Estimated Read Time: 3.5 minutes Last month on the blog, we confronted the reality that it’s our job as believers to end abortion. Today, I want to explore why it’s also urgent that we end abortion. Practically speaking, our faith demands that we rescue a preborn child with the same urgency and effectiveness that we would rescue a 5-year-old kindergartener. If both are equally valuable to God, then they are equally valuable to us as His people, and our behavior must align with our belief. Imagine a society that allows toddlers to be killed Just picture for a moment an America in which it is legal to kill children up to age 5 for any reason. In this selfish, dystopian society, parents would have the option to kill their kids through doctors and large healthcare corporations. Politicians would continue to take up sides – one claiming that killing toddlers is murder, the other claiming that parents have more value (and therefore more rights) than their children do. They would claim that giving parents the option to kill their toddlers is necessary for their welfare and health. Imagine if we killed 3,000 toddlers every day in the name of choice and parenting rights.  Let’s pose some questions about our churches in this dystopian society:

• Would your church refuse to teach and preach on the killing, citing the slaughter of toddlers as a “political issue”?
• Would your church refuse to teach and preach on the killing, not wanting to offend anyone or scare off “seekers”?
• Would your church refuse to teach and preach on the killing, citing the separation of church and state?
• Would your church refuse to teach and preach on the killing, afraid of offending parents in the congregation who had made the choice to kill their own toddler?
• Would your church be okay with the killing, as long as the toddlers who were killed were products of rape or incest?
• Would your church claim that other ministries take greater priority than rescuing toddlers?
• Would your church rescue toddlers even if the parents didn’t want the children and were legally allowed to kill them?
• Would your church refuse to be involved in any rescue operations, claiming that doing so is “not a customary act of our church”?
• Would your church refuse to use, show, or display pictures of murdered toddlers, not wanting to upset members of the congregation?
• Would your church simply deny the killings were going on?

Toddlers and the preborn have the same value If you read those questions and answer them as any biblical Christian would, then you would rightfully claim that your church would drop everything and rush to rescue as many toddlers as they could. They would reject political arguments; they would prioritize rescuing toddlers over every other work or expense of the church; and they would boldly, consistently teach and preach on the urgent, moral priority to end the killing. And so we are left with a profoundly disturbing question:

If God values the preborn child and the toddler the same, then why do our churches NOT respond to abortion as they would to the killing of toddlers?

Again, I believe that despite the fact that God values the preborn and the born equally, we do not. Our behavior is not in line with our beliefs. In fact, many churches value preborn children the same way our culture does – they consider them to be worthless. Scripture is replete with passages commanding us to rescue and save the weak, the oppressed, the vulnerable, the downtrodden. And yet we turn a blind eye to the most victimized, most oppressed, most downtrodden people group in American history – children in the womb and their mothers. If we do believe that life in the womb is as precious as life outside of the womb, then our beliefs must align with our behavior. People in the church must not only raise their voices in opposition to the abortion genocide, but they must also do everything in their power to rush to rescue the preborn from imminent death.

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Read the other blog posts in the Abortion and the Church series:

• Part 1: It’s Our Job to End Abortion
• Part 2: Our Calling to End Abortion is Urgent
• Part 3: Is Ending Abortion One of God’s Pressing Moral Priorities?
• Part 4: Want to End Abortion? ACT.