The Only Way Forward in a Post-Roe Society

Since the overturning of Roe v Wade, many conversations have been had within the pro-life community. One of them being about strategy and messaging going forward. For so long, the goal was to overturn Roe; with that accomplished, many ask what comes next. They ask how we can not only continue to pass legislation but also convince the culture to embrace pro-life policies and beliefs.

Allow me to offer a strategy with a proven track record throughout the centuries: sharing truth boldly without fear of being maligned. We must stop entertaining the lies of abortionists and instead properly frame the argument from the beginning to remain grounded.

Every significant cultural and political movement in history was won by speaking the truth without wavering in the face of persecution. It was not won by people afraid of offending others, defending their own honor, or convincing others of their virtue. On the contrary, it was won by boldly speaking the truth without fear of being hated or maligned by the masses.

We did not end the tyranny of King George III by trying to prove our virtue to the British. We did not end slavery by trying to prove our virtue to the Confederacy. We did not end the holocaust by trying to prove our virtue to the Nazis. Furthermore, we did not end tyranny, slavery, or the holocaust by mincing our words to avoid offending those committing such evils.

We ended those atrocities by embracing the words of the great reformer Martin Luther: “Peace if possible, truth at all cost.” If we want to end abortion successfully, that is the attitude we must adhere to today.

Unfortunately, most “strategies” today revolve around proving to the public once and for all that the pro-life movement is not one of misogyny but that we do care about women in need and are not attempting to usher in a handmaid’s tale reality. However, there are many issues with this “tactic,” the most obvious being that it simply does not work and instead entertains the absurd claims that we hurt women.

Since the beginning, the pro-life cause has used this approach to prove themselves as compassionate, yet the false claims against us have only gotten louder over time. This is because when we entertain the absurd claims of abortion advocates, we grant them validity. We tell them that their premise is legitimate and allow them to frame the entire issue, and in turn, we lose before even speaking by leaving out the truth altogether.

You can see the ineptitude of this “strategy” in real-time when listening to conversations today. A typical conversation about abortion usually consists of the first two minutes discussing abortion and then quickly devolves into the pro-lifer spending the rest of the time explaining why they are not a woman-hating misogynist that wants them to die. They insist to the rabid abortion advocate that they aren’t one of those weird religious pro-lifers; they’re a cool pro-lifer. So instead of sharing the truth about the evil of abortion to save lives, we are wasting time defending ourselves from ridicule at the expense of babies in the womb.

Babies are being murdered by their own mothers, and instead of screaming from the rooftops to stop it, we have become content with speaking quietly on the issue to avoid confrontation. Pro-lifers will now get offended if someone refers to abortion as murder or shows pictures of aborted babies, stating, “those people are making us look bad!” Why is this? Why have we become embarrassed of the truth and those who courageously speak it?

It is time we remember that those who are adamantly defending the violent murder of innocent babies in the womb do not have the moral high ground, and we need to stop falling for the assertion that they do. We have nothing to prove regarding the virtue of fighting for life. It is the right thing to do and does not require caveats or qualifiers.

Pro-lifers must get comfortable with being maligned and deemed hateful by the masses and prioritize saving preborn lives in the womb over appeasing those who advocate for abortion or have gotten abortions. We cannot allow our comfort of being “accepted” in society to distract us from stopping the barbaric murder happening daily inside abortion mills. And we cannot fool ourselves into believing the naïve idea that we can end abortion by convincing people to like us—that is not “strategy,” that is cowardice disguising itself as such.

We must begin and end by proclaiming the truth: Abortion is murder. It is the purposeful and violent killing of innocent human life and must be stopped completely.