Overturning Roe Has Been an Evangelical Goal for Over a Generation. What’s Next?
The Dobbs ruling is a culmination, and just the beginning
At the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting last week, church messengers (delegates) attended sessions that rolled out a strategic response to the looming end of Roe. Life begins at conception, most seemed to agree, and so steps must be taken to protect the “pre-born.”
Those steps, as outlined by church leadership such as members of SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberties Commission, include caring for “abortion-vulnerable” women to help them avoid abortion and support for the expected infant. There was talk of church ministries to support these women, encouragement to other believers to adopt and take in foster children so that mothers who could not raise children have some alternative. Efforts to fund and place ultrasounds at crisis pregnancy centers were touted. There was also a truth that I’ve never heard spelled out in such a way to rooms full of conservative believers and pastors: 1 in 3 women in your churches have had an abortion.
It was all in preparation for today, when anti-abortion evangelicals would be mobilized around a new set of talking points and face the reality that an end to abortion would impact people within the church as well…
