ABORTION AND A CONSISTENT ETHIC OF LIFE

There is a watching world looking at the church. They are not first asking what party we vote for. They are asking whether we mean what we say.

For decades now, many Christians have declared with certainty that abortion is the taking of innocent life. They have used the strongest moral language available. They have said it is murder. They have said it is the great evil of our age. They have said no other issue compares.

Very well.

If that is so, then our commitment to life must be whole, consistent, and without favoritism.

The Bible does not allow us to love life in theory while neglecting it in practice. The Word of God says, “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?” (James 2:15-16). Faith that does not act is not faith at all.

If we say we care about babies in the womb, then we must care with equal urgency about babies in poverty, babies in foster care, babies born into addiction and instability. A consistent ethic of life does not end at delivery. It begins there.

The prophets rebuked God’s people for selective righteousness. “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:16-17). The fatherless and the vulnerable are not campaign slogans; they are sacred trusts.

There is another question that must be asked gently but honestly. If abortion is morally identical to murder in every sense, then what follows? How should we treat the woman who has had one? The man who pressured her? The grandparents who paid for it?

Would we speak of them as we speak of other murderers? Would we demand identical penalties? Or do we instinctively reach for mercy, for counseling, for grace?

The moment we instinctively soften our tone, we reveal something important: we understand there are complexities. We understand there are pressures, fears, and broken circumstances. We understand this is not a simple slogan.

And if we understand that, then we must stop using abortion as a political identity badge while ignoring the deeper pastoral and social realities that surround it.

Christians are not called to win arguments; we are called to bear witness to truth. The apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things” (Romans 2:1). Hypocrisy is not merely a political problem; it is a spiritual danger. It hardens the heart and dulls the conscience.

The watching world notices when we excuse in our own leaders what we would condemn in others. It notices when moral outrage is loud in one direction and strangely quiet in another. It notices when “character matters” becomes negotiable because a candidate aligns with us on a single issue.

If life is sacred, then truth is sacred. If righteousness matters, it must matter all the time—not only when it is convenient for your tribe.

The church must refuse to trade its moral witness for political access. We cannot claim to stand for the unborn while ignoring the hungry child, the struggling mother, the immigrant neighbor, the prisoner seeking redemption. We cannot shout about sin in one area while winking at cruelty, dishonesty, or corruption in another.

A consistent ethic of life is not partisan. It is biblical. If it defends the child in the womb, it defends the child in the classroom. If it speaks for the unborn, it speaks for the poor. If it calls abortion a grave moral matter, it calls hypocrisy a grave spiritual one.

If we truly believe every human being bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27), then our politics must reflect that image at every stage, in every circumstance, without selective outrage and without selective mercy.

The world does not need louder Christians. It needs consistent ones.

It needs believers whose love for life is not a slogan but a way of living; whose concern for righteousness does not bend with power; whose allegiance is not to a personality but to the Lordship of Christ.

Anything less is not a pro-life witness. It is a partisan one.

And the watching world can tell the difference.

BDD