powerless to end abortion and protect the lives of unborn babies.
Note that there are two key words I used above:
Secular and
political. While the battle against abortion "rights" cannot be won politically, it can be won spiritually. The weapons of that warfare are literally infinitely more powerful than any political campaign we can wage. If God sends spiritual revival on this nation, abortion (and a host of other rebellions against Him) will end or at least be heavily suppressed by a combination of legal and cultural pressures.
This is not to say that Christians should not lobby our elected representatives, campaign for good candidates, or make arguments in the public square advocating for the oppressed. We should do all of that, and God works through His servants to accomplish His will. But none of this will be effective short of a revival. Without God sending the Holy Spirit to convict hearts, nothing we do will matter at all. That is why the most effective weapon we have against abortion is prayer.
With that in mind, and while we pray for revival, there are things we can do. After fifty years of abortion "rights" protected by law and abortion as a common "medical procedure," baby-murder is so ingrained in the culture that it will take effort to educate and deprogram people brainwashed into thinking that it is "liberty" to exterminate your own offspring.
This means we need to educate the public, both in the pulpit and in the public square. A large part of this needs to be educating the public about the humanity of the unborn baby and the reality of what abortion does. This is why the campaign against partial-birth abortion was so politically successful in the 1990s: Illustrating the exact procedure and how gruesome it was. But a public campaign must also come with a pulpit campaign. If the Church is not preaching against abortion, then Christendom loses the teaching.
This also means that we need to be strategic in how we fight abortion. Obviously, the end goal must be total abolition, but as it is now we need to proceed incrementally. There is wide public support for a ban at 24 weeks, so that should be the first target. Support for a ban at 15 weeks is weaker, but can still get bipartisan support among voters provided the messaging and voter education is present. Going for a six-week ban, as Ohio did, actually made things worse by sparking a backlash. Legal protections for "abortion rights" in Ohio are now
stronger than they were before the ban went into effect. It is a political reality that if you try to get everything, you often wind up with nothing.
All is not lost. Yes, we have suffered setbacks in our battle against abortion, but there are reasons to be optimistic. Even though surgical abortion increased in 2022 to a horrific 930,000 babies murdered, that is a significant drop from the 1.6 million abortions that took place in 1990. We have a much larger population now, so the abortion rate has dropped even more than the total number of surgical abortions. (Chemical abortions are another matter.) Wars are never won with a single battle, and the overturning of
Roe v. Wade was only the first step in a long campaign to come. With God on our side, we will win.
Opinion Archives
E-mail Scott
Scott's Links
About the Author
ConservaTibbs.com