A Hill Worth Dying On
Why Christians and other pro-lifers must celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade
“Imagine being upset that you don't have a right to kill your baby.”
Someone I know made this comment to me after the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade. When I quoted it on social media, one person challenged me with:
I love that when the mass shooting at Robb Elementary happened last month, you were virtually silent, but this is where you make your stand. Very telling.
“Telling” of . . . what, exactly?
Both cases involve mass murder, but otherwise aren't as closely related as we might think. For one thing, if school shootings were as common as abortion, requiring the Supreme Court to weigh in on the subject—I’d react to that too!
But not only is assaulting a school relatively uncommon, it's also illegal—whereas, under Roe v. Wade, murdering the unborn was nationally legal. And there aren’t any rallies on Capitol Hill or the steps of the Supreme Court with protesters clamoring for the “right” to attack school kids. Everyone already agrees that school shootings are a great evil.
We don't all agree that assaulting the womb is evil. That's worth its own conversation, isn’t it . . . ?
Given that the unborn are human persons no less than children killed in school shootings, isn’t it entirely rational to demand legislation against killing the unborn as well? Following logically from that, isn’t it entirely rational and appropriate to celebrate the demise of Roe v. Wade?
But what I assume my commenter was alluding to is the social-justice assumption that if you're pro-life, you should be pro-gun control, and that I should have commented on that as well, if I’m “really” pro-life. Cuz obviously stricter gun-control laws would stop school shootings, right?1
In any case, among crimes that result in human death—abortion is unique.
Why?
THE GREAT ABOMINATION
Somebody, somewhere, has been quoted as saying: “The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members.”2 In this case it's entirely apt: American state and federal governments sanctioned the mass murder of infants.
Seems to me that anyone who thinks that's evil would naturally celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Don'tcha think?
Our hearts know the truth—even the hearts of the pro-aborts who deny it. You see it in the car decal that says “Baby Onboard.” We intuitively recognize that the most innocent among us are the least deserving of harm. The most deserving (and in need) of our protection.
And one of the things God hates most is intentional harm to those who deserve the very opposite: He “hates—no . . . he detests . . . hands that kill the innocent” (Proverbs 6:16-17). Child-sacrifice was a primary sin about which God warned the Israelites after He'd delivered them from their bondage in Egypt:
Do not permit any of your children to be offered as a sacrifice to Molech [a pagan god], for you must not bring shame on the name of your God. [Leviticus 18:21]
This was the most barbaric sin among the Canaanites whom God sent Israel (as His human agents) to wipe out.3
Ancient dumping grounds have been found filled with the bones of hundreds of dismembered infants. This is strikingly similar to discoveries of thousands of dead babies discarded by modern abortion clinics. One scholar4 of the ancient Near East refers to infant sacrifice as “the Canaanite counterpart to abortion.”5
Of course, that was post-birth. But the ancients had their own methods of abortion too:
Abortifacients – Herbs that produce miscarriage.
Massage – Extreme pressure or physical trauma to the women’s midsection until abortion occurs.
Embryotomy [dismemberment within the womb] – An incredibly invasive procedure much like the dismemberment abortion procedures of today.6
God made it clear to His people what the consequences would be for engaging in such heinous practices:
If any of them offer their children as a sacrifice to Molech, they must be put to death . . . because they have defiled my sanctuary and brought shame on my holy name by offering their children to Molech. And if the people of the community ignore those who offer their children to Molech and refuse to execute them, I myself will turn against them and their families and will cut them off from the community. [Leviticus 20:2-5]
Note that the consequences were severe not only for the doer of the deed himself—but also for the clan that failed to punish him by execution. This should tell us how God views the murder of children.
Years later, after the Israelites themselves had actually embraced this evil, God conveyed to the prophet Jeremiah—three times—that child-sacrifice horrifies Him: “it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing!” (Jeremiah 7:31; 19:5; 32:35)
And because He abhorred it, child-sacrifice seems to have been the main reason the divine hammer eventually came down on the southern Hebrew kingdom, Judah:
[King] Manasseh built altars for the stars of heaven in the two courtyards of the Lord’s Temple. He sacrificed his own son and burned him on the altar. [2 Kings 21:5-6]
These disasters happened to Judah because of the LORD’s command. He had decided to banish Judah from his presence because of the many sins of Manasseh, who had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood. The LORD would not forgive this. [2 Kings 24:3-4]
BEYOND THE VALE
Shockingly—though we really shouldn’t be surprised—the demon-inspired Canaanite religion has found its near-equivalent in the modern abortion debate. In 2021,
The Satanic Temple filed a lawsuit against Texas alleging certain state-mandated abortion regulations violate the religious liberty of its members. . . . [Texas] requires a woman to wait 24 hours after receiving the sonogram and paperwork before she can go through with the abortion. . . . But the temple's members consider abortion a ritualistic process . . . . The ritual is meant to take the shame and guilt away from the person receiving the procedure, affirming their choice.7
That is so sad to read. The Texas regulations are intended to prompt a mother to rethink her decision to abort. Countering this, the satanists’ ritual is an effort to overcome the rational, moral, God-given sense of conviction toward murder.
That same conviction stirred—eventually—in the heart of King Manasseh.
His case is instructive in two particular ways, positive and negative. First, in spite of his horrific evil, Manasseh wasn't beyond redemption. The book of Second Kings focuses on his atrocities, but Second Chronicles informs us8 that Manasseh—after God punished him—actually repented and was restored to his throne.
However, secondly . . . Manasseh's repentance didn't dissuade God from punishing the entire nation for the evil they'd committed under Manasseh's earlier reign.
If we apply this to abortion in the United States, it's possible that Roe v. Wade, despite now being overturned, spelled doom for the nation. I don't assume this to be the case, but it's very possible. After all, more than 60 million innocent Americans have been slaughtered since Roe v. Wade, their murders sanctioned by the federal government. And a host of societal evils—sexual perversion, violence, pagan ideologies, and hatred of God and His people and of traditional Western values that derive from the Biblical worldview—have accumulated along with the American Holocaust.
Even so . . . it's worth repenting (of all sins), like Manasseh did, if not to “save the country” (Manasseh couldn't save his), then simply to avoid ending up in a place that's Biblically associated with—you guessed it—
—child-sacrifice.
Many of the victims of Manasseh and his countrymen were slaughtered in the Valley of Hinnom, immediately southwest of Old Jerusalem. You can visit it today and try to imagine the unspeakable horror of children and infants being brought there and sacrificed to Molech.
The longer name “Valley of [the Son(s) of] Hinnom” eventually morphed into the Hebrew shortform Ge-Hinnom, which was picked up in Greek as Gehenna.
Which is the most often-used New Testament word for Hell.
Think about what this means: God’s utter disgust and anger toward child-sacrifice led the Biblical writers to use the sacrificial fire as a symbol of the eternal punishment awaiting those who reject the Lord.
INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH9
When I call abortion “a hill worth dying on,” I mean that quite literally. As far as I’m concerned, pro-life states should have revolted the minute Roe v. Wade was announced in 1973. The wholesale decimation of innocents within one’s own country is surely worth a civil war.
But never mind taking concrete action: there are a surprising number of professing Christians who, bizarrely, are hesitant even to celebrate a tilting of the law toward life. In a poignant, forceful commentary, Allie Beth Stuckey has rightly chastised such people:
They will say, “Well, you know I can't celebrate it because what are we doing for women? . . . We really need to make sure that we are caring for women so we don't need to focus so much on abortion . . . . We really need to be caring for the poor; what are we doing for them?”
What are you doing for them? . . .
If you don't know [what pro-lifers are doing], if you are a professing Christian who says you can't celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which led to the slaughter of over 60 million babies—[if] you're saying you can't celebrate that because Christians really need to start helping these women who are in need rather than only focusing on abortion—that tells me you have not lifted a finger for them. . . .
I don't want your finger-wagging until you have gone to your local pro-life pregnancy center and you have seen how you can help, or you've at least taken a tour to see the Christian women who have been pouring their lives and pouring their energies into women who are in crisis, families who are in crisis for decades. . . .
So no more finger-wagging; no more nagging; no more fake self-righteousness from those of you who are saying “Oh, I just don't know how I feel about the abortion issue. I don't know how I feel about Roe v. Wade, because we really need to do more to help the poor.”
The same clear and godly reasoning applies to any other social ill, whether poverty, outbreaks of violence, domestic abuse, etc. Celebrating a victory on one front doesn’t equate to lack of concern for other fronts. Nobody criticized Allied soldiers for celebrating VE Day—victory in Europe—as if they didn’t care about the ongoing war in the Pacific.
Sadder still, John Stonestreet and Kasey Leander argue that for some professing Christians, “lack of concern” isn’t even the problem; for these individuals,
real compassion precluded celebration . . . [W]e must “lament” with women who no longer have a presumed right to end the life of their child. It was as if the real problem was that this particularly heinous choice was being taken away from them. Abortion is an act of violence to both mothers and children. Only a society that’s been deeply poisoned by a culture of death pretends otherwise. Should celebrations of the Emancipation Proclamation have been muted as well?10
Anyone who values a human life will surely agree that the pro-abort position demands a zealous and unremitting spiritual and political assault—and the complementary celebration of partial victories along the way. The overturning of Roe v. Wade proves that this is a winnable war; it’s not an ideological Vietnam.
“Winnable” is what the British and American abolitionists of the slave era needed to believe their campaign actually was, though it must have seemed impossible at the outset. British parliamentarian William Wilberforce fought for 46 years to outlaw slavery in the British empire.
Of course, given that the United Kingdom professed to be a “Christian” nation, it was appropriate for Wilberforce to incorporate Biblical teaching—such as the equality of all humans before God—into his arguments against slavery.
It’s different now: we’re in a post-Christian culture (that still hasn’t figured out what it believes or stands for). But I can’t help wondering what it would sound like if some of the arguments of today’s “progressives” could be transmitted back through time and adapted by slavery defenders in the Wilberforce era. Perhaps they’d be along these lines:
“Slave to grave! You have to care for ex-slaves from chains to churchyard!”11
“Blacks are inferior to whites—are they even real ‘persons’?”
Or, reflecting the challenger I quoted off the top: “Now that we’re undergoing our industrial revolution, you remain virtually silent on child labor—but slavery is where you make your stand. Very telling.”
Wilberforce may have replied: “Telling of what, exactly? Are you suggesting that in order to have grounds for addressing one societal ill, I am obligated to give equal attention to all societal problems?”
Slavery was a hill worth dying on (and many did).
Abortion is a hill worth dying on.
Any grave and widespread injustice is a hill worth dying on.
It’s why America fought the War of Independence, and why the Western Allies engaged in two world wars in the twentieth century.
Very telling.
I'll tell you what would severely minimize them: eliminating public schools. Education isn't the State's proper domain. Return schooling to (a) parents first, (b) faith and local communities second, all backed up by (c) the Second Amendment—and there'd be next to none of these assaults.
This has usually been attributed to Gandhi, but apparently there's no evidence for this. See “Who said A society is measured by how it treats its weakest members?” (Answers.com, © 2022 System1, LLC) and Paul Knight, “Letter: Quote from Humphrey, not Gandhi,” The Columbian (11 Nov. 2016).
See: Clay Jones, “Killing the Canaanites: A Response to the New Atheism’s ‘Divine Genocide’ Claims,” Christian Research Journal 33-4 (2010; accessed 1 Sept. 2022); and Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan, “Was Israel Commanded to Commit Genocide?”, Christian Research Journal 34-5 (2011; accessed 1 Sept. 2022).
James Hoffmeier, Abortion: A Christian Understanding (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1987), 53.
Randy Alcorn, “Abortion in the Bible and Church History,” Eternal Perspective Ministries (26 Feb. 2010; accessed 27 Aug. 2022; emph. mine). Excerpted from Alcorn's book: Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments.
Kirstie Piper, “Abortion in the Bible,” Focus on the Family (23 Sept. 2021; accessed 1 Sept. 2022).
Jacob Vaughn, “The Satanic Temple Says Texas Abortion Laws Violate Religious Liberty. So, They're Filing Suit,” The Dallas Observer (23 Feb 2021; accessed 2 Sept. 2022 [italics mine]).
Without contradicting 2 Kings.
From the seventh line of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854).
Italics mine.
Pro-aborts accuse pro-lifers of ignoring human needs post-birth. Supposedly if we want to ensure all babies are actually born, then we also must care for them “from womb to tomb.”