Last week, the Gospel Coalition published an article by Scott Klusendorf titled “Why Equal Protection Bills Harm Pro-Life Efforts.” His basic premise: charging aborting mothers with murder will lead to more abortions in the end. Two days later, Seth Gruber posted a response via Substack in which he publicly took Scott to task for his “poorly reasoned” position. Though these are not names that will mean anything to the average American, both men carry significant clout within pro-life circles—which is why it’s distressing to see them publicly at odds. Distressing, but not surprising. This is the era of ideological infighting, after all. Schisms are the new black.

For my part, I’ve known and admired Scott Kluesendorf since the beginning of my pro-life career some three decades ago. Our paths don’t cross much, but our vocational journeys share plenty in common. Seth Gruber is someone I don’t think I’ve ever met in person, but I did have some virtual interactions with him back in 2011. He was barely out of high school at the time. Today, he is among the highest-profile pro-life speakers in the country—and his observation about abortion’s perverse relationship to the Eucharist (This is my body) is profound. Klusendorf bolstered his article with a quote from Gregg Cunningham, the man who opened my eyes to the evils of abortion. Gruber bolstered his with a quote from C.S. Lewis, the man who opened my eyes to just about everything else. Are they trying to make it impossible for me to pick a side?

Earlier this year, Klusendorf informs us, something rather unprecedented happened in Tennessee. A proposed pro-life House Bill failed to receive even a single subcommittee vote thanks, in part, to the pro-life organizations that campaigned against it. Like Klusendorf, they deemed the bill “antithetical to the anti-abortion movement.” That’s how the Nashville Banner put it. So this isn’t just a “classroom” dispute between two pro-life intellectuals. In the post-Dobbs landscape, where states can again outlaw abortion, it suddenly has more real-world implications than it’s had in a half century. This is how Klusendorf articulates the historic case against prosecuting aborting mothers:

In pre-Roe America, pro-life legislation exempted women receiving abortions from murder charges. There were three reasons for this exemption. First, lawmakers concluded that punishing abortion on the supply side (i.e., the abortionist) would dramatically reduce its occurrence. Second, prosecutors needed the testimony of the woman to convict the abortionist, and without immunity, she had no incentive to testify against him. Third, lawmakers concluded that many women seeking abortions acted without full knowledge, having been coerced by boyfriends, family members, or society into making a wrong choice.

One of Gruber’s objections, though he doesn’t lay it out in quite these terms, is that we are rapidly moving towards an abortionist-free future. Not an abortion-free future, mind you, but abortionist-free. This is why my enthusiasm for the ongoing slate of abortion clinic closures is less than it would have been even a few years ago. The abortion pill—delivered by mail—is putting both abortionists and abortion clinics out of business. The difficulty is this. If there is no abortionist, and you categorically refuse to charge the mother, then how can you prosecute the crime of abortion? You can’t, Gruber argues. “A pregnant mother in (even) the most conservative state in America,” he reasons, “can abort her baby at any point in pregnancy by any means and face zero legal consequences, so long as she performs that abortion herself.” Gruber concedes that America isn’t ready for the passage of equal protection bills but insists they should be pursued anyway. He writes:

It’s true our culture is likely “not ready” for the criminalization of abortion, wherein little babies are actually given the same protections against being murdered [that] you and I and our children have. Our culture is no more ready for that than it was for “gay marriage” in 2015, for legal porn in 1973, or for full-term abortions also in 1973 [but] sexual liberationists and occult feminists never WAIT for the culture to be “ready”… They create culture and change it according to their whims THROUGH their political engagement. They go all-in and mobilize their relatively small portion of the public who are willing to sacrifice nearly everything on the altar of “orgasms without responsibility.” They understand and understand well that “statecraft is soulcraft.”

I find this passage extremely compelling and true. Those who promote wicked causes do not wait for opportunity; they create opportunity. Gregg Cunningham has been saying this for years. Specifically, that those seeking to advance the banner of abortion are far more willing to do the necessary legwork than those who oppose it. That, however, is not the point of contention, and I feel compelled to point out that Gruber has subtly adjusted the parameters of the debate. Did you notice that? The disagreement is not over whether our culture is ready to criminalize abortion. Numerous states have already done so. The disagreement is over whether or not it would be advisable to charge aborting mothers with murder. Nothing Gruber wrote above speaks to that specific point.

You might argue that if unborn babies were actually given the “same protections” as born children, then mothers would be charged for their murder, but that’s not necessarily the case. Because mothers who kill their born children are almost never prosecuted as they would have been if they were not the mother. A 2024 Canadian study reports that “most child homicides are committed by [parents or stepparents]” and further notes that “maternal perpetrators are less likely to be convicted (in general), less likely to be convicted of murder, less likely to receive a prison sentence, and receive sentences that are shorter on average compared to paternal perpetrators.” Many countries formally grant leniency to murdering mothers through infanticide laws. Those that don’t, like the United States, still tend to sentence mothers differently. Haven’t we all seen news stories of women who directly or indirectly killed their infant child only to receive what seems a grossly-inadequate sentence? I’m not saying that’s how it should be. I’m just pointing out that the precedent of treating mothers with kid gloves already exists.

It’s also true, according to the law given to Moses, that prosecuting different types of murders according to different legal standards may be perfectly appropriate. Why is this important? Because it counteracts the assertion that charging mothers with murder is the only way to adequately account for the humanity of unborn children. Though this is one of those passages I might prefer not be found in Scripture, Exodus 21 makes a legal distinction between killing a slave and killing someone who is not a slave. The specific context is an ox with a history of violence. We read the following in verses 29-32:

But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death. If a ransom is imposed on him, then he shall give for the redemption of his life whatever is imposed on him. If it gores a man’s son or daughter, he shall be dealt with according to this same rule. If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.

There is plenty here to offend my Western sensibilities, but the material point is this. The slave and the freeman are both human beings. They’re both made in the image of God. On this front, they are equals—and yet the law treats their deaths differently. It was a capital offense to kill a free man, woman, or child (even indirectly). It was not a capital offense to kill a slave. I am not saying that unborn children are the moral equivalents of slaves. I’m simply pointing out that prosecutorial distinctions are not unbiblical as a matter of course. I’m open to the idea that we should be charging aborting mothers with murder, but I’m not open to the idea that the Bible (or the humanity of  unborn children) requires it. That’s simply not the case. And is it really fair to legally single out the aborting mother while ostensibly giving the father a pass? Just because she’s the one who physically carries their child?

Over the last few years, virtually all pro-life ballot initiatives have failed. “We might wish it weren’t so,” Klusendorf writes, “but the relentless drumbeat of stories claiming that women will die from abortion restrictions or be prosecuted for suffering miscarriage resonates not only with the general public but also with marginally pro-life voting blocks.” And donors, I would add. One of the things I discovered in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs verdict is that there is a class of people who are morally opposed to abortion but want it to be legal. Abort73 lost donors who suddenly realized that they weren’t anti-abortion in the way they’d assumed themselves to be. Some of that owed to misinformation surrounding the purported unavailability of miscarriage care, but I suspect there was more in play than just that. What they really want, it seems, is a society that discourages abortion through culture and education—but doesn’t prohibit it by law. That may sound nice in theory, but it’s a pipe dream in practice. Gruber points this out quite persuasively. He writes:

[Andrew] Breitbart [argued that] “politics is downstream of culture.” So change the culture, you change the politics. True enough. But only half true. Culture is also downstream of politics… And abortion is in fact the best example for this. The median number of illegal abortions before 1973 in America was 98,000. Within just a handful of years following Roe, the annual total of murdered babies was 1.6 million! That cultural change was due solely to the political change. And this despite the fact that in 1973, the Democrat Party was largely pro-life.

The dramatic year-over-year increase in abortions following Roe is something I point to every time someone suggests that laws have no bearing on a woman’s willingness to have an abortion. History tells a very different story. In large measure, it was the supply of abortion that created the massive uptick in demand. Like so many of the technologies that society can no longer live without, abortion is not necessary. It is merely convenient. And deadly (in more ways than one). “Can we change enough hearts and minds through cultural engagement alone,” Gruber asks, “to create a sufficient enough shift that the people will ‘be ready’ for the criminalization of abortion?” In his words: “Not likely.” Even though Abort73 does work “through cultural engagement alone,” to change the way people think about abortion, I am sympathetic to Gruber’s claim. Because, having been at this for a generation now, I can admit to underestimating both the difficulty of educating the masses about abortion and the possibility that said education will fail to produce the desired result. 

That being said, I’m not aware of any pro-life leaders or organizations that are opposed to abortion bans in general. It’s only prosecuting the mother that some take issue with, but this distinction gets lost throughout Gruber’s Substack piece. “What will happen,” he asks, if we take Klusendorf’s advise and refrain from demanding and fighting for full legal protections for the unborn in America’s red states and focus on the culture (instead)?” But Klusendorf isn’t opposed to giving full legal protection to unborn children. He simply believes the punishment should fall on the provider alone. While Klusendorf opened with the assertion that not prosecuting mothers is the historical norm, Gruber asserted the opposite, using an in-article headline to declare that “Equal Protection Is the Historic American Position.” But he then skips over the point of actual contention to argue again for something that is not being disputed. Gruber writes:

The position that preborn children should have legal protections is more traditional in American jurisprudence than the position of Mr. Klusendorf. By the time of ratification, nearly every state had criminal legislation proscribing abortion. Twenty-three states and six territories referred to the fetus as a “child” in their anti-abortion statutes. Twenty-eight jurisdictions classified abortion as an “offense against the person.”

Here again, Klusendorf explicitly affirmed the fact that criminalizing abortion was the historic norm. So in order to counter his actual position, Gruber would need to demonstrate that these 23 states and six territories did, in fact, prosecute aborting mothers for murder. But that key piece of the puzzle is left off the table. I’m no apologist for the pro-life establishment. I’ve been on the outside looking in for as long as I’ve been doing this work, but I’m leery of the idea that anyone who proposes immunity for aborting mothers has made some sort of deal with the devil. It’s one thing to say, I disagree with your tactics. It’s another to say, you’re not really pro-life. Or, you must not be a Christian. Gruber doesn’t go quite that far, but he’s close. He accuses numerous pro-life leaders and organizations, by name, of being “co-opted by the GOP Republican Establishment” and lays the blame for red state medical abortions at their feet. They “serve as incumbent protection programs” (for abortion?) he argues, whose “subversion” of pro-life principles cannot be tolerated. 

It’s certainly possible that there are some bad actors within the ranks of professional pro-lifers. How could there not be? But while “pro-life” politicians may want to maintain the status quo for political reasons, it’s hard to imagine there’s enough money or prestige in vocationally combatting abortion to entice the blackguard class. I do not begrudge Seth Gruber his passion or impatience. One of the most credible accusations you’ll hear leveled against we who oppose abortion goes like this: our rhetoric and our actions don’t match up. If we really believed abortion was murder, if we really believed thousands of babies were being slaughtered in America every day, we’d be doing a whole lot more about it. Our relative indifference is a tell. It indicates we’re not as torn up about abortion as we pretend to be. In Gruber’s mind, we can say abortion is murder, but if we’re unwilling to prosecute as such, is it all just a charade? 

Now for the moment of truth. Is Scott Klusendorf right, or is Seth Gruber right? Does justice demand that we prosecute mothers for the crime of abortion, or does wisdom demand that we take the victories we can get? And the answer is… I have no idea. Time will tell, or it won’t. That’s part of the difficulty. There are compelling arguments on both sides, but there are no control groups. There is only an endless stream of shifting variables. All of which makes it impossible to know with any certainty whether taking a different tack would lead to better results. Or worse. Fortunately for me (and for most of you), it doesn’t matter who is right. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this debate doesn’t matter. I’m just saying it doesn't matter to the vast majority of those who hate abortion and want to see it relegated to the dustbin of history.

Outlawing abortion is almost certainly the most effective way to eliminate abortion. Wherever abortion can be outlawed, it should be outlawed. I suspect Scott and Seth would both agree. But that still leaves all the places where abortion can’t be outlawed (apart from miraculous intervention). What do we do there? Especially in our current political climate where support for anti-abortion policies continues to hemorrhage. Klusendorf referenced a study indicating that “only 43 percent of churchgoers now identify as pro-life, a 20-point crash in just two years.” Yikes. His advice: we should follow the lead of Lincoln and Wilberforce who achieved ultimate victory against slavery by not seeking for too much too soon. On the other hand, we’ve already been at this for more than 50 years. At what point does patience become cowardice or dereliction? Nor do I much care for the practice of publicly sabotaging the efforts of fellow pro-lifers for putting forth a bill you’re strategically opposed to. Tactical disagreements are one thing. Turning those disagreements into public grievances is another. Didn’t Paul say something about it being better to be wronged than to bring public shame on the cause of the gospel? And isn’t it somewhat disingenuous to assert that since a bill won’t pass, we’re going to ensure that it doesn’t pass? Here are two additional Scriptures that come to mind:

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind… (so) why do you pass judgment on your brother? … For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” (Romans 14:5-10)

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. (Romans 12:18)

One of the reasons C.S. Lewis is so universally beloved is because he didn’t miss the forest for the trees. We Christians can be as sectarian as they come, but Lewis transcended denominational divisions by reminding us that there is more that unites us than divides. There’s a lesson there for pro-lifers. Unless you’re a lawmaker or lobbyist, you can content yourself with being merely pro-life. You needn’t be able to articulate exactly how the crime of abortion should be prosecuted—or even have a definitive position on the subject—in order to be a meaningful public witness against abortion. That’s worth remembering. There is no one right way to combat abortion. The best we can do is to be faithful to both our reason and principles. Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind. 

How can the average American be a witness against abortion? My suggestion is this. Focus first on your family and your neighbors. Make sure your kids have a working knowledge of prenatal development. Share with them what makes abortion anathema. Reaching your neighbors is admittedly trickier, but Abort73 can help. That’s where our T-shirts and bumper stickers come in. And even if you’re not a T-shirt wearer, imagine with me what might happen if you added one of our stickers to your car. Is it possible that after seeing “Abort73” drive through their neighborhood for days, weeks, or months, some or all of your neighbors would finally be compelled to Google Abort73? And if you have the financial wherewithal to invest in the elimination of abortion, find the organization that most closely aligns to your own convictions and objectives. And give! Remembering as you do that the horse is prepared for the day of battle, but victory belongs to the Lord.