What Now?

What is next after the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs? I have been trying to come up with a concise way of thinking about that for the last month or so. Recently on a podcast I heard Henry Olsen, a Washington Post opinion columnist and polling expert, give the following post-Dobbs action plan which I think best expresses my thoughts:

“Overturning Roe, in hindsight, will be seen as the easy part. And I know that sounds like an absurd thing to say, since it took us almost 50 years to overturn Roe. But the fact is that the majority of American public opinion says that life within the womb in the first trimester (when the vast majority of abortions occur) does not deserve legal protection. They do not see the unborn child at that stage as sufficiently human to demand protection of the law. That opinion can change, it was different 60 years or 70 years ago, but that’s the battle that pro-lifer’s need to fight.

Jeremy Gorr in conversation with some students at UCLA in May, 2022.

“We can eliminate abortion extensively throughout the nation only when we change public opinion in that way. That’s the real battle, changing public opinion about the legal status and the human status of the unborn child in the first trimester. When we win that battle, we will win nationwide. Until we win that battle, it will always be a case of carving out enclaves and doing what we can.”

(“Life After Dobbs,” Episode 9, 33:58)

We convinced five judges, now we must convince 300 million Americans.

How Christian Kids Become Pro-Choice

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This Free Speech Board comment, seen at a JFA university outreach event, represents an all-too common position I hear from Christian students.

Every time I do outreach with JFA I have a conversation that reminds me exactly why the work we do is so important, why I left my previous career to do this work. At the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) that conversation was with a young woman named “Miriam.”

At outreach we meet a lot of pro-choice people who are atheists or agnostics, but we also meet a lot of pro-choice people who profess to be Christians. How does somebody who has been raised in the church her whole life become pro-choice?

Miriam is a perfect example of this phenomenon. I will quote her initial response to me at length. It is a fascinating look into how people who profess to be committed Christians (in this case a “proud Catholic”) justify their support for legal abortion:

I’ve been pro-life most of my life. But I do think it should still be legal, though. I’m a proud Catholic. And as a Catholic, most of us are pro-life.

I don’t know. God gave us free will. And he told us to make our own choices and choose what we believe is right, and in the end we will get our reward. Everything will be justified in the end.

I don’t believe that I should put my religious beliefs on the entire United States. If somebody who’s not Catholic wants to get an abortion, I’m not going to judge them. If somebody who is Catholic wants to get an abortion, I’m not going to judge them. It’s not my job.

I understand it’s sad. I don’t want babies to die. I do personally believe it is murder. Especially after a few months. I think maybe a time limit would be nice. Especially after a good amount of months, you shouldn’t kill that kid. I think it’s just not our decision to make for everyone.

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Our March outreach at UT Dallas where I met Miriam

I was very saddened by her response. She knew that abortion was “killing a kid” and didn’t want babies to die, yet she believed in keeping it legal to do just that.

Miriam considered herself pro-life because she personally was against abortion. Yet her position is almost identical to any pro-choice student that I meet who thinks that abortion should be legal for all reasons in the first two trimesters. This seemed to be a comfortable position for her. On the one hand, she could call herself pro-life and think she was in line with her church. On the other, most of her friends are pro-choice, and she could tell them she agrees with them about abortion.

She mentioned that her parents were pro-life without exceptions. I wanted to understand more about why she changed the position with which she had been raised, so I asked her about it. She responded:

I had my own mind after a while. I saw what my parents believed, and for a while I believed that. I see in some cases my parents were right. But eventually at some point in my life I [saw] some cases where abortion is justified. It is sad, but it would be worse for the kid if it was born. It’s hard to balance whose life weighs more, the mother or the child. It’s a judgement call, and it’s not my decision.

There it was again, the phrase “not my decision,” which echoed her previous comments about “make our own choices,” and, “I don’t believe that I should put my religious views on the entire United States.” She had uncritically accepted our culture’s message: choice trumps a child’s right to life.

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Equipping Christian students, like those in the seminar shown above, is one of our main priorities at JFA.

This conversation was evidence to me of the vital role our churches and families play in developing the pro-life advocates of the next generation, and of the fact that they are often under-equipped for the task. That’s why Justice For All’s training is so important. If she had heard strong justifications for the pro-life view, she would have been much more likely to reject the views that her culture and her peers were pushing on her. If her parents knew how to have difficult conversations with her about this topic, she would probably still oppose abortion today. But those conversations are hard, especially when dealing with issues such as abortion in the case of rape, and many, if not most, parents are not equipped to have those types of conversations confidently. Teaching those skills is exactly what Justice For All is about.

“If her parents knew how to have difficult conversations with her about this topic, she would probably still oppose abortion today. But those conversations are hard...and many, if not most, parents are not equipped to have those types of conversations confidently. ”

During our conversation, I was stunned by the number of pro-choice talking points she had absorbed and regurgitated to me. Where did Miriam’s justifications for abortion come from?

I went to Catholic schools my whole life, and most of my friends there were pro-choice, which is surprising because you’d think in Catholic school it would be pro-life, but that’s not the case where I grew up. Pro-choice makes more sense for the youth than for those who are older. I guess wisdom comes with age and stuff. Maybe it’s our youth mentality about how we think we know more than those who are older.

I was very surprised that she still considered herself pro-life, even though almost everything she was saying was no different than what I would usually hear from atheistic pro-choice students. I asked her to try to make sense of that for me.

There is a gray area between the two. You can be pro-life with a little pro-choice in you. Pro-choice has their moments where they make sense to me. I don’t think I’ll ever go over totally to the pro-choice side because I believe in the right to life, and I believe everything the Catholic Church says on the subject.

I support pro-life one billion percent, and kind of like one percent I see some pro-choice arguments that have points where they make sense.

Again, I was a bit shocked to hear that someone who spouted to me dozens of pro-choice arguments also said she is “one billion percent” pro-life. How is that possible? Had she learned why her church believes abortion is wrong? Had her parents taught her how to respond to the reasons her friends were pro-choice? Almost everything she had heard on the subject seemed to have come from our pro-choice culture or her pro-choice friends.

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JFA Outreach at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in February 2020

After listening to her share her view, I presented a case for the equality of the unborn. I then asked, “Since the unborn are also human, shouldn’t they deserve an equal right to life to you and me?” She avoided the question, and she jumped once again into a common pro-choice talking point. This pattern continued throughout our conversation. It seemed clear to me that she had never considered the points I was making, and she had no responses other than repeating what she had heard from her friends.

This was discouraging, but I am hopeful that I “put a pebble in her shoe,” as Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason says. People often don’t change their minds on the spot, but my modest goal in my conversation was that something would stick, just like a pebble in her shoe.

We need to reach kids everywhere, especially kids who claim to follow Christ, before they are convinced by the culture and their peers that even if abortion is “killing a kid,” the law should let people make their own choices about it.

My conversation with Miriam confirmed for me that our culture is talking to our kids about abortion. The question is, are we? Are our Christian youth being told the reasons that the unborn should have a right to life? Are they being told how to respond to the pro-choice arguments that their friends are making?

“... our culture is talking to our kids about abortion. The question is, are we? ”

That’s exactly what Justice For All’s mission encompasses. We train Christians to defend their pro-life convictions winsomely in a culture that is hostile to it. We help them understand how this is one issue where the comfortable position of being only personally pro-life is not enough. We teach them that injustice against some of the most vulnerable members of our society is not something about which we can be indifferent. And finally, we train their parents to have these conversations with their kids, so their children develop the critical thinking to help them hold strong even when the culture pushes back.

Where will parents and kids learn this? They are most likely to learn it through their church or a program at their Christian school. The pro-choice culture does not need to communicate its message to our kids — the media and their peers will do the job for them. But as Miriam proves, we don’t have the luxury of inaction. And I am so happy that God allows me to reach so many Christian parents and kids every year through Justice For All’s work.

It’s up to churches, Christian schools, and parents not to hope that our underlying beliefs magically transfer to our kids. Rather we have to spend time focused on the topic. We need to craft a whole-person response that includes the heart and the mind. That is precisely what Justice For All trains leaders to do.

Spending Spring Break with JFA

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Angelique (second from left), the pro-life club president at Trinity University, engages students at UT Dallas in conversation during her spring break with JFA.

In February, our team held outreach events at two schools in San Antonio in one trip. For the Trinity University event, we were invited by the president of the Tigers for Life, Angelique. As for UTSA, we had been working with their pro-life club’s outreach chair for years before finally getting to do outreach on campus this spring. We also did training seminar events with both of them last fall.

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Our spring break team at UT Dallas

After our successful outreach events with them in San Antonio, we asked both of them if they wanted to join us two weeks later at the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) since our events there took place during their spring break. They each decided to abandon their spring break plans to come to Dallas with us.

There they joined Mariana and Thomas, from Benedictine College, who also spent their spring break with us. We all had three amazing days of outreach at UT Dallas. The day that trip ended, the quarantine and stay-at-home orders started to be issued, so we finished the trip with God’s perfect timing. Judging from the response we got from these student leaders, they really were glad that they spent their spring break not on a beach vacation, but at outreach with Justice For All changing their peers’ minds about abortion, one person at a time.

“I am so grateful I went on a mission trip with Justice For All over spring break! It was a time of growth, intentional dialogue, and deepening of faith . . . I learned a lot of interesting viewpoints, and I was deeply moved by some of the heartbreaking reasons why people are pro-choice . . . It was truly amazing to see a variety of different people’s strengths and talents come together and impact students on campus. Abortion is not something to be ignored, no matter how hard the conversation is. I can bet the students at UT Dallas will be talking about the JFA exhibit for years to come, leading to a domino effect of conversations. Overall, I feel strengthened in my own faith through this mission, especially in learning how to do my part in a mission and surrendering the rest to God.”

— Mariana (Freshman, Benedictine College)

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Mariana in action at UT Dallas

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Thomas (green shirt) having conversations with pro-choice protestors

“I was amazed at how many conversations really changed people’s views on the issue of abortion—rarely a 180 degree turnaround, but more often than that, I found even sharing the perspective we were coming from helped open people’s minds more on the subject. I was especially impacted by seeing how each day the protestors became less hostile in their attitude and more open to dialogue.”

— Thomas (Sophomore, Benedictine College)