No more compromise
Blog
Nebraska Family Alliance’s
Anti-Family Initiative
We should not have been surprised. Not in today’s world. Not in a time where good is called evil, and evil good. Not in a place where moral relativism is common, not only with the godless or unbelievers, but also among professing Christians. Not in a society where truth stumbles in the public square. Not with the pro-life movement’s track record of compromise, or indeed the knowledge that we ourselves formerly supported such efforts (to our shame).
We should not have been surprised. But we were.
The surprise came in the form of Nebraska Family Alliance’s ballot initiative announced in March 2024.1
Now, before we go any further, let us make a few things clear:
- We are thankful for the work of Nebraska Family Alliance (hereafter NFA) in other areas. For example, their defense of marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman, and their advocacy for religious freedom in both public and private. We also note their commitment to the protection of born children through striving to expose and hinder the seriously harmful gender ideologies being pushed in government school systems, and in providing resources for parents on this front.
- We are in line with and appreciate NFA’s stated vision: “To ensure Nebraska is a place where God is honored, marriages and families thrive, life is cherished, parental rights are protected, and religious liberty flourishes.”2
- We note their expressed desire to have the hope and truth of Jesus Christ declared.3 We ourselves are impelled in our work by the gracious Gospel of Jesus, who is the eternal and uncreated Son of God. Our blessed God has saved us by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and it is the mercy and love of Christ that constrains us to do what we do.
- We have both respect for the staff of NFA and for much of the work that they perform.
- We have no reason to believe otherwise than that NFA has good intentions in promoting their ballot initiative.
With this having, we trust, been made plain, we hope that the foregoing can be kept in mind as the reader continues down the page.
We believe that the “Protect Women and Children” ballot initiative is a very serious error, and it is the error and the actions to promote it that we write against, not the kind people of NFA themselves. We love all of our neighbors and fellow Nebraskans, including those with whom we disagree, however strongly.
We shall review the ballot initiative in ten parts. And we ask the reader’s pardon for when we speak strongly what we feel so very keenly.4
1. The Misnamed Title
The ballot initiative has been called, “Protect Women and Children.”
Of course, we are surely in agreement that women and children should be protected. But the title is highly misleading.
Regarding women, NFA expresses concern that the amendment proposed by the pro-abortion movement, to which NFA’s initiative is a response (see below), would put “existing medical safeguards that protect the health and safety of women at risk of being eliminated. This includes informed consent statutes and requirements that the abortion be performed in person and by a licensed doctor.”5
Is this what protecting women looks like? Helping those who have abortions to do it “safely” so that they themselves hopefully don’t get hurt?
And if NFA wants to protect women from any harmful effects that may befall them from committing an abortion, why are they promoting legislation which permits women to obtain them?
Pro-abortion advocates keep saying that abortion is healthcare. The language used above coincides well with such a view, desiring “medical safeguards,” protecting the “health and safety” of the mothers, and wanting the women to be required to consult a credentialed doctor for the abortions.
What is abortion? It is murder. It is the premeditated killing of an innocent preborn child with malice aforethought. Should murder be a safe and protected act?
Our laws already protect women, and men, and born children, and these all equally. The only people whom they don’t protect are preborn children. The proposed amendment, title notwithstanding, will do nothing to change that.
2. The Pernicious Objective
The press release states that the ballot initiative seeks “to amend the Nebraska Constitution to create a constitutional protection for preborn children in the second and third trimesters.”
The article which they wish to amend by adding a section, is Article I. Let us review what is already contained in that same article, in sections 1 and 3:
“All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.”
And: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor be denied equal protection of the laws.”
We know biblically and logically (unless we suppress the truth), as well as historically,6 that what is meant by human person is no other than human being.
Our State Constitution does not explicitly express this, but its language is completely consistent with that fact. The Constitution likewise makes no distinction between one kind of person and another.
But the proposed amendment would create, in the foundational legal document of our state, a dangerous contradiction and a radical divide. (Such a divide already exists between the Constitution and pro-life laws; this would insert the divide into the Constitution itself.) No longer could person be understood to mean human being without qualification. And no longer, under the Constitution, would every person be treated the same.
The only way the proposed section 31 is consistent with the existing sections 1 and 3 is if human beings are in fact not persons from the moment of conception — the very thing pro-abortion advocates say. From the point of view of the proposed amended Constitution, human beings who are conceived in rape, who are conceived in incest, who are considered a threat to their mother’s life (be they themselves ever so innocent), as well as any human being in the first three months of existence, would not possess the right to life, could be deprived of life without any due process at all, and would be denied equal protection of the laws.
This is not legal protection. It is constitutional subversion.
NFA goes on to say: “This is consistent with what our legislature passed last year to prohibit abortion at 12 weeks.”
We spoke earlier of being surprised. When we have two sets of legal documents — on the one hand, the State Constitution, which says that every person possesses a right to life from which they cannot be deprived without due process, and that they must be afforded equal protection under the laws, and on the other hand, pro-life legislation which permits most abortions to take place legally (more on this shortly) — which should we seek to amend?
Should we not alter our laws so that they are more consistent with the Constitution, and more importantly, with God’s holy and revealed Word? What should we desire to be consistent with — the Constitution, which protects life, or the pro-life laws, which erode that protection?
Ask yourself, dear reader. Why, post-Roe, is abortion still legal in Nebraska? Why can innocent preborn children still be murdered in our state with impunity? The answer does not lie with the Constitution.
3. The Specious Baseline
The initiative establishes “a floor of protection, not a ceiling.” Do not be taken in by this turn of phrase. What would the proposed minimum level of protection be? Any child in his first three months, and some others as well who are older, depending on their status, are considered to be below the “floor of protection,” and could be killed without mercy by their own parents.
Should this be the minimum level of protection established in any sane society? Imagine, for a moment, if we lived in a world where mothers could slaughter their born children up to a certain age after birth. In such a society, would NFA be advocating for lessening the number of weeks mothers would be allowed to kill their born children in? Would not the murders of the born children, at any point, be considered a despicable crime worthy of severe punishment? Why then do they make ageist distinctions between older and younger preborn human beings?
They say that “stronger pro-life laws could still be passed going forward,” which brings us back to the question posed earlier: Why is abortion currently legal in Nebraska? If our Constitution protects all persons equally without making any distinction between them, and the Dobbs decision refers to the states to make their own determination on the abortion question, then how does abortion remain legal in our state?
The answer: pro-life laws.
The solution is not more pro-life laws. In order to abolish abortion and protect all humans equally under the law, pro-life legislation is what stands in the way. Such laws need to be repealed or superseded, not strengthened. If NFA was serious about protecting preborn children, they would advocate for the abolition of abortion, not for more pro-life laws that are prejudiced against the most innocent and helpless among us, and permit their continuing destruction.
If the kind reader is somewhat taken aback by the suggestion of repealing pro-life laws, do consider: if a law were passed which provided equal protection for all human beings without exception, criminalizing abortion as murder, could it coexist alongside laws which permit mothers to kill their own children?
(Image credit: Free the States)
4. The Envisioned Culture
NFA’s statement refers to working to create “a culture of life that provides love and support to every mother and child.”
Our culture has been taught, for decades, that some children are more worth protecting than others. This pro-life ballot initiative serves to perpetuate that lie. Where do mothers learn that if they are sexually assaulted and then conceive a child, it is acceptable to murder the offspring? Where are they taught that, the younger the child is, the more respectable it is to kill him? How do they learn that, if they perform the abortion themselves through acquiring pills online, that they bear no guilt at all, and are somehow even themselves “victims”? What has trained them to believe this perversion?
Again: pro-life legislation. It is a corruption that does not in any way promote a culture of life. Rather, it is a hellish compromise with the culture of death, where the only loser is more, and more, and more preborn children, who continue to be murdered by the thousands in our state every single year. Preborn children are not supported by pro-life legislation. They are condemned to death without mercy and without trial, subject to the whims of their parents.
The press release says further, “After 50 years of Roe, our culture has been badly damaged.”
Indeed, our culture is very much damaged. But Roe was not ultimately at fault. Who is to blame? All of us. Every civil magistrate who rejected the Constitution, their Creator, and bowed to the Supreme Court as if it were God.7 Every citizen who did not plead with his local authorities to ignore the Supreme Court opinion, defy Roe, and instead obey the Constitution and more importantly, our God to whom we will ultimately give account. Every pro-life organization which lobbied for legislation making distinctions between kinds of persons, protecting some while condemning others. Every church whose congregants lifted their hands in praise to God on Sunday and left their preborn neighbors to go to their bloody graves during the week.
5. The Highlighted Declaration
A callout in the press release proclaims that “Nebraska must be the state to stop the abortion industry.”
If this is so, surely we must ask the question, From where do they receive their business? Is it not from parents who seek to sacrifice their children on the altar of career, or sexual “freedom,” or leisure?
At bottom then, who is it that really needs to be stopped? It is the mothers and fathers who kill their own preborn children. It is their demand that drives the abortion industry.
If we want to stop abortions, we must criminalize the act itself. Not people, not women (do not be deceived by suchlike ridiculous objections), but the act of abortion. Just like murder is a crime, so should abortion be (for it is indeed murder), with one and the same laws applied across the board. Without exception, and without compromise.
6. The Erroneous Implication
What is the focus of this supposed protection? “The second and third trimesters.” Excepting the problems with the amendment already mentioned (and more to come), two-thirds of the pregnancy may sound like a good amount of coverage, until one realizes that the vast majority of all abortions are performed during the first trimester.8 And with self-managed abortions through pills by mail rapidly rising, these numbers of early abortions are only increasing.9 And under pro-life laws, why shouldn’t they? The message to women — for 50 years — has been loud, clear, and consistent: killing your own children is totally acceptable, just as long as you do it early enough.
Going back briefly to the subject of titles, when by far and away the number one cause of death in the United States is the murder of preborn children,10 and the majority of those murders take place upon helpless children in the first trimester, how does this ballot initiative in any sense demonstrate that NFA is, in this area at least, what they claim to be: a “family alliance”? The amendment is terribly anti-family. Unless preborn children in the first months of life don’t count as part of the family? Apparently, the magical number is 12 weeks right now.
7. The Stunning Response
Pro-abortion advocates would like the Constitution to be amended to provide the “right to abortion until fetal viability, or when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient.”11 Concerning this, NFA rightly notes: “The initiative contains a vague ‘health exception’ determined entirely by the abortionist. Exceptions could include non-physical factors, such as emotional, spiritual, and financial health. This opens the door to abortions up until birth.”12
When do most abortions occur? The CDC’s 2021 Abortion Surveillance report includes the following finding: “Nearly all abortions in 2021 took place early in gestation: 93.5% of abortions were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation.”13 (Recall that this does not include the swiftly rising self-managed abortions, or the percentage would be even higher.)
So let’s get this straight. Pro-aborts want to alter Nebraska’s Constitution so that abortion is constitutionally legal in virtually any circumstance, or as close as possible to 100%. And the pro-life movement’s response is to instead offer to alter our Constitution so that abortion is constitutionally legal more than 90% of the time that it takes place? Is this not unconscionable?
Take note, readers — this is where compromise with intrinsic evil leads: you end up fighting the right to abortion with a right to abortion of your own. For can a rape-conceived child have a right to life when his own mother could slay him and the amended Constitution would not defend him? Can a little one in the first trimester have a right to life when the offered section 31 would not protect him if his mother chose to end his life? We see then that if a mother can take away the life of her child at will and the proposed amendment would defend her in this action but not the child, then clearly she would possess a right to abortion under the law, whether or not such language were explicitly used.
Why, even post-Roe, is the pro-life movement not arguing for equal protection of all human beings, and instead promoting special murder rights for mothers?
8. The Endangerment Exception
The proposed amendment contains an exception for medical emergencies. “What if the mother’s life is in danger?” is the all-too-common refrain.
Some remarks:
- A good doctor operates by the age-old principle of “do no harm.”
- A doctor knows that when a mother with child comes into his examination room, he has two patients, and must do everything in his power to preserve the lives of both.
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Removing an already-dead baby from inside the mother is not an abortion. (This is often the case in ectopic pregnancies.14)
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That abortion is sometimes justifiable to save the life of the mother is a Satanic myth, propagated for the purpose of creating a loophole by which to keep abortion legal.
Many medical professionals have plainly stated that abortion is never necessary to save a mother’s life. The following quotations are worth consideration:
“In my thirty-six years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother’s life.” —former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop15
“You never need late-term abortion to save a woman’s life. If necessary, you accomplish the delivery.” —Anthony Levatino, former abortionist and practicing OB/GYN16
Dr. Levatino has further stated: “During my time at Albany Medical Center, I managed hundreds of such cases by ‘terminating’ pregnancies to save mothers’ lives. In all those cases, the number of unborn children that I had to deliberately kill was zero.”17
Close to 500 physicians signed a declaration which states: “I agree that there is never a situation in the law or in the ethical practice of medicine where a preborn child’s life need be intentionally destroyed by procured abortion for the purpose of saving the life of the mother. A physician must do everything possible to save the lives of both of his patients, mother and child. He must never intend the death of either.”18
And 1,000 doctors have signed another declaration which proclaims: “As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion – the purposeful destruction of the unborn child – is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman. We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion, and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child. We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.”19
“We affirm that there are no medical circumstances justifying direct abortion, that is, no circumstances in which the life of a mother may only be saved by directly terminating the life of her unborn child.” —John Bonner, Eamon O’Dwyer, David Jenkins, Kieran O’Driscoll, and Julia Vaughan, leading obstetricians in Ireland at the time the statement was made20
Even former president of Planned Parenthood Alan Guttmacher admitted, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal illness such as cancer or leukemia, and if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save, life.”21
“As far as I’m concerned, there are no medical indications for terminating a pregnancy.” —“Father of Fetology” Hymie Gordon, former director of medical genetics at the Mayo Clinic22
In 1982, John Murphy and Kieran O’Driscoll of the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, published a report where they investigated, out of 74,317 births at more than 28 weeks’ gestation that had taken place at the hospital between 1970 and 1979, the 21 maternal deaths that occurred during that period. Their verdict: “The final conclusion is that therapeutic abortion would have had no beneficial effect on maternal mortality in this hospital during the ‘seventies and, by analogy, that women do not die in childbirth because therapeutic abortion is not practised in Ireland today.”23
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In the rare cases where a preterm pregnancy results in immediate danger for the mother, and other possibilities have been exhausted, doctor and parent(s) may decide to have the child delivered prematurely, where the doctor relocates the living baby from inside of the womb to outside of it, and then continues to give the little one the best possible care, seeking to preserve the newborn’s life with the utmost diligence. If the child were to die after being delivered, despite every attempt by medical staff to save his life, this is not an abortion.
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Abortion is the intentional destruction of innocent human life. Therefore it is always and everywhere murder. There are no exceptions. In the end, the above quotations from physicians are not needed to determine the question. A hard situation, no matter how difficult, never justifies the direct disobedience of God’s plain commands. “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). What, are we in the place of God, to decide for ourselves what is wrong and what is right?
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If a mother had an opportunity to give up her life to save her child’s, why wouldn’t she?
9. The Ohioan Allusion
Reference in NFA’s press release was made to the pro-life movement in Ohio, who failed to defeat a pro-abortion initiative despite “spending $35 million in a well-organized opposition campaign.”
But why did they fail? As Abolitionists Rising has put it, “In their efforts to defeat Issue 1, the pro-life coalition’s strategy was nothing short of pathetic. Instead of exposing the horror of abortion, they hid behind half-truths about ‘parents’ rights’ and ‘women’s health.’ The horrible truth of abortion is the most powerful weapon we have and they laid it aside to pursue compromised, uninspiring, moderate talking points.”24
10. The Detestable Amendment
Let us now to turn to consider the amendment as a whole: “Except when a woman seeks an abortion necessitated by a medical emergency or when the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest, unborn children shall be protected from abortion in the second and third trimesters.”25
Ultimately, how can we know if this would be a good law, or not? The topic at hand is legislation concerning life and death. In the end, what determines if such an initiative is worthy of support?
We are not left in the dark on this question. For the uncreated, thrice holy, and triune God over all, who alone reigns supreme and possesses all authority both in Heaven and on Earth, has revealed in his Word what he demands of created human beings.
What does God require of us?
“He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).
What is the first requirement listed? To do justice. This is a repeated admonition in God’s Word: “Seek justice, correct oppression” (Isaiah 1:17). “Do justice and righteousness” (Jeremiah 22:3). “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).
So let us ask then, Is this a just amendment that is being promoted? The Holy Bible answers this with an emphatic and resounding no! Which we prove in the following ways:
Firstly, the amendment shows partiality and perverts justice. It does this by being partial in the extreme toward mothers who kill their children, and severely prejudiced against the youngest preborn babies, those conceived in rape or incest, or those considered to be a threat. But God says:
“You shall not be partial in judgment” (Deuteronomy 1:17).
“You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality” (Deuteronomy 16:19).
“It is not good to be partial to the wicked
and so deprive the innocent of justice” (Proverbs 18:5).
“But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (James 2:9).
Secondly, the amendment decrees iniquity through perpetuating the oppression of the most innocent among us, preventing the neediest from receiving justice, and depriving them of their most basic rights, even to the point of eroding rights they already possess in the Constitution. God pronounces:
“Woe to those who … deprive the innocent of his right!” (Isaiah 5:22–23).
“Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees,
and the writers who keep writing oppression,
to turn aside the needy from justice
and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be their spoil,
and that they may make the fatherless their prey!” (Isaiah 10:1–2).
Note the particular attention given to the fatherless. The proposed amendment gives attention to the fatherless too: by explicitly condemning them to death. For who is more fatherless than a rape-conceived child? The amendment allows for the punishment of the child, unto death, because of the crime committed by the father. This too is a perversion:
“Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers” (Deuteronomy 24:16).
Thirdly, the amendment acquits the guilty mothers and fathers who kill their very young children, while condemning to death their innocent victims. Under the amendment, a mother could seek an abortion, and the father could wickedly give her all possible support in this action, and both would be considered innocent, while the truly innocent one would be put to death, and the amendment would justify his murder as the result of guiltless conduct.
Ponder the following two renderings of Proverbs 17:15:
“He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous
are both alike an abomination to the Lord” (ESV).
“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent—
the Lord detests them both” (NIV).
We have referred to this amendment as detestable because God himself uses that strong of language about the very thing this legislation would continue to promote: the acquitting of guilty parents who kill their preborn children, and the condemnation of the innocents who are slaughtered without any recourse under the law.
Fourthly, the amendment neglects justice by treating less developed and less wanted human beings as less valuable; indeed, as having so little value that they can be butchered with impunity. Christ threatens woe to those who “neglect justice” (Luke 11:42).
Fifthly, the amendment treats abortion like healthcare (just like the abortion movement claims it to be), which can be regulated, rather than murder, which must be abolished.
“You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). There are no exceptions.
Should we have laws which define the how, why, when, and where rape can take place? or human trafficking? Why then do we conceive of doing it with murder?
In Summary
The “Protect Women and Children” amendment:
- keeps preborn murder “safe” for the women committing it, while leaving their innocent victims to die;
- considers preborn human beings 12 weeks old or younger, as well as those conceived in rape or incest, or those involved in a precarious pregnancy through no fault of their own, to not be persons;
- erodes existing protections for preborn already in the Constitution;
- accounts most preborn children as not possessing and unworthy of having the right to life, due process, or equal protection of the laws;
- makes ageist distinctions between one kind of human being and another;
- promotes a culture where some children are worth more than others, and murder of the youngest children is acceptable by law;
- condemns preborn children to death without mercy and without trial;
- encourages mothers to abort their children early;
- is anti-family;
- makes abortion constitutionally legal, adding special murder rights for mothers into the Constitution;
- perverts justice by being partial in the extreme toward mothers who kill their children, and severely prejudiced against the youngest preborn babies, those conceived in rape or incest, or those considered to be a threat;
- decrees iniquity through perpetuating the oppression of the most innocent among us, preventing the neediest from receiving justice, and depriving them of their most basic rights;
- punishes rape-conceived children for the crimes of their fathers;
- acquits the guilty mothers and fathers who kill their very young children, while condemning to death their innocent victims;
- neglects justice by treating less developed and less wanted human beings as less valuable;
- treats abortion like healthcare, which can be regulated, rather than murder, which must be abolished; and
- calls good what God calls iniquitous and detestable.
Our Earnest Pleas
So then, for all these reasons, Abolish Abortion Nebraska therefore denounces NFA’s 2024 proposed amendment as the unjust, prejudicial, iniquitous decree that it is, and asks and urges our readers in the Lord Jesus to do the following:
For any members of NFA, we sincerely beg you to withdraw the “Protect Women and Children” ballot initiative.
For all readers who have supported this ballot initiative or any other legislative efforts that compromise with inherent evil, please repent of promoting laws that God detests. And please hear us that when we say this, we fully acknowledge that as individuals, we too have been guilty of advocating for such laws. We have repented of this past sin, and when we call on you to repent, what we are saying is, please repent with us.
Let us all consider obedience to God our duty, and the results his prerogative. Let us make his Word be our guide in everything that we do, and trust him to bring the outcome. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
In a time where the horrors of the abortion holocaust continue, instead of rallying support around an unrighteous and arbitrary standard that we will only change later on, or attempting to build consensus around a premise that is faulty, rather, may our rallying cry be: “To the law and to the testimony!” (Isaiah 8:20).
Let us not do evil, hoping that good may come of it, and find ourselves in rebellion against God’s revealed will. Let us no longer make the very words of the eternal and all-wise God as if they were subservient to political strategy. No, dear readers, never! Let us, by the help of God, return, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for the Lord (Hosea 12:6).
Let us unite together around God’s truth, for it is him ultimately to whom we must give an account. No more compromise!
The Way Forward
Our final plea to you is to advocate instead for the total and immediate abolition of abortion as murder through an equal protection law that will apply the laws currently against murder to all human beings in our state alike. Why? Because murder is an attack against God himself, who “made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6).
If such a law were established in our society, what would that look like? See the following section, which is a reproduction of Bradley Pierce’s “An Abolitionist Vision.”26
An Abolitionist Vision
Imagine this future.
Abortion is completely illegal.
Laws that have protected people from assault, homicide, and wrongful death after their birth now also protect them before birth—from the moment of conception.
Instead of law enforcement officers guarding abortion clinics, they now raid them.
Women who find out they are mothers no longer think of abortion as a legitimate option.
Churches, nonprofits, and communities provide mothers encouragement, resources, and a loving community.
Instead of calling abortion a choice, counselors describe it as the sin of murder for which there is forgiveness in Christ to those who repent.
No one who had an abortion before it was outlawed may be prosecuted.
The very few parents who break the new law by hiring someone to murder their child or doing it themselves risk arrest, along with those who assist them.
Many parents arrested are given immunity in return for their testimony against abortionists.
All defendants face a justice system of law enforcement, prosecutors, grand juries, judges, trial juries, and appellate courts, each part of which is tasked with considering each situation on a case-by-case basis, including mitigating circumstances.
Those defendants who cannot afford an attorney are provided one.
Governors review each conviction and decide whether or not to grant a pardon, a reprieve, or to commute the sentence.
In other words, the same justice system protecting born people also protects those not yet born.
Laws prohibit prosecution of accidental miscarriages or conviction of mothers who abort their child while under threat of force, mothers whose lives are threatened by a medical emergency, or mothers who truly do not know what they are doing—these mothers are protected from criminal liability by existing legal justifications and defenses of duress, necessity, mistake of fact, among others.
Parents, boyfriends, husbands, and others who pressure or aid a mother to abort her baby are all subject to prosecution.
New technologies are developed to address ectopic pregnancies and other medical emergencies to better protect both mother and child.
Fertility doctors using in vitro fertilization no longer fertilize more eggs than they implant.
Legal and financial barriers to adoption are lowered.
Ultimately, as a society, we and our institutions treat all human life from the moment of fertilization as made in the image of God and deserving of love, respect, and equal protection of the laws.
These actions that are fruits of repentance invite God to withhold His hand of judgment upon our land and extend His hand of blessing.
Footnotes
[1] “New Ballot Initiative Filed To Add Pro-Life Protections In State Constitution,” Nebraska Family Alliance, March 19, 2024, https://nebraskafamilyalliance.org/new-ballot-initiative-filed-to-add-pro-life-protections-in-state-constitution/.
[2] “About,” Nebraska Family Alliance, https://nebraskafamilyalliance.org/about/.
[3] “About,” Nebraska Family Alliance.
[4] We borrow this language from William Wilberforce, A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade; Addressed to the Freeholders and Other Inhabitants of Yorkshire, (London, 1807), 295.
[5] “Protect Women and Children,” Nebraska Family Alliance, https://nebraskafamilyalliance.org/protectwomenandchildren/.
[6] “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The language in our Declaration of Independence is very similar to the language in our State Constitution, but uses men instead of persons, demonstrating how those terms were used interchangeably to refer to living human beings. When are men created? Immediately upon fertilization.
[7] See “Defy Tyrants: Nullification and Interposition,” Free The States, https://freethestates.org/nullification-and-interposition/.
[8] “CDCs Abortion Surveillance System FAQs,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortion.htm.
[9] One estimate is that 93,996 self-managed abortions took place over a 12-month period in the 14 states with abortion “bans.” These abortions are not reported to state or federal agencies. “Babies Unprotected: An Analysis of Self-Managed Abortion Numbers in States with ‘Bans’,” Foundation to Abolish Abortion, January 2024, https://faa.life/sma.
[10] Abortions in 2023 through the formal health care system: 1,026,700. Heart disease deaths in 2022: 699,659. Selena Simmons-Duffin, “Despite bans in some states, more than a million abortions were provided in 2023,” NPR, March 19, 2024, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/19/1238293143/abortion-data-how-many-us-2023. “Provisional Mortality Data — United States, 2022,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 5, 2023, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm.
[11] Alex McLoon, “Get the Facts: Fetal viability and the abortion rights petition in Nebraska,” KETV, November 17, 2023, https://www.ketv.com/article/nebraska-abortion-rights-petition-fetal-viability/45879388.
[12] “Protect Women and Children,” Nebraska Family Alliance.
[13] “CDCs Abortion Surveillance System FAQs,” CDC.
[14] Sarah Cleveland, “Answering the Ectopic Pregnancy Argument,” End Abortion Now, March 1, 2023, https://endabortionnow.com/answering-the-ectopic-pregnancy-argument/.
[15] C. Everett Koop, “Abortion: Deception-On-Demand,” Moody Monthly, May 1980, 24.
[16] “Former abortionist: Abortion is never necessary to save a woman’s life,” Texas Right to Life, March 18, 2016, https://texasrighttolife.com/former-abortionist-abortion-is-never-necessary-to-save-a-womans-life/.
[17] “What Percentage of Abortions Are Medically Necessary?” Human Life International, October 2021, https://www.hli.org/resources/what-percentage-of-abortions-are-medically-necessary/.
[18] “Declaration: Protecting the Life of the Mother: List,” American Life League, https://all.org/archive/declaration-protecting-the-life-of-the-mother-list.
[19] “Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare,” Dublin Declaration, https://www.dublindeclaration.com/.
[20] “Statement by Obstetricians,” The Irish Times, April 1, 1992, as quoted in “Maternal Health,” Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, https://www.spuc.org.uk/Article/383545/Maternal-Health.
[21] Alan F. Guttmacher, “Abortion—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” The Case for Legalized Abortion Now, ed. Alan F. Guttmacher (Berkeley, Calif.: Diablo Press, 1967), 9.
[22] As quoted in “What Percentage of Abortions Are Medically Necessary?” Human Life International.
[23] John F. Murphy, Kieran O’Driscoll, “Therapeutic Abortion: The Medical Argument,” The Irish Medical Journal 75, no. 8 (1982), http://archive.imj.ie/Archive/Editorial11.pdf.
[24] “How NOT to Fight Abortion: Why Issue 1 Passed,” Abolitionists Rising, November 8, 2023, YouTube description, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C61V0cPADro.
[25] “Protect Women and Children,” Nebraska Family Alliance.
[26] Bradley Pierce, “An Abolitionist Vision,” Foundation to Abolish Abortion, https://faa.life/vision. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Deed), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
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