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Pro-lifers face a crossroads. The number of abortions is slightly up since the defeat of Roe v. Wade, and pro-choice sentiment has risen, reversing a 2010s trend that had the issue evenly split among Americans. Major media organizations continue to cover the pro-life position in a biased way. And the conservative electoral coalition is wavering on the importance of the issue. This is how even red states such as Ohio, Kentucky, and others adopted largely unrestricted abortion access via referendum. The blue-collar, working class populists who now form a coalition with social conservatives will vote for pro-life candidates, but they do not prioritize the issue.

Even the Trump administration, which should be credited for many pro-life victories in the first term, including the appointment of Supreme Court judges who overturned Roe, has become less committed to the issue. The Trump Health and Human Services has been slow to reverse the Biden administration’s actions to make the abortion drug, mifepristone, which is responsible for a majority of abortions, easily available by mail without prescription. The Trump Justice Department revealed last month that it is defending the pill’s efficacy in court, against Republican attorneys general.

Pro-life activist groups should continue to press the administration to reverse these policies, and faithful Christians should continue to urge their legislators to uphold pro-life principles. But it’s time to return to the strong moral language that awakened the American conscience on this issue. Those of us who have grown up in the movement might wrongly assume that our fellow Americans understand the moral gravity of the issue of abortion. We are so often bogged down in talk of strategy and prudence — important and vital conversations in a complicated political environment — that we forget to explain to the public why it is we are pro-life.

When the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision was announced, conservative Christians were divided on its morality. The Catholic Church was opposed, and lay leaders such as Nellie Gray, founder of the March for Life, began to organize. Perhaps the most prominent pastor in America, W.A. Criswell from First Baptist Dallas, commended the ruling: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

At the convention following the ruling, in 1974, the messengers overwhelmingly approved a pro-abortion resolution. A 1970 poll showed that 70% of Baptist pastors supported abortion. In a 1968 Christian Medical and Dental Association meeting, the participants released a statement saying, “Whether the performance of an induced abortion is sinful we are not agreed, but about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances we are in accord.” At the same time, Christianity Today and the National Association for Evangelicals condemned Roe. Most evangelicals, either ignorant or dismissive of early church teaching condemning abortion, largely considered the practice to be a primarily Catholic concern.

Yet, only a few years later, abortion became a major concern not only for Catholics but for conservative evangelicals as well. Jerry Falwell, in 1979, declared it to be one of the key issues that characterized a nation in decline: “The Roman Catholic Church for many years has stood virtually alone against abortion. I think it’s an indictment against the rest of us that we’ve allowed them to stand alone.”

Southern Baptists, led by Richard Land (who would later go on to lead their public policy arm), organized a group of Baptists for life who pushed for a strong resolution at the 1982 convention declaring that human life begins at conception. Many other evangelical organizations followed. Ronald Reagan, who had signed a permissive abortion law in the late 1960s as California governor, changed his position and by 1980 pledged to be a pro-life president. He wrote a book, “Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation,” explaining his newfound convictions.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - JANUARY 24: Anti-abortion demonstrators gather on the National Mall for the 52nd annual National March for Life, on Friday, January 24, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Credit: Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images.

What changed opinion and brought evangelicals and Catholics together to champion unborn life? There are many factors, of course, including the tragic rise in the number of abortions that took place after Roe. But perhaps the most influential voice was a Presbyterian pastor named Francis Schaeffer, who barnstormed the country in 1979 with both a book and video series, “What Ever Happened to the Human Race,” explaining the abortion practice in detail and how this practice both devalued human life and was an attack on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded. Schaeffer teamed up with Boston pediatric surgeon and future U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

If Schaeffer’s bestseller “How Shall We Then Live,” published in 1976, moved Christians to get off the sidelines and resist the moral relativism that was eating away at the nation’s moral fabric, “What Ever Happened to the Human Race” gave conservative Christians an issue that stood at the center of this worldview clash. Jerry Falwell, writing in his memoir, admitted that Schaeffer’s work moved him from a pietistic fundamentalism to a more socially active position. It was not long after reading Schaeffer that Falwell launched the Moral Majority. Richard Land said, “Schaeffer had enormous influence on a whole generation of baby-boomer evangelicals, calling us to engagement with society and inspiring us to be the salt and light that Jesus commanded.” Chuck Colson, the Nixon hatchet-man turned Christian leader, dedicated his book “How Now Shall We Live” to Schaeffer, whom he called a mentor.

The consistent Catholic conviction and the work of men such as Schaeffer birthed the enduring and effective pro-life movement. Today, nearly a half-century later, it is one of the most powerful movements in American politics. Roe is gone, many states outlaw abortion, and pregnancy resource centers dot the American landscape, offering help and hope to young mothers in crisis. This justice movement has introduced a moral vocabulary into American life — that even the most vulnerable Americans are worthy of dignity and respect — to the point that its most bitter foes co-opt this language to accuse us of being inconsistently pro-life.

So often the pro-life position is on the defensive. We are told that our position is anti-women. We are asked for our five-point plans on poverty reduction and health care. Pro-life champions should have thoughtful answers on these important issues. And yet we should also be willing to ask the question of those who oppose the sanctity of life: Do you believe in the humanity of the unborn child? Do you believe there is a baby there? If so, why would you be in favor of ending that life for the crime of existing?

Pro-lifers must return to the art of persuasion. We cannot assume our fellow Americans and even many of our fellow Christians understand the issue. And we should do it in a way designed to generate converts, not in ways that push folks away from our side. The small but loud cohort of internet activists who fantasize about throwing women in jail and repealing the 19th Amendment may seem courageous to their text threads, but they are not moving public opinion and in fact may be doing the work of those who seek to expand abortion.

Courage requires the fortitude to stand up for what is right, even when it’s unpopular. But it also requires the wisdom to make arguments that expand the movement. In a democracy, this is the only way to make change. Many of the activists in the movement use moral language, but we need to urge our political leaders to do this as well. Too often, with the exception of folks such as Senator James Lankford, who routinely speaks on the Senate floor about the value of human life, many of our pro-life politicians, when asked about the issue, either mumble about exceptions or stare at their shoes. They rarely give an eloquent defense of the unborn.

We should defend the sanctity of life in the public square by appealing both to America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and to our founding principles in the Declaration. This is how successful social activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. helped build a movement that saw real civil rights victories in the 20th century. He appealed to America’s uniquely Christian character by talking about the God-given dignity of black people. And he appealed to the words in our founding documents that declare “all men are created equal.”

Two hundred and fifty years after this grand experiment in human government was formed, we have come much closer to realizing the reality of those words. And yet, as long as unborn children are treated as less than human, we have so much further to go. While we strategize and support pro-life candidates as we should, let’s return once again to appealing to the moral imagination of our fellow citizens. And perhaps, several decades from now, we might look back at this moment as the influential second chapter in the long pro-life struggle.

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Daniel Darling is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary, a columnist for World, and the author of several books, including his latest, “In Defense of Christian Patriotism.”

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The Next Chapter Of The Pro-Life Fight May Hinge On A Major Shift