The ERLC posted a long-winded Twitter thread recently decrying abortion but seems to fail to understand exactly what abortion is and how it is viewed by God and how it should be viewed by man. To be clear, I’m not arguing—nor will I—that the ERLC is pro-abortion. They are not. However, the ERLC, a Southern Baptist Convention entity that is supposed to be grounded in a biblical worldview, is not approaching the situation from this perspective.
In fact, the arguments coming from the ERLC and many other Evangelical thought leaders appear to relegate the heinousness of abortion to a lesser degree than that of murdering a human being already born. Over and over, these talking heads suggest that we, as Christians, should be willing to offer subsidized welfare and social justice trade-offs in exchange for making abortion illegal with the implication that without doing so, abortion is a necessary evil.
And that’s exactly what the ERLC is arguing. After a long-winded thread decrying the federal government’s commitment to codify abortion into our nation’s legislative system, they offer the following concession. Particularly, the part about how they are “working toward a day when abortion is not just illegal, but both unnecessary and unthinkable.”
The implication here is clear; the ERLC believes that in our current political and social climate, abortion is necessary. If it wasn’t necessary, why would we need to work toward making it “unnecessary”?
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This is not a biblical way to think about these issues. In fact, it’s the opposite. George W. Bush once said—and I don’t agree with Bush on much—that we don’t negotiate with terrorists. And even though it may have been for the wrong reasons, the statement itself is absolutely correct. Abortionists are terrorists, and we don’t offer welfare bribes to those willing to murder their own children if we don’t.
This echoes former ERLC head, Russell Moore’s sentiments when he blamed abortion on churches and religious bodies, suggesting that the reason women have abortions is that churches, communities, and religious organizations don’t provide enough welfare and free social services to low-income women.
Last year at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, ERLC employee, Josh Wester, argued against a resolution calling on Southern Baptists to affirm the complete and total abolition of abortion.