At times it may be necessary for me to vote for a better pro-choice candidate in order to avoid the election of a worse one and the dire consequences that would ensue. However, were I to cast such a vote, I would feel compelled to contact the candidate, explain that I am voting for him in spite of his position on life, and urge him to reconsider it, seeing that it is dangerously wrong. However, my decision in this matter may different from my neighbor’s. Each of us is shut up to the Ruler and Judge of men and nations. Let us therefore earnestly seek his mind, and then, having found it, vote as our conscience dictates.
Note: I recently submitted this article, in a slightly different form, to a number of media outlets and pro-life organizations. I post it here, not only to make the case that the GOP is endangering its very existence, but also to encourage Christian citizens to enter the public square and bring much-needed biblical perspective to the burning issues of the day. The Church is the pillar and support of the truth in the earth. God grant her the wisdom, ability, and courage to boldly fulfill that high calling.
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Before I reply to the question above, a little history is in order.
In the mid-19th century most American abolitionists had found a home in the Whig Party. But in 1852 the party leadership included a pro-slavery plank in its platform. The abolitionists bolted, and just four years later the Whig party exited American history, stage-left. It was replaced by a Republican Party dedicated to this fundamental principle: Self-evidently, it is wrong, at all times and in every place, for one person to kidnap, sell, buy, or enslave another.
It is just this stubborn adherence to principle that, for the last 50 years, has drawn millions of pro-life Americans into the GOP, which, until now, has held firmly to a similar principle: Self-evidently, it is wrong, at all times and in every place, for anyone to murder a pre-born human being by abortion.
Imagine, then, our shock and dismay, as we who are pro-life Americans watched President Trump and much of the GOP reject the historic GOP position on abortion and the sanctity of human life.
The litany of the President’s statements to this effect is depressingly familiar. He has told us that the SCOTUS got it right: abortion is a 10th Amendment issue properly left to the states and the (diverse and ever-shifting) will of the voters.1 Though he personally opposes late term abortions, he is fine with letting blue states permit them, even up to birth. He thinks current abortion law in Florida (and some 15 other states) is too restrictive (6 weeks). He has pledged not to sign any federal law restricting abortion. He states that his administration will be “great for reproductive rights”. Professing love for wanted babies, he is keen on in-vitro fertilization, an enterprise fraught with moral hazard and inevitable manslaughter; as for unwanted babies, they are on their own. Perhaps most disturbingly, he and his surrogates surreptitiously marginalized pro-life members of the GOP Platform Committee in order to eviscerate the party’s deeply principled, highly detailed, and longstanding pro-life plank. Alas, all too many Republicans, fearing election loss, have fallen in line.
But might this much-lamented pivot to a pro-choice stance on abortion lead—Whig-like—to the death of the GOP? For the following four reasons, I would answer yes.
1. It forfeits the blessing of God and courts his judgment. Christians believe that righteousness exalts a nation, but that sin is a shame to any people (Proverbs 14:34). They believe that God will honor those who honor him, especially if they do so by defending the helpless victims of oppression and violence (1 Samuel 2:30; Proverbs 24:11-12). They believe that the primary purpose of government is to promulgate and administer God’s law (Romans 13), and that his law includes, as a high priority, solemn sanctions against murder (Genesis 9:5-7: Exodus 20:13). They also believe that abortion is a form of murder, that deep-down everyone knows it, and that when any citizen, candidate, judge, party, legislature, or nation suppress such knowledge in unrighteousness, they are courting God’s judgment (Romans 1).
But one needn’t be a Christian to see all this. Thomas Jefferson, a deist who committed the new nation to the self-evident “laws of nature and nature’s God,” solemnly warned Americans that God is just, and that his justice will not sleep forever. Surely events have proven him right. Observe the (post-Roe) decay of our national character, culture, unity, institutions, public policy, economy, military readiness, and standing in the world. Is this not the hand of Almighty God, withdrawing his favor? But in view of 60 million deaths by abortion, one is compelled to ask: What has kept God’s hand from destroying us altogether?