7 Things Culture Gets Wrong About Abortion and Reproductive Rights

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Abortion Museum. However, we do post content from both sides of the issue in order to foster intelligent discourse.

[Editor’s Note: This article was originally published shortly after the 2024 U.S. election and reflects the political circumstances, election results, and public conversations of that time. It is republished here for its broader examination of common cultural assumptions surrounding abortion and reproductive rights. Some political references may no longer reflect current officeholders, policies, or events.]

This year’s presidential election season [2024] was one of the most contentious I’ve ever experienced. And “women’s rights” or “reproductive rights” were front and center of some of the most vitriolic political sparring. We are all SO ready for the election stuff to end, and it’s tempting to just breathe a sigh of relief now that it’s over. But we have a point of mourning here: When push comes to shove, we as Christians didn’t win; we just didn’t openly lose. I’m not talking about the economy or even freedom of religion. I’m talking about all the abortion legislation on state ballots.

Why are we concerned? I mean we overturned Roe, right?

We need to remember (because everyone seems to still be confused about this) that overturning Roe v. Wade merely didn’t outlaw abortion; it just turned the decision back over to the states to decide. When the decision was put in the voters’ hands, the pro-life issue lost in almost every place it was on the ballot. Clearly, we have a whole generation that believes killing children is not just a basic right but is fundamentally necessary for us to live our best life now.

It wasn’t all bad news, so let’s start with something we can celebrate: Florida failed to get the 60% majority for Amendment 4 (which would have permitted abortion until the point of viability). But both Missouri and Arizona (states where conservatives generally won) overturned their near-abortion bans, which previously had only “life of the mother” exceptions. Colorado passed a ballot initiative that not only permits abortion for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy but will use public funds to pay for them. And Montana overwhelmingly voted for an explicit right to an abortion which only permits the state to legislate abortion following viability. Therefore, the state legislature could potentially permit abortion through all nine months. The Montana amendment also uses public funds and does not require parental consent for teens. (Tylenol? Cough drop? Gotta have signed parental permission. Suctioning their grandchild out of their daughter? No permission required.)

Now more than ever, we need to dispel the myths surrounding “reproductive rights” because politicians and social justice advocates are using these ideas to sway Americans to make decisions that have serious ramifications. We’ll have a later post about “reproductive rights,” but in order to combat the chokehold abortion has on our country, we need to unpack the underlying assumptions of the “reproductive rights” position.

Assumption #1 – Equality requires unlimited access to abortion.

Our culture seems to have an underlying assumption that for women to have equal access to economic independence and societal equality, women require unfettered access to abortion at any time for any reason without any limits. If they can’t have this right, they will be automatically tethered to home and children instead of pursuing their dreams. Men don’t have to face the issue of an unwanted pregnancy; “fair” and “just” means that women shouldn’t either, right? (This assumption also seems to ignore the millions of women who are successful while embracing motherhood.)

Another part of this assumption is that if you don’t have a uterus, you don’t get to have a say. Ignoring the fact that if we followed this assumption the original Roe v. Wade decision would have to be discounted, this is not a standard we use in any other aspect of law. We all are supposed to participate in protecting the innocent from those who would ignore their human rights. You don’t have to have experienced evil to recognize it and seek to stop it.

Unfortunately, legally in our country, men don’t get a say in whether a baby lives or dies. If the mother wants to abdicate her responsibility to her child through abortion, she can, but the government can mandate the father’s participation at least financially.

Assumption #2 – Reproductive rights means nothing is off-limits.

While the average pro-choice woman probably wouldn’t take this position, legislators are another matter. The most vocal pro-abortion advocates refuse to set any limits on abortion. None. You’d be hard-pressed to find any legislator on the left who will publicly propose developmental limits on abortion. One of the most egregious examples was that under Tim Walz, Minnesota removed wording from the law that required a doctor to attempt to “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant” after a failed abortion attempt.

One suggested plan is to make abortion the law of the land in every state. In a candid interview about restoring the perceived federal abortion rights granted under Roe, Vice President Kamala Harris clearly said she would not make any exceptions, including religious ones, to requiring every nurse, doctor, hospital, and clinic to provide abortions regardless of religious or moral objections:

Yeah, we know this is a violation of the First Amendment and an affront to the values that our Constitution guarantees. However, proponents seem to think that the right to take the life of your child is more fundamental than the right to religious freedom.

Reproductive justice advocates also believe in taxpayer-funded abortions since the cost might be prohibitive for women in poorer communities, and that laws inhibiting abortion access unequally impact minorities, the poor, and the LGBTQ community (notice they don’t say women because they can’t without excluding transgender individuals who still retain their biologically female organs).

Assumption #3 – Abortions are healthcare.

While some people say abortions are like having a tooth pulled, that just isn’t reality. (Besides the fact that abortions are inherently unsafe because they always deliberately take the life of a human being.) Abortions carry risks for the mother. We just don’t have as much solid data as we would like due to the lack of required reporting on abortions in general. However, the complication rate is at least 2.1-2.9%, even using the very conservative pro-abortion statistics that are significantly under-reported (often using faulty studies),meaning somewhere around 20,000 women end up in the ER following an abortion attempt each year (depending on the number of abortions/year), and several thousand have severe complications that are life-altering or lead to death.

Physical complications are not the only risks; one study showed 44% of women said they regretted their abortion and many reported the depression and grief persisted for more than a decade. Abortion is not the kind of procedure that a woman easily forgets. It is far from simple, emotionally or physically. If we’re trying to care for and protect women, we need to take into account the very real trauma that follows and seek to prevent it.

Assumption #4 – Women will die from ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages without legal access to abortion.

Unfortunately, women have died in states with laws that limited or banned abortions, but those deaths were entirely preventable. No state prevents doctors from treating women who are experiencing a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy.

In an ectopic pregnancy, the embryo is implanted in a fallopian tube which will –100% of the time – end in death for the fetus. Removing it before it also kills the mother is not the same thing as a deliberate killing of a viable embryo. In a miscarriage, that life has already been lost. No state prohibits doctors from treating either ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages. Doctors who fail to act in this situation are guilty of malpractice. They are either woefully or willfully ignorant of the laws governing the appropriate standard of medical care for women in these tragic situations.

Assumption #5 – Women have no other help available for an unwanted pregnancy.

Abortion advocates often share truly tragic stories of desperate women to persuade us that abortions are necessary. They describe women in abusive relationships who can’t bear to bring another life into that situation, women facing tremendous poverty who can’t feed the children they already have, or horrifically, women who have been assaulted and become pregnant as a result. These stories should give us pause.

We should stop to consider how we can be compassionate and seek to alleviate their pain without compromising on God’s morality. But we should also ask what help abortion advocates are offering to escape these tragic situations. Abortions. That’s it. These women need so much more, but most abortion clinics only offer them services connected to abortions or pregnancy prevention, not counseling or legal assistance. And while abortion advocates claim to be pro-choice, if a woman dares to choose life, she will find herself without many options at abortion clinics. Not only do these clinics not offer any other solutions for pregnant women, but some advocates are openly trying to shut down the very pregnancy centers that would offer alternatives! So much for “choice” or “informed consent.”

While many people don’t know about options available to women facing unplanned pregnancies, women do have choices. One option is a Pregnancy Resource Center (PRC) or a Crisis Pregnancy Center. These centers directly confront one of the greatest pro-abortion lies, namely that pro-life advocates only care about babies being born, not about the mother or helping her raise the babies. However, this could not be further from the truth. Pregnancy Resource Centers (mostly staffed by pro-life volunteers) offer numerous services to help women in crisis and outnumber abortion clinics by approximately 3 to 1.

Although several prominent politicians have openly called these kinds of clinics “deceptive” or even “torture” and have tried to shut them down, PRC’s are the most likely place a woman will find actual choices, help, and the support she truly needs–and usually for free! PRCs offer loads of services, including ultrasounds (ones in which the mother is allowed to see and hear her baby), counseling, job assistance, education assistance, relationship classes, parenting classes, baby and young child supplies (sometimes even cribs and nursery furniture), even post-abortive counseling for women and men, referrals to adoptive agencies, and help applying for various forms of government assistance. All of these things can help women facing a crisis pregnancy instead of ending the life of an innocent human being. To learn more about PRCs in your area, click here.

Adoption is another option. Some women choose to give life to their babies but share them through adoption with parents who are in a better position to care for them. (BTW, babies placed for adoption through private agencies are never in the foster system. They are immediately placed in loving homes chosen by the birth family).

Even if a child were to end up in the foster care system, that’s not a viable reason to kill a child. We don’t kill children already in the foster system. Why would we kill those who MIGHT end up there? And the children who end up in the foster system are still made in the image of God and deserve protection. We should fix the broken system, not murder people who might need to use it. This argument is similar to countries like Iceland, which have supposedly “eradicated Down Syndrome”… by aborting all the babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome. You can pretty much solve any problem by killing the people who are suffering. Is that a Pandora’s box we really want to open?

Failing to embrace the beautiful calling of parenthood is also tragic. My heart breaks for the losses these young people are running toward without understanding what they are losing. As Christians, we need to lead more people away from the darkness of these lies and into the light because we know ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. And these bad ideas have millions of victims a year. It’s impossible to count the physical or spiritual costs.

Assumption #6 – Self-control violates our sexual freedom.

A massive myth has engulfed our world like a black hole, sucking in all the light–and that is the idea that no one should have to practice self-control when it comes to sex. But, we all have to control various impulses all the time. I can’t eat everything I crave or I’d be the size of a house. I can’t drive however I want without getting a ticket. Why do we think people simply can’t be expected to practice self-control when it comes to sex? As believers, we know self-control is a fruit of the Spirit for a reason. But all people need to practice it, especially when the stakes are high. Sex is a wonderful, amazing gift from God to join a married man and woman physically, emotionally, and spiritually, but when it’s abused, it causes all sorts of havoc.

Assumption #7 – Babies don’t get human rights until they are “viable.”

This last one is pretty insidious because it almost sounds reasonable. The assumption is that the unborn do not have human rights until the point of viability. First, viability is not a set line. It depends on our current scientific technology, which advances regularly and differs from hospital to hospital. Should someone’s right to life be based on location? If you’re lucky enough to be at a hospital with a NICU, you get to live? Are babies at 18 weeks that are fully formed, can feel pain, respond to stimuli, and move of their own volition really not human? Viability is an arbitrary threshold that seeks to remove the human rights of the unborn and definitely removes the humanity of everyone involved.

What is the reality when it comes to reproductive rights?

No one should have their right to reproduce taken unfairly. The government should not have a say in when adults choose to start a family. However, that isn’t what is happening. Abortion ends the life of an already existing human being. Pro-life advocates just argue that the time to plan your parenthood is before creating an innocent human life, not after.

As we discussed in our first article in the Buzzwords series, justice is a biblical mandate. People should be treated fairly without regard to ethnicity, skin color, intelligence, appearance, political or religious beliefs, economic status, or developmental age. Biblical justice means the law applies equally to everyone, and everyone should be given the same rights under the law.

Because our human rights begin with the right to life as stated in our Declaration of Independence:

Our government didn’t give anyone human rights. Our creator did. Our government’s job is to protect the rights endowed by our Creator. We cannot support any government or ideology that contradicts who God is and who He says we are.

In fact, God detests it according to Proverbs 6:16-17 Open in Logos Bible Software (if available):

Abortion sheds innocent blood, and that blood is on our hands. It’s not too late for us to do something about it, though. There are practical steps we can take to make an impact. We need to reject the assumptions and accept the reality that our hearts and minds need to change so that we can fully commit ourselves to saving the unborn.

Changing Hearts and Minds

Why is this issue so important to not only Abortion Museum but also to me? Because I used to think I could be a Christian and be pro-choice. (How? First, I was more of a cultural Christian than a sold out for Jesus Christian).

But two things changed my mind over time: science and God. Science clearly shows we are human from the beginning, and we have no scientific means of removing the status of human from the unborn. If it’s human, it gets human rights. And because God changed my heart of stone to a heart of flesh, I started to realize the sacred quality of human life and became passionate about the truth I had missed for so long.

We need to help more people start to open their eyes to the horrors of abortion. Do you feel like you need more help talking about pro-life issues with your pro-abortion friends? This week is a perfect opportunity to address the assumptions behind reproductive rights with the truth (in love). To have some helpful talking points, check out this episode of the Mama Bear Podcast.

If this issue is near to your heart or you want to learn more, volunteer at a local pregnancy resource center or foster care clothing closet. Maybe find out what it takes to become a foster parent or respite care for foster parents in your area. Do you know a single mother? I bet she is struggling right now. Can you bring her a meal, offer to babysit, or just hold her baby while she showers or sweeps the floor? Sometimes, getting involved in loving people closest to us makes the biggest impact on them (and us).

Remember a lot of people are completely held captive by the destructive ideology of abortion. They are fearful and distraught after last week’s election. Some truly believe democracy has died and that conservatives want to make The Handmaid’s Tale a reality instead of making 1984 fiction again. How we approach people now will affect if we are effective in persuading them to see the truth. Don’t miss the chance to love people during this confusing time.

Originally published in November 2024 here: