On June 24, the Supreme Court released its landmark opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that overturned Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion debate to the state level. This is not a pro-life troop rallying diatribe—that market’s well and truly oversaturated. Instead, there are two specific inconvenient truths I want to talk about that the pro-life movement, of which I am a part, needs to be reminded of, regardless of how irritating they may be to some ears.
First, the numbers on the abortion issue are anything but a victory. It’s easy to see America as standing on the brink of a pro-life wave that’s going to crash and effect a wholesale cultural turnover in regard to the rights of the unborn. Well, we’re all still waiting. Recent Pew data indicate that 57 percent of Americans disapprove of the Court’s overturning of Roe, with only 41 percent approving. Let’s state the same data another way: More Americans strongly disapprove of Roe’s overturn than the amount of Americans who approve at all.
Pro-lifers have an uphill battle on almost all levels—at least 50 percent of Americans disagree with Roe’s overturn in every polled demographic except white evangelicals. It’s one thing to talk about being part of the ‘post-Roe generation,’ but it’s another thing to realize that the pro-choice contingent of that generation (18-29) outnumbers the pro-life contingent by more than 2 to 1. The numbers do not indicate a pro-abortion movement that’s ready to fall. Far from it—if you’re pro-life, your opponents outnumber you in almost every individual demographic, and the same is true on the national level.
With that bit of smiley-face-french-fry positivity, (i.e. fake, deep fried, and dangerous for health in large doses) out of the way, let’s get to the second inconvenient truth for pro-life America: reaching the pro-abortion coalition in America is the hardest task the pro-life movement has yet faced. When the Dobbs decision dropped, I walked around SCOTUS to gauge the temperature of the conversation and gawk at the rooftop snipers. (One protestor told me that ‘democracy needs extremists’ within earshot of the Capitol police line, and I sincerely hope you find that as ironic as I do.) One protestor, a former high-ranking lawyer, when questioned, eventually admitted her view that ‘some babies don’t need to be born.’ As a former Third World orphan, I find this type of logic abhorrent, arrogant, and extremist. But it’s stupid to pretend that all abortion advocates share that kind of conscious extremist thinking. Pretending that all abortion advocates—more than half of American adults—are consciously aware of the humanity of a fetus and choose to ignore it based on mere personal convenience is intellectually lazy. It allows one to avoid the real human endeavor of seeking to win over pro-abortion family members, colleagues, and friends.
“Cope and seethe” is not a strategy for Christians to adopt. We live in a nation where more than half of America is confused and angry about the issue of abortion. Roe’s demise has not changed that confusion and anger. It’s our job to see the scope of the opposition and reach out in a spirit of unapologetic truth paired with unrelenting love. That is the hard truth for pro-life America, but things worth doing are generally hard. Magnanimity in victory is a tricky business, but ‘malice towards none, charity for all’ is a timeless goal for free people to aspire to. Now is no exception.