On a recent podcast, Al Mohler exhorted pro-life advocates to stand firm in defending life at every stage, warning that the pro-choice movement is pressing toward an ever more radical push for abortion without exception.
“The issue of abortion tends to rise and fall in the nation’s consciousness, having to do usually with some kind of court decision or some kind of major legislative move, some executive order coming from a White House,” said Mohler on his podcast, The Briefing. “But one of the things Christians need to recognize is that our moral concern for abortion, the Christian worldview urgency of abortion, it doesn’t wax and wane. It is a constant we need to keep very much on our minds.”
Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said abortion was not a matter of shifting policy debates, but one of grave moral significance that is rooted in the Word of God.
“When we get to human dignity, the image of God and the sanctity of human life, we’re in Genesis 1 territory,” he said. “And that underlines the fact that it is so fundamental in terms of its importance. Or to put it another way, a society that messes this question up inevitably is going to eventually mess every question up.”
Mohler warns that one of the greatest threats to the pro-life movement is complacency. Too often, those who call themselves pro-life can drift into a passivity.
“We cannot be satisfied until every single unborn human life has full legal protection,” he said.
The Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade, showed what determined effort could accomplish, Mohler noted. Yet it also revealed the challenging road ahead as the abortion question was returned to the states.
“That just means we have 50 battles, and the national battle is not gone. If you do have a Democratic president and you have Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, you can count on the fact that they will try to do with abortion what they haven’t been able to accomplish.”
While pro-lifers are called to diligence, Mohler notes that the pro-choice movement is moving toward an uncompromising demand that abortion be defended without exception; in recent years, pro-abortion activists have abandoned even the cautious language of Roe v. Wade’s trimester framework.
“If your categorical moral principle is supposedly a woman’s right to choose and to control her own body, and you raise that to the level of an absolute, then you’ve got nowhere to go other than defending every single abortion under any circumstances, for any reason or for no reason at all. You can’t support any restrictions on abortion,” he said.
To illustrate his point, Mohler pointed to an article in The Nation, which published a cover story titled “Defending All Abortions.” The article argued that any restriction—whether at viability or late in the third trimester—undermines the principle of a woman’s control over her body. In this worldview, abortion is not merely tolerated but must be celebrated as a justice issue, with taxpayers expected to cover the costs.
The article details the late-term abortion of a mother of three children; The abortion is justified due to economic pressure, family obligations, and a sense of being unprepared for another child.
“The open argument is that you’re not really pro-abortion if you don’t defend any abortion, anytime, for any reason, or no reason,” Mohler said.
Sadly, the article details the doctor confirming that the baby’s heart had stopped, and then asking the woman, “Do you want to talk about any of the emotions that you were having?” And the woman responds, “I got a little emotional once it started moving.”
In illustrating what he calls “the culture of death,” Mohler points out how the doctor raises a theological issue soon after the abortion.
“Any God I believe in knows your heart and knows you’re a good mom,” the doctor says.
“Notice what’s happened here,” Mohler said. “You’re talking about a complete theological upsetting of the universe, as well as on the sanctity of human life.”
Christians must remind ourselves what we believe in, and we must be faithful, Mohler concludes.
“One of the things the pro-abortion movement has been counting on is that abortion will just recede into the background. Or it would just be listed with other contentious, cultural, political, and moral issues, that it would just be one more item on a list. And perhaps, just one more issue to be dismissed quickly. And that’s exactly what Christians can’t do. We’ve got nowhere to go on this. The fight for the sanctity and dignity of human life is what we’re called to in the very first chapter of Scripture.”