#586: The Pro-Life Movement's Crisis

A new essay at The Dispatch.

I have a new essay over at The Dispatch that unpacks the significance of the Republican Party significantly altering their platform’s stance on pro-life issues. Two excerpts: 

The GOP might not be quite a pro-choice party, as The Gospel Coalition’s Joe Carter suggests. But though the transformation of its platform signals the end of Reagan-era pro-life politics, it also represents the opportunity to rethink pro-life politics from the ground up (just as Trump’s election prompted many conservatives to re-evaluate their economic policies). The political pressures the movement faces are novel, but they also offer a unique opportunity to creatively and faithfully work to persuade all Americans to protect embryonic human life. 

And: 

Such creative measures depend, ultimately, on the limits of our forbearance with injustice and evil. The idealism behind eliminating abortion or making it “unthinkable” is admirable—but succeeding requires answering head-on what evils we must allow to make abortion less thinkable than it is today. Pro-lifers may not want to answer such a question—but it is the question on which a real pro-life politics depends.

Read the whole thing, before it goes behind a paywall.

I wanted to add a few additional thoughts for members. Obligatory reminder: become a member for $20 annually and get a copy of my book—or just email me your request to be added for free and you will be, no questions asked.