In my last article, Why I’ve Spent the Past Decade Fighting to End Abortion, I told a bit of the story behind my longing to see the ending of abortion in America. The undoing of this atrocity called abortion is a catalyst for something that goes far beyond a changed law. In fact, it is a matter of life itself.

I value life because Jesus values life. Plain and simple. Once you have seen the beauty and majesty of God, it changes everything. It transforms your attitude, values, and desires. When Jesus enters your life, everything is changed forever.

The tension of course, is when it doesn’t change everything immediately. What I am saying is that Jesus enters your life in a moment. You become a new creation in Christ Jesus. Renewing your mind, however, can take some time.

This applies to the pro-life movement in some very important ways.

First of all, you cannot be pro-life in the same manner as God if you do not know Jesus. There are some very important figures in the pro-life movement that aren’t Christian. I’m not saying that they lack the love of defending life, but I am saying that their perspective is different in a very important way. If you don’t know Jesus, you’re not concerned with the eternity of the life that has been delivered from injustice.

Second, as Christians we all approach the reality of defending life from various stages in the journey of our renewed mind. Due to the politicized nature of the pro-life debate on a national level, my concern is that many well intentioned believers are enabling us to become more “anti-abortion” than pro-life. Make no mistake, if you are pro-life you are also anti-abortion. However, you can be anti-abortion but not pro-life.

To be pro-life, we need to defend the life, its condition of living, and its eternity.

Here’s an example of what I am talking about: It was recently shared that more black babies in NYC have been aborted than were born during the most recent year on statistical record. This is an extreme example of the horrific trend of eugenics that has gone unchecked and began generations ago in our nation. There’s a reason Black women are aborting their babies and it is not due to women’s liberty.

Beside our nation’s targeting of Black babies in the womb, there have been generations of systemic racism in the forms of redlining, harsher civil punishment for Black citizens, and racial disparity within the foster care system (to name only a few). For generations, we have created an environment of exclusion that has undermined the Black community, leaving young mothers with a feeling of abandonment and hopelessness. Meanwhile, we point the finger at “gang culture” as though we have the right to judge them.

Here’s another example: Many people have been born in this country by parents who were here illegally. The “Dreamers” did not choose to be born in this country and many don’t have any other country to call home. For a lot of them, “going back to where they came from” would mean destitution or worse. In the mean time, we’re calling the same play from the eugenics playbook for Hispanics as we have for the Black community. If we marginalize their communities by alienating them from the only home they’ve every known, maybe they’ll adopt the American way and begin aborting themselves. Given the rate of Hispanics who consider themselves pro-life versus the rates of abortion in the Hispanic community, I’d say the tactic is unfortunately working.

Could it be that pro-life integrity is linked more closely to something like DACA than we realize?

Justice does not oppress the defenseless. It is time for the pro-life community to mature and become something much more than anti-abortion. I haven’t even mentioned yet the effects of human trafficking on the abortion industry (which needs its own article). I also have yet to address the great opportunity we have in the Church to use our resources to fuel the greatest adoption movement in history. Its not all bad news, not by far.

Even so, if we don’t deal with our evident blindness to racism, our anti-abortion efforts will simply mean more injustice for a greater number of people. Becoming pro-life, as God sees it, means defending the life of the living as well. If we do a good job at that, then we will also have the opportunity to show them the life eternal.

-J.S. Marek