#OPEDFRIDAY | Abortion is on the Ballot - These Elections are a Chess Game, Not a Valentine’s Wish

By Troy Newman
President, Operation Rescue

In the days of the American founding, ministers stood in pulpits and preached election sermons. They opened the Bible, laid out the duties of rulers and the people who choose them, and warned the land against the sins that invite judgment. We need that clarity again.

Right now, one question stands above the rest: Whether the killing of the unborn will continue under the protection of law, or whether the civil magistrate will once more bear the sword of authority to defend the weakest among us (Romans 13:4). Abortion is on the ballot. Period.

Psalm 8 asks, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” God made us a little lower than the angels, crowned us with glory and honor, and gave us dominion. The unborn are not a clump of cells. They are the work of God’s hands—image-bearers known by Him before they ever drew breath (Psalm 139:16). To shed their innocent blood is an attack on that crown. The truth of Genesis 9:6 still stands: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

The civil magistrate does not bear the sword in vain (Romans 13:4). When he uses that authority to protect those who destroy the image of God in the womb, he has stopped ruling in the fear of God. He has become an accomplice to the same kind of abomination the prophets condemned when children were sacrificed to Molech. Tens of millions of image-bearers have been cut off. Their blood cries out from the ground. This is not ordered liberty. It is the strong devouring the weak.

Human sacrifice is not new. Israel passed children through the fire to Baal and Molech. The Aztecs tore out beating hearts. Carthage sacrificed infants in the tophets. Abortion is simply the modern, clinical form—same bloodguilt, different altar. The deepest pollution of the land is not chemical, it is blood (Psalm 106:37–38; Numbers 35:33). A magistrate who refuses to restrain it leaves the land defiled, and a people who elect such rulers share the pollution.

This is also not the first time the church has faced a culture of death. George Grant has documented that we are living through “the third time around.” In pagan Rome, the early church stood against abortion and infanticide. Later generations fought the same fight. In the nineteenth-century United States, a coalition of pastors and physicians, moved by the Word of God and by the medical knowledge that the unborn is a living human being, worked to criminalize abortion across the states. The Lord who raised up deliverers then has not lost His power now.

We are dual citizens. Our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), yet under God’s providence we are also citizens of this earthly nation. Paul used his Roman citizenship for the sake of justice (Acts 22:25; 25:11). Participating in civil life is not optional for those who know the blood of the innocent is on the ballot. Research has shown that tens of millions of church-attending Christians sit out elections. That is not dual citizenship. It is abdication.

I am not speaking as a partisan of any party. I am speaking as a man who has spent decades exposing the abortion industry and fighting for the unborn. But the facts of the two major parties are not the same.

The Democrats have made abortion a sacrament. They stand firmly and publicly on the side of killing children. At their last convention they parked an abortion van outside the hall—literally offering the procedure steps from the speakers’ podium. Segments of their street activism have chanted “hail Satan.” Their platform and their leaders treat the right to kill the unborn as non-negotiable. They have spent years defending the destruction of image-bearers and attacking any law that would restrain it. Abortion is on their ballot as a protected right.

Republicans are imperfect. Some of their leaders have been feckless. Some have broken promises. Yet at least they claim to be pro-life. Their convention opened with prayer. Their platform, their candidates, and their base still contain a living pro-life constituency that can be held to account. The difference is not subtle. One party treats the killing of the unborn as a protected right and a campaign feature. The other at least pretends to want the opposite—and can be pressured to deliver. Abortion is on the ballot either way. The only question is which side you, the voter, choose to empower.

Elections are a chess game, not a Valentine’s wish. You do not get to stay home because no candidate makes your heart flutter. You do not get to demand a perfect ticket while the blood of the innocents continues to be shed under color of law. You play the board you are given. You elect the magistrates who at least claim the duty to protect life, and then you hold them to it. Neutrality is impossible. Silence is complicity. Abortion is on the ballot.

The protection of innocent life is not a secondary issue. It is a first duty—to God, whose image is being defaced, and to neighbor, whose life is being taken. “He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” (2 Samuel 23:3). A magistrate who will not defend the unborn is not just. A people who will not require that defense of their magistrates share in the guilt.

The same God who made man a little lower than the angels has not abandoned the work of His hands. The second Adam has come. His blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. The Great Commission still stands: all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ, and He is with us to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18–20). The knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth. The gates of hell will not prevail.

Until that day we do our duty.

We pray. We vote. We speak. We refuse to consent to the shedding of innocent blood. And we choose rulers who will at least claim to rule in the fear of God. The crown of creation is still worth defending. The blood of the unborn is still precious in His sight. Elections are a chess game. Abortion is on the ballot. Make your move at the ballot box!

This report may be republished with inclusion of the following acknowledgement: “This article was originally published by Operation Rescue, a leading pro-life, Christian activist organization dedicated to exposing abortion abuses, demanding enforcement, saving innocent lives, and building an abortion-free America.“