Passion Life is now working in 27 different countries around the world helping pastors teach their churches and the community of churches to organize pregnancy help ministries that fit within the context of their own country. One of the most exciting moments of my life is when we get these reports from around the world. Some of our reports come from countries in which the Christians are persecuted and they continue to live out their church life as part of the underground church. They have to be very careful about what they say and do. When we get a report from these places, we can’t share the pictures or the specifics of the stories and in many cases they are some of our best stories that we have to keep private at this time to protect them.

I received a report from one country like this just last Friday. It is not helpful, but I am telling you the stories were really inspiring because these are courageous Christians going to great lengths to help mothers who are in crisis have their babies and to overcome insurmountable odds. It is so depressing when I hear this steady, constant criticism against the pro-life work from our critics outside the movement. One of those criticisms is that we need to be a whole life movement rather than a pro-life movement. The argument goes like this: “The whole life movement seeks to purify the pro-life movement of its inconsistencies. A pro-life movement that ignores infant mortality rates, starvation, or the degradation of the environment simply does not deserve the label pro-life. Only a whole life approach can make the pro-life movement authentically pro-life.” I think this argument falls flat because when you put it to the test, when you apply it consistently to anyone who is doing any kind of nonprofit work, they do not need to take responsibility for doing everything. To save an innocent child from being intentionally killed does not mean that you have to become an environmental advocate at the same time and spend whatever precious few resources that you have equally among hundreds of social concerns. Can you imagine me telling the people living in places of great hardship and persecution that if they rescue a mother from aborting her baby, that now she’s responsible to stop starvation around the world or they need to become environmental activists? Or that they need to address social policy and law? This argument is inconsistent.

I know some people, some really close friends of mine, who work with Muslim refugees that come from hard places to this country and my friends help them resettle. They get the refugees an apartment and help them start to learn English. They make sure that the refugees are here legally so that they can get jobs and start to integrate into our society. Can you imagine if I were to say to my friends, “You only care about refugees, but Jesus cared about all these others and if you are going to be consistent in your pro-life work with refugees, you also have to take care of the elderly and the sick and the poor, deal with unequal education, and become an environmental activist.” This is a burden that no one places on any other group of people but pro-lifers. If you are taking care of inner city kids in the afterschool program, you are doing a great thing. It does not mean that you are inconsistent if you are not doing everything else for those kids. This is an argument that I really encourage you to resist. Stand in the pro-life movement. Defend the innocent. I really encourage you to join us at Passion Life as a partner, supporter, or prayer warrior to help us bring the gospel of life to other countries and to help Christians in hard places defend the weak and the innocent where it’s most difficult for these children to survive.