The liberal Democrats who cheer the defeat of abortion restrictions in the recent election in Ohio and gloat over their victories in the governor, state legislative, and judicial races in Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania — all of which have been attributed to their support of abortion “rights” — and the Republican politicos who urge their party leaders to abandon social issues, like abortion, would be well advised to recall the words of Matthew 16:26: “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade energized liberal Democrats who, remarkably, cherish their ability to “legally” kill babies in the womb over any other political issue. So-called progressives hold this view just as strongly as slaveholders prized their “legal” ability to enslave African Americans. The recent election defeats of GOP candidates in races in which abortion was a major issue has likewise energized GOP “moderates” and political strategists who argue that without electoral victories, the Democrats will set the pro-abortion agenda in their respective states. There is, to be sure, some truth in this latter point, and Republicans would be wise to shape their anti-abortion arguments and policies with that in mind. 

But that does not mean abandoning the “social issues” in hotly contested political races. It does not mean that speaking up to defend innocent unborn children against the forces that would end all of their legal protections is not a winning political strategy. The elections of Ronald Reagan and, yes, Donald Trump proved that energetic pro-life candidates can win at the ballot box. Reagan wrote Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation before the 1984 election and won a 49-state landslide victory over Democrat Walter Mondale. Trump overtly embraced the pro-life movement in 2016 and defeated perhaps the most outspoken pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. 

Pro-abortion forces in this country have always had the advantages of fundraising and news media support. With the demise of Roe v. Wade, those advantages have increased. What is strikingly new about these forces is their unashamed willingness to embrace abortion as a positive good. There was a time when liberal Democrats like Bill Clinton promoted abortion under the guise that it should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Today, pro-abortion forces often brag about killing unborn babies. As Planned Parenthood proclaims, “There are no ‘bad’ reasons to get an abortion.” 

Perhaps one of the most egregious recent examples of the flight from shame about abortion was when singer Stevie Nicks told the Guardian that had she not made the decision to have an abortion, she might have had to walk away from Fleetwood Mac. “I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy,” she said. Killing an unborn child was justified, according to Nicks, because it was more important to have a “band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers.” Another woman was so proud of getting an abortion that she posted a video about it on TikTok that showed her dancing and smiling about the procedure. And the “sainted” Oprah Winfrey’s magazine in 2018 promoted the “Shout Your Abortion” movement. 

The pro-abortion forces have dropped the “safe, legal and rare” pose and fully embraced the “rightness” of deciding to have an abortion — for any reason.

Perhaps the last national Democratic Party officeholder who understood what Matthew was saying in the Bible was then–Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey Sr., who had the political courage to challenge his party to live up to its professed ideals of championing the underclass and protecting the most vulnerable in our society. In his memoir Fighting for Life, Casey made the explicit analogy of abortion to slavery, explaining that “[o]nly twice has mortal power, using the instrument of the law itself, sought to exclude an entire class of people from their most sacred human rights.” Roe v. Wade, Casey wrote, excluded an entire class of human beings — yes, unborn children are scientifically human beings — from the “protection of the state.” That decision, which effectively legalized abortion on demand in all 50 states, he explained, was “an abrupt mutation, a defiance of all precedent, a disjuncture of law and authority.” It was “the product of a contrived and fraudulent test case,” a “judicial decree” that arose “not from the wisdom of the ages … but from the ideology of the day and the will of a determined minority.” Abortion, Casey concluded, is an affront to the “clearest of Commandments.”

Casey understood that it profited him not at all to gain political power if, in the end, he lost his soul.