Can a Pro-Life Christian Vote Pro-Choice?

How can a Christian who believes in the sanctity of life and that life begins at conception vote for a pro-choice candidate? I’ve seen this question posed a few times - most recently on Facebook today - and often seen it discussed in the past. The best expression I’ve seen of that viewpoint was in a 2004 article by J. Budziszewski, “Ballot Box Blues”:

“Just for purposes of argument,” she persisted, “suppose candidate X supported abortion, and candidate Y opposed abortion but supported a war that was unjust… So an unjust war would be a sanctity-of-life issue too, wouldn’t it?”

“It would,” I said, “and an unjust war certainly could be even worse than abortion. But let’s think a little further. To be even worse than abortion, just how bad would the unjust war have to be?… Do you happen to know how many innocent lives are lost each year through legalized abortion?“…

“Just through surgical abortions? We’re running at about 1.2 million a year,” she said. “More than 44 million babies have been killed since abortion was legalized.”…

“So to be worse than abortion,” I asked, “wouldn’t an unjust war have to kill even more than 1.2 million innocent people each year?”

1.2 million innocent lives a year is a lot - enough to supersede almost any other policy question. I found this logic irrefutable, so I’ve reliably voted Republican for almost my entire life.

And yet…

There’s a lot more to Christian faith and values than protecting unborn life. Let’s take a step back from the abortion question and think about what a truly “Christian” approach to politics would look like. Robert O’Callahan, a Christian New Zealander, gives a great description:

A truly Christian party’s key issues would include reminding the voting public that we all sinners against God, in need of repentance and forgiveness that comes through Jesus. The party would proclaim to voters “how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God” and warn against storing up treasures on earth instead of heaven. It would insist on policies that support “the least of these”. It would find a way to denounce universally popular sins such as greed, gluttony and heterosexual extra-marital sex, and advocate policies that reduce their harm, while visibly observing Paul’s dictum “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” A Christian party would follow Jesus’ warning against “those who for a show make lengthy prayers” and downplay their own piety. It would put extraordinary emphasis on honouring the name of Christ by avoiding any sort of lies, corruption or scandal. Its members would show love for their enemies and not retaliate when attacked. If they fail in public, they would confess and repent in public.

That sounds pretty difficult, but it’s what Jesus deserves from any party that claims his name.

Whew. That’s a lot. In tact, I’d go further than O’Callahan; I’d say it sounds just about impossible for a mainstream political party to reliably act like this. Certainly neither the Republican nor Democratic parties do. So maybe that’s too much to ask. Let’s set a lower goal; what would it look like for a political party to reflect Christian values?

For me, that would probably include some combination of the following: Opposition to abortion and assisted suicide (because of the sanctity of human life). A genuine care and concern for the poor (even if there’s plenty of room for debate about what concrete policies best help the poor). Care for the environment (we’re stewards of God’s creation). Opposition to racism (we’re all made in the image of God), including a willingness to wrestle with the legacy of slavery and institutionalized discrimination. Fiscal responsibility (including a willingness to pay a fair share in taxes). Support for the family. Support for families. A commitment to humility and truth-seeking that’s willing to engage with expert advice and outside consensus. A skepticism toward big government and a willingness to limit its power (because we’re fallen, and power corrupts). A skepticism toward big corporations and a willingness to regulate them (because we’re fallen, and power corrupts them, too). Vigorous defense of religious freedom and freedom of conscience for all faiths (I don’t want Christianity protected just because it’s currently mainstream). A skepticism toward violence and instruments of violence (because we have a Second Amendment and wars can be just, but violence and instruments of violence are symptoms of the fall and end human lives and aren’t something to celebrate).

There’s room for disagreement here; I’m sure that some Christians would express some of these values differently or may add or remove some. But hopefully this is at least broadly recognizable as a list of Christian political positions. Of these positions, protecting 1.2 million innocent lives a year should surely go at or near the top of the list. The problem is that this list doesn’t line up with the Republican or Democratic parties; each party does some things well and others less well.

To be more direct – the Republican party isn’t just the evangelical Christian party. (If it was, it would look more like O’Callahan’s ideal.) It’s a coalition of evangelical Christians, other social conservatives, big business types, libertarians, whites who are still irritated about the civil rights movement, and Buchanan- and Bannon-style nationalists. (And, of course, there’s some overlap between these groups, and plenty of folks can fall into more than one group.) Most of these groups aren’t automatically bad, but they can have views and positions that go against the spirit of Christ – turning into social conservative moralism and big-business mammon and libertarian self-centeredness and white-grievance-fueled racism and arrogant ethnocentrism. And some of those views and positions show up in the Republican party. And so I’m left feeling like, if I’m going to vote to protect 1.2 million innocent lives a year, I have to accept all of the rest that comes along with it. In fact, I sometimes even feel like my vote is held hostage – as long as the Republican party is pro-life, it can do whatever it wants for anyone else in the coalition, secure in the knowledge that evangelical Christians will never abandon it.

I don’t like feeling that way. But, to protect 1.2 million innocent lives a year, I can suck it up and deal with it. Right?

And yet…

So we went from “we have to vote pro-life nationally to save 1.2 million lives a year” to “there’s an outside chance that voting pro-life nationally could save 112,060 lives a year” (13% of the current declining rates) to “we’re continuing to make pro-life progress regardless of what happens nationally (and maybe the ‘pro-choice’ Democrats have some helpful ideas, too).” And saving 112,060 lives a year is huge, and I don’t want to downplay or become numb to the horror of abortion, but I’m also increasingly weary of feeling like I have to compromise numerous other values and positions for the sake of a cause that we’re making real headway on regardless.

Because, after all, ending abortion is only part of upholding life. To pick just one example: according to Wikipedia, African Americans’ average life expectancy is 3.6 years shorter than white Americans. How do I weigh 862,000 unborn lives lost to abortion against 45 million African American lives shortened due to racial and economic inequalities? I don’t know. Shouldn’t we be talking about lives lost to racism and poverty as passionately as we talk about lives lost to abortion? Probably. There aren’t easy answers, but I at least no longer think that it’s automatically correct to vote for the party that says they’re “pro-life.”

For a Christian, being pro-life should go deeper still: no matter how good we do at preserving life in the face of abortion and poverty and violence and COVID, everyone dies. In Luke 13:1-5:

Now there were some present on that occasion who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. He answered them, “Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things? No, I tell you! But unless you repent, you will all perish as well! Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you! But unless you repent you will all perish as well!”

Jesus’ listeners wanted to tie each of those deaths to human action and consequences (in that case, the idea that bad events were the direct result of God’s judgment on sin). Jesus challenged them to reorient their perspective: people die regardless, and what’s more important is getting right with God, lest we die eternally. As it relates to politics – being truly pro-life has to mean that we support candidates and policies that make it easier to follow Christ, who alone can offer permanent life, rather than tempting or corrupting people into sin, and that we avoid compromising our beliefs and our witness for the sake of anti-abortion laws. John Piper makes this point brilliantly in “Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin”; I’m not sure how much I can add to what he wrote.

Because there’s another, deeper risk to evangelicals’ blanket support for Republicans as the “pro-life” party – not only does it weaken our impact within the party (by limiting our ability to advocate for broader Christian views, because the coalition knows it has our vote regardless), but by so closely identifying with a secular party, we risk getting sucked into secular partisanship, and we risk mistaking Republican party positions for Christian positions, and we risk becoming viewed by the outside world as just another political interest group. These are tragic, potentially eternal consequences, and I believe they’ve happened and continue to happen.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I still passionately believe that abortion is wrong. I know that there’s still a strong case for supporting anti-abortion policies and candidates. I just can’t let it solely decide my vote anymore.

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