PENnED

Christians do not see eye to eye on whether there are cases in which abortion might be deemed a right option. Some might say that abortion is acceptable in cases of rape and pregnancy that puts the life of the mother at risk. Others, however, do not see any situation that might justify abortion. To them, it is absolutely no abortion. Conservative evangelicals, in general, take that latter position.

There is no doubt that conservative evangelicals are for overturning Roe v. Wade. Abortion is the reason why many of them have become single-issue voters. In other words, they would vote for the candidates that promise to work for them on this single issue. And to many, that would mean voting straight Republican, the political party that currently takes the anti-abortion stance. (Why not if it caters to their political base?)

Sadly, however, evangelicals might have carelessly voted for incompetent candidates. If these politicians could not deliver even on what evangelicals might deem as less important issues, what’s the chance that they could deliver on more important ones, such as those related to abortion rights? For some reason that eludes me, evangelicals stick to their strategy: work with and vote straight Republican!

The last presidential election has been widely known as a transaction of compromise between evangelicals and Donald Trump. Despite Trump’s questionable reputation, the evangelicals voted for him believing that he was the “chosen one” who could deliver conservative political goals, especially the overturn of Roe v. Wade. But are conservative Evangelicals realistic in their expectations? Can the Republican Party deliver what they promise? Can they have Roe v. Wade overturned?

To answer that question, let us have a little review of the abortion right’s history. Roe v. Wade was the landmark United States Supreme Court ruling from 1973 that established abortion as a fundamental right of a pregnant woman. It is ironic that the President at that time was a Republican, Richard Nixon, and the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the majority opinion was a Republican, Harry Blackmun, who was joined by two other Republicans: Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justice Potter Stewart!*

In 1992, the Supreme Court, which was “now more ideologically conservative than at the time Roe was decided,” revisited the legal rulings in Roe v. Wade in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Even though it modified its ruling by abandoning “Roe’s trimester framework in favor of a standard based on fetal viability, the Court “overruled Roe’s requirement that government regulations on abortion be subjected to the strict scrutiny standard” and reaffirmed “that a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion is constitutionally protected.”**

Recently, evangelicals were again disappointed that President Trump’s conservative appointees have not delivered what they hoped their vote for Trump would accomplish. “Pro-life leaders expressed deep disappointment with the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal June 29 to uphold a Louisiana law designed to protect the lives and health of women by requiring hospital admitting privileges for doctors who perform abortions.”***

So if a “conservative” president (in quotation marks because I don’t believe Trump is a true conservative) and a conservative Supreme Court cannot or not willing to deliver on the issue that makes evangelicals one-issue voters, why stick to a political strategy that has not worked? If Republicans were the original proponents of Roe v. Wade and, as we have seen, are not really working to overturn abortion rights, shouldn’t that make evangelicals think that perhaps the issue has been constantly used as a bait to vote Republican? And since the evangelical strategy to vote Republican has never worked since President Richard Nixon (yes, even when the sitting President is Republican: Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (1974 –1977), Ronald Wilson Reagan (1981–1989), George Herbert Walker Bush (1989 –1993), George Walker Bush (2001-2009), Donald Trump (2016-present), wouldn’t it be smart to rethink it?

Politicians and political parties will always tell us what we want to hear. God does not do that. God will always tell us the truth. And God will always fulfill his promises, including the humanly impossible ones. Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:29, NIV). So, let’s trust God rather than man.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
  **https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_casey.html
  *** https://mbcpathway.com/2020/06/29/court-disappoints-pro-lifers-with-abortion-ruling/*