To the glory of God we sit here today entering the one year anniversary of the end of Roe v. Wade. This law was enforced for about 50 years and stripped all of the unborn children in America of their natural human rights. Since then we have seen a number of positive and negative developments. I just want to take a moment during this anniversary to let you know that I expected a lot of pushback after the decision came down one year ago. The reason I expect pushback is because I have been quite a student of the abolition movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Because of this I know that this kind of great debate in our country always presents pushback. Whenever there’s an advancement, there’s a pushback. Every time there is a small advancement, we need to make sure that we hold the ground, let people come to agree with it, then take another step forward. That is how the abolition of slavery proceeded, even from the days of the Constitution.

The idea of the Constitution was, despite its flaws, to get consent of the governed. The principle of all people being created equal was established then the work began toward the practice of it by getting the southern states to agree on the principle in the Constitution. They basically knew that the battle for the ending of slavery was just a matter of time. Of course that unfolded over the following hundred years after the signing of the Constitution. We are still trying to move from principle to practice today; but since Roe v. Wade was ended a year ago, we have seen about 25,000 babies rescued from abortion that otherwise would have died.

That is a good thing, obviously, but there are some states that have moved in the opposite direction now that the battle is a state by state issue. They have liberalized or even stripped the unborn of more of their natural human rights. Other states have moved to protect human life (Texas, Florida, Ohio), at least at certain points, and some people think that this is already a compromise. Everything in a republic like ours happens through a certain amount of political compromise. The powers of the governed are always derived from the consent of the people, which means you can only pass what you can get 50% plus one to agree on.

This is why I am not in politics because I want to be able to uphold the principle that all men are created equal, therefore the practice in law, protection, civil services and the work of compassion ought to be consistent with the principle. There is always a gap between the two. So where are we after a year? We have seen in some cases that more people now support Roe v. Wade than before. That is also something that I would expect because something was taken away from them. People react to it before they were just asked in survey after survey, do you identify as pro-life? About 53% of the population in the US did identify as pro-life. I think after Roe v. Wade a lot of people saw that our beliefs actually do become policy and that scared some people.

We have to let things settle down. We have to hold the ground that we have. For me, as a pastor, I am going to continue to call us to be the underground railroad of our generation. I admire people going into politics who run for different offices, and I certainly encourage us all to vote. I certainly encourage us to make as much progress as we can where we get 50% plus one in our policies and advocacy. The reality is we all have the opportunity to be the Underground Railroad today.

All of my passion and all of my energy over the last 33 years has been to mobilize the church. Every woman seeking abortion is looking for salvation just needs to find the right savior. They need to find that God who makes a baby can also feed a baby. That is where we come in. I want to humbly bow and give God praise for the progress at the political level and the end of Roe v. Wade, but recognize that everything is somewhat incremental in its advancement.

Most people think Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. It did not free the slaves. It only freed the slaves in the southern states that had succeeded from the federal government. It did not free the slaves where slavery was legal in the northern states like Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky. They all had slavery still, and it did not even free the slaves in the south where the north had taken over that part of the territory. The reason was they did not want to frighten people into joining the south. They had these moral compromises and again, the principle was going to lead eventually to the practice. It is a messy political world out there, but the calling of God on you and on me is actually quite clear.

The calling is to rescue those being led away to death and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. And I say, let us bow our heads, give God praise for the end of Roe v. Wade and then go back to rolling up your sleeves being a part of the underground railroad of our times. Let us help the pregnancy crisis movement from state to state, from neighborhood to neighborhood, from town to town, and now more around the world. Let us love our neighbors, including our pregnant neighbors, with a life-saving impact. Thank you.