Thousands of abortion-rights activists gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court after the Court announced a ruling in the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization case on June 24, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Court's decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health overturns the landmark 50-year-old Roe v Wade case and erases a federal right to an abortion. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Chip Somodevilla, 2022 Getty Images)
With the release of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision on Friday, June 24, 2022, the reign of the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in all 50 states was overturned.
This was a decision Christians have long hoped for but one that at times seems far from ever coming to pass.
A great deal has been written on this topic over the past two days, and it is not my intention here to recap all of it. But despite the volume of commentary about abortion, there are, I think, some important topics that are touched on but rarely, if they are discussed at all. It is to these topics that I now turn.
Dobbs v. Jackson Does Not Outlaw Abortion
The Supreme Court’s decision does not outlaw abortion in America. What it does is remove the Constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion, a right not found in the Constitution at all, but one invented by the Court in 1973.
When the Constitution was written, the intention of the framers was to establish a federal government of enumerated powers. That is, the Constitution spelled out in detail the powers of the federal government. Apart from these enumerated powers, the federal government had no authority. The 10th Amendment puts it this way, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
The logic here is the same as the logic behind the Regulative Principle of Worship. God alone tells us in his Word how he is to be worshipped. If the Bible does not specifically sanction a worship activity, that activity is prohibited. In like fashion, if the Constitution does not specifically spell out a governmental function as belonging to the federal government, that function is prohibited to it, and is, “reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
Following this line of thinking, we need to ask ourselves, does the Constitution have anything to say about abortion? This answer is, no it does not. Writing in Liberty Defined, Ron Paul noted,
[T]he Constitution says nothing about abortion, murder, manslaughter, or any other acts of violence. There are only four crimes listed in the Constitution: counterfeiting, piracy, treason, and slavery. Criminal and civil laws were deliberately left to the states.
Paul, Liberty Defined, 2
Those who believe the Supreme Court should ban all abortion in America likely are disappointed by the Dobbs ruling. For example, a tweet from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) read, “Following the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a patchwork of state laws means abortion access will vary widely depending on where someone lives.” But what some would call a “patchwork” is simply the result of our federal system of government. As much as Christians would like to see abortion banned in all 50 states, that is probably not a possibility at this time. Some areas of the nation take a more biblical view of abortion, and some will be less Christian in their thinking.
While Christians can pray and work for the day when abortion is banned in all 50 states, we can receive with thanks the Court’s ruling that holds out the promise that abortions will now be banned or severely restricted in some parts of the nation.
Implications of the Dobbs Decision
When the draft of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked in May – by the way, it’s odd how the leak investigation has disappeared from the news cycle – some liberals were concerned that the same logic used by the conservative justices to overturn Roe v. Wade could be used to overturn same-sex marriage.
The liberals were right.
In May, Business Insider ran a piece titled “Supreme Court leak overturning abortion rights has Democrats concerned that same-sex marriage and civil rights could be next,” in which several noted progressives were quoted as saying the logic in the draft of Dobbs posed a threat to the Court’s same-sex marriage ruling.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez complained, “As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage + civil rights.” As John Robbins noted in his Trinity Review “Abortion, the Christian, and the State,” the problem with Ocasio Cortez’s thinking is that it uses the language of rights rather than referring to the Law of God. Robbins wrote,
What is found in the Bible, what is logically sensible, and what these various phrases about human rights are designed to obscure, is the idea of divine law, specifically the Ten Commandments. It is not because a baby has an inalienable right to life that it is wrong to kill him; it is because God has said, You shall do no murder. Our moral authority is divine, not human. It consists of revealed commands, not invented rights. One of the dangers of using pagan terms – and even Francis Schaeffer did it in his book Whatever Happened to the Human Race? – is that of conceding the argument at the beginning. After all, it was on the basis of a theory of human rights – specifically the right to privacy – that the Supreme Court decided a mother has the right to kill her children.
Robbins, "Abortion, the Christian, and the State"
Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, wrote,
Predictable next steps after the Alito opinion becomes law: a nationwide abortion ban, followed by a push to roll back rights to contraception, same-sex marriage, sexual privacy, and a full array of textually unenumerated rights long taken for granted.
It is interesting to note that Tribe, a liberal’s liberal, admits that these “rights” which he holds dear are “unenumerated” in the Constitution. Speaking of same-sex marriage, there is no such thing, and neither is there a right, Constitutional or otherwise, to such an activity. Same-sex marriage is an abomination, and it is sinful for governments to enforce such contracts.
Abortion is a Religious Issue
In the wake of the Dobbs decision, journalist Michael Tracy observed that, “An annoying aspect of the abortion debate is that lots of people oppose abortion based on religious conviction, which is fine, but then they pretend completely secular reasoning brought them to their conviction.”
This is a good point. Many times, Christians come to political convictions based upon their faith but then argue for these convictions in strictly secular terms. In his epistle, James calls such individuals “double-minded” and says that such men will receive nothing from the Lord.
But as Robbins noted, “we must recognize that abortion is a religious issue, despite what some leading anti-abortionists would like us to believe” (“Abortion, the Christian, and the State”).
The Law of God prohibits murder, which the Scriptures define as the taking of innocent human life, and the Scriptures imply that the unborn child is, in fact, fully human. On that reasoning, abortion is murder and prohibited under the Sixth Commandment.
Robbins again,
As Christians we are commanded to do everything in the name and to the glory of God, and to bring every thought into captivity to Christ. The pagans want us to talk like Christians inside the church walls, and like pagans in the halls of government. If a Christian does that, he has betrayed Christ. The Bible claims to have a monopoly on truth, and it is about time that Christians began to talk and act as though they believed the Bible.
"Abortion"
It is high time Christians stopped talking like secularists and started talking like Christians.
Beware Anti-Abortion Ecumenism
There is much more that can be said about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. One topic not yet covered in this post is the extreme danger that anti-abortion ecumenism poses to Bible-believing Christians. Rome has used anti-abortion activism since the 1970s to beguile Christians into thinking Rome is a Christian church and to draw them to herself. Do not be deceived. Rome is the system of Antichrist. As important as it is to speak out against abortion, remaining loyal to the doctrine of the Justification by Belief Alone is much more so.
It is critical that Protestants be aware of Rome’s use of anti-abortion political activism for ecumenical activity. The Scriptures warn us not to greet or to invite into our homes those who do not bring the doctrine of Christ. To do so means that we share in their sins. If we yoke in anti-abortion ministry with Roman Catholics, we become guilty of the many, heinous sins of Rome.
Christian, do not be deceived.