Criminalizing women is not consistent with the advocacy of the pro-life movement for the last 50 years and abandons the SBC’s historic pro-life posture.
For over 40 years, the Southern Baptist Convention has consistently been one of the most pro-life voices in America. The SBC has passed numerous resolutions to express its views regarding the sanctity of the preborn life. As a result, the ERLC has engaged extensively in the pro-life cause, both in the ERLC’s advocacy work and through initiatives like the Psalm 139 Project.
The ERLC stands committed to protecting the life of precious preborn children and their mothers from the predatory actions of the abortion industry. Similarly, the messengers to the annual Convention have “commend[ed] the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s frontline work on the pro-life cause and urge all Southern Baptists to continue our faithful pro-life advocacy by partnering with local, state, and federal governments to enact pro-life and pro-family policies that serve and support vulnerable women, children, and families.”
However, the step to criminalize women who have obtained an abortion is not one that messengers to the convention have supported. At the 2021 meeting, the messengers soundly rejected an amendment to a proposed pro-life resolution on the Hyde Amendment that would have eliminated the call to “love, care for, and minister to women who are victimized by the unjust abortion industry” in favor of a punitive approach.
Furthermore, ethicists from the SBC’s seminaries, including former ERLC President and leader in the pro-life movement, Dr. Richard Land, have argued against criminalization, seeing it as the wrong approach to pro-life policies because of the danger it poses to the goal of truly ending abortion.
The ERLC stands with the same pro-life position that it has held for decades: ban abortion, save preborn lives, support mothers, and punish the abortion providers.
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