The debate over how to best protect preborn babies continues in the state of Idaho. Of note this year, Sen. Brandon Shippy (R-New Plymouth) has introduced the Idaho Prenatal Equal Protection Act. The proposed legislation would, among other things, enable prosecuting attorneys to treat abortion as either murder or manslaughter—all with the goal of extending equal protection of the law to preborn children.
Idaho Family Policy Center stands in support of the principles driving equal protection efforts like the Idaho Prenatal Equal Protection Act. The biblical, historical, and scientific evidence makes clear that human life begins at the point of fertilization and that each individual life deserves to be protected with the full force of the law. Because any elective abortion is an unjust tragedy and a reproach to civilized society, Christians must continue seeking opportunities to better protect preborn life.
That said, we are dealing with real world legislation. As a result, we must look to the practical application of these noble principles.
Many of the criticisms that have been lobbed against the Idaho Prenatal Equal Protection Act are meritless, including dystopian visions of government officials intrusively investigating each and every miscarriage to determine whether an abortion has been performed.
But it’s also worth noting that our policy team does have some legitimate concerns about how this legislation would work in practice, as well as whether it would really achieve its intended goal of strengthening protections for the preborn while reducing illegal abortions across the state.
To that end, we plan to release a policy paper later this summer that explains our concerns with the Idaho Prenatal Equal Protection Act and makes recommendations that could strengthen the bill when it is reintroduced in coming years. Additionally, we hope to work with potential bill sponsors and other legislators to improve the bill in ways that would increase its effectiveness and chances of success.
Our prayer is that Idaho lawmakers will continue trending toward equal protection of the preborn in future years. Idaho Family Policy Center remains steadfast in our commitment to advancing this cause.
With this in mind, Idaho Family Policy Center sets forth these guiding principles to inform how we will pursue justice for the preborn moving forward:
1. While some post-abortive women are indeed victims, biblical justice dictates that women should not be given blanket immunity from prosecution for procuring or inducing an unlawful abortion.
Two common yet opposing views proliferate public debate on the culpability of post-abortive mothers. Some argue the mother is always a secondary victim of the abortion, and therefore these women should be exempted from criminal liability. Under this view, only the abortionist should be held legally responsible for the death of the preborn baby.
Conversely, others claim that the mother is never a secondary victim because of the role she played in killing her child. Advocates of this perspective sometimes frame their arguments in a way that suggests post-abortive mothers should almost always face charges of murder or manslaughter, with little regard for the unique facts and circumstances of each case.
However, both of these viewpoints oversimplify reality by ignoring the nuances of differing situations and the complexities that commonly surround mothers who seek abortions.
It goes without saying that many abortion-vulnerable mothers are coerced by loved ones or misled by medical professionals. Some women are even threatened with violence by parents or domestic partners. In these instances, the mother could be considered a second victim.
But there are also examples of mothers who understand that abortion ends the lives of their preborn children yet knowingly proceed in callous disregard for the lives growing within their wombs. These are the women who “shout” their abortions or ingest chemical abortion pills on live television as a political protest. Such women ought to be punished for their actions.
Thankfully, our criminal justice system is equipped with the procedural safeguards necessary to distinguish between post-abortive mothers who deserve mercy and those who deserve punishment. For example, prosecuting attorneys already have great discretion regarding which cases to pursue and which crimes to charge. The demands of justice can be ascertained only by first considering the unique circumstances of each specific case.
To treat each post-abortive situation as identical – either by always maintaining the absolute innocence of the mother or by always asserting her guilt – would represent a gross miscarriage of justice.
2. Biblical equal protection demands that rape and incest exceptions must be eliminated.
Exceptions for abortion in cases of rape or incest run contrary to the Word of God. Biblical justice dictates that every preborn child is entitled to equal protection under the law, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their conception.
Ezekiel 18:20 provides the principle that “the child should not be punished for the sins of the parent.” But rape and incest exceptions punish the baby for the sins of the father—destroying the innocent life that has been created, albeit through sinful actions.
Even more, we must also be honest about the real and lasting emotional consequences of abortion with pregnant mothers who have suffered from the trauma of rape or incest. One survey conducted by the Elliot Institute found that 88 percent of women who became pregnant as a result of rape regretted their abortions and expressed that their abortions had been the “wrong solution” to their pregnancies. And just as tellingly, every rape or incest victim who had chosen to carry their baby to term “expressed satisfaction with their decision to have the baby.”
Each preborn child – whether conceived in a covenant marriage or conceived through violence – deserves the same inalienable right to life as every other person. Removing rape and incest exceptions in Idaho abortion law is best for baby, mother, and society.
3. In a fallen world, it is more important to prioritize saving preborn lives over making political statements.
Idaho Family Policy Center is committed to building a culture of life where every preborn child is cherished and equally protected with the full force of the law—even as we seek a day when God’s justice is honored across our state.
But that vision will become reality only through incremental steps which save as many preborn lives as possible and reframe the cultural perspective on life.¹ When political realities render impossible the immediate adoption of laws which reflect biblical justice, our efforts to protect the preborn must be informed by Proverbs 3:27: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.”
Although current Idaho abortion laws fall short of the biblical ideal, they have effectively reduced the legal abortion rate by nearly 99.9%. Building on this success requires intentionally pursuing thoughtful proposals that push the boundaries of what is possible within current political restraints—all while simultaneously shifting the narrative on the value of preborn human life in the direction of biblical truth.
Christians should never impede or hinder efforts to abolish abortion, no matter how remote or unlikely. But Christians must also seize every opportunity available to save as many preborn lives as possible. By refusing to support or celebrate imperfect pro-life laws for the purpose of making a political statement, some Christians neglect to use the power at their disposal to provide good to our preborn neighbors.
Idaho Family Policy Center has been – and will continue to be – on the frontlines in the fight to protect the lives and the rights of the preborn. We recognize that protections for preborn children must be strengthened before God’s justice will be fully satisfied, but we also celebrate the thousands of children that have been saved from death by our abortion laws. We fully believe that a day is coming to Idaho when every human life is guaranteed equal protection under the law, and when every human life is cherished and valued.
¹ Many theologians, scholars, and pastors who support abolishing abortion have argued for an incrementalist approach to Christian social transformation as we work to change hearts and minds. For example, Reformed theologian and theonomist scholar Kenneth L. Gentry makes a classic argument for incrementalism in his book Political Issues Made Easy (2020):
As Christians living in God’s world, we must understand that we are here in the world for the long run. And as we come to grips with this it will be encouraging to recognize an important method of God’s dealings with man: gradualism, or incrementalism. That is, God generally works gradually over time to accomplish his purpose. We must therefore be willing to labor for our Christian influence in politics over time, not expecting all to be accomplished over night.
This theological principle should buttress our hope for the future. It allows us to seek smaller, stop-loss victories now with a goal to winning larger ones as history unfolds. Thus, this theological principle shows the practical wisdom in accepting compromise in our political actions (not compromise of our principles themselves) in the present time with a view to gaining influence in the long run. Rather than approaching politics as an all-or-nothing venture, we must recognize the significance of incremental victory over time.
In Scripture we find the principle of gradualism embodied in the actions of God in history. God works by the slow providence over time by means of a ‘here a little; there a little’ gradualism (Isa. 28:10). Indeed, he encourages his people by rhetorically asking: “Who has despised the day of small things? (Zech. 4:10). […]
We do not, of course, compromise our principles themselves. That would make us what we are not. But sometimes we must compromise our methods. In promoting Christian politics in a mixed and antagonistic environment such as we have in America, we must recognize the opposition we face. We must accept as a political principle that we will have to oppose the greater evil by sometimes voting for the lesser good.
Pastor Toby Sumpter of King’s Cross Church in Moscow, Idaho, applies the principles of incrementalism that are observable in the Kingdom to the issue of abolishing abortion (“Eight Tenets of Smashmouth Incrementalism,” 03/07/2022):
We believe that the gospel works through the world like leaven in a loaf, like a mustard seed slowly growing. Likewise, while every regenerate person is fully justified at conversion, sanctification is the process by which Christ conforms people to His glorious image, an incremental process only completed at the resurrection in glorification. While all known sin must be put to death as quickly as possible, God does not convict everyone of every sin equally or immediately. This is especially true of widespread cultural sins (for example, polygamy, divorce, and slavery). While God hates the shedding of innocent blood, especially of children, and His prophets certainly condemned it, the center of their message was a gospel message of repentance that would have resulted in gradual reformation in the land.
While God’s justice is unchanging, the implementation of His justice will always be imperfect in this world, and our goal must be gradual conformity to God’s eternal standards. We find examples of this gradual conformity in the fact that God did not immediately put Cain to death after he murdered his brother, He did not immediately prohibit blood-avengers for manslaughter, He did not immediately prohibit polygamy, He did not immediately or fully prohibit slavery, nor did He completely prohibit sinful divorce, and Scripture praises kings who used methods of suppression for sodomy (e.g. exile) instead of the death penalty prescribed in the law. […]
The same is true of the necessity of ending abortion. […] We reject the notion that any incremental bill that stops short of complete abolition means that its supporters are permitting any abortion before and within the limited parameters (e.g. ‘and then you can kill the baby’), any more than God’s law limiting polygamy was God granting permission to a man to take a second wife (Ex. 21:10). […] Since we cannot snap our fingers and end all abortion in every land immediately, all efforts to end abortion must be incremental in time and space. . . .
Wayne Grudem, a popular Bible scholar and systematic theologian in the neo-Evangelical movement, explained in his systematic political theology textbook Politics According to the Bible (2010) the importance of using incremental reform in the abortion context:
If laws are eventually made to prevent abortions, what penalties should be given to those who perform an abortion? […] In a democracy, laws can only be passed with support from a majority of the elected representatives of the people, and ultimately this means that – in ordinary circumstances anyway – laws can only be passed with support from a majority of the citizens . . . Therefore, in determining an appropriate penalty for performing an abortion, it would be foolish for pro-life representatives to insist on penalties so severe that they would not gain assent from a reasonable majority of the population or their elected representatives, for then no law would be passed at all.
What if a ‘compromise’ law were proposed that would prohibit abortions except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest? I think that Christians should support such legislation, since it would still prohibit probably 99% of the abortions that are occurring today. After such a law is passed, perhaps further modifications could be made to the law in the future, if public sentiment would support it. But even such a law would do a tremendous amount of good in protecting the lives of the vast majority of preborn children who today are being put to death.
