Members of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination voted this week to pass a resolution that not only condemns the most popular abortifacient on the market, but also calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as well as Congress and state legislatures to ban its use.
The Southern Baptist Convention has long affirmed the sanctity of unborn life and any attempt to end it. The latest pro-life resolution proposed for a vote during the SBC’s 2025 annual meeting, however, expands the reasoning for the SBC’s opposition to chemical abortion based on the popularity and danger mifepristone poses to both women and their babies.
“On Standing Against the Moral Evils and Medical Dangers of Chemical Abortion Pills” acknowledges that the prevalent use of abortion pills causes “both the death of the child and often significant physical, emotional, and spiritual harm to the mother” but warns that women are not fully aware of the harms mifepristone, especially when mail-ordered and taken at home alone, can have.
“Women are often denied full, truthful, and compassionate information about chemical abortion, which is increasingly administered through impersonal and unsafe means like telehealth and mail-order services—methods that can easily be misused or abused—while shield laws in some states enable the mailing of these drugs into states with abortion restrictions, undermining both the rule of law and the protection of unborn life,” the resolution states.
The resolution referenced a recent Ethics and Public Policy Center study, which found the rate of serious or life-threatening complications after mifepristone is 22 times higher than previously thought, to emphasize that the FDA’s historically lax approach to the abortion drug regimen is “endangering women and reducing public accountability.”
“The original approval process for mifepristone wrongly labeled pregnancy as a ‘serious or life-threatening illness,’ thus treating a natural and healthy condition as a pathology and undermining the dignity of both mother and child,” the resolution continues.
As a result, SBC members agreed to demand the FDA rescind its approval for mifepristone, urge Congress and state legislatures to ban the “manufacture, sale, and distribution” of it, and encourage its pastors, churches, and ministries “to speak the truth about abortion, to equip their congregations to care for women in crisis with compassion and practical support, and to proclaim the healing hope of the gospel.”
“Christ calls his church to defend both mother and child and to advocate for a culture of life marked by truth, compassion, and care,” the resolution states.
Just last week, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary committed to “conducting a review of mifepristone and working with the professional career scientists at the Agency who review this data.”
Chemical abortion condemnation was one of several resolutions floated to and approved by SBC’s voting body throughout its convention this week. While the SBC also passed measures affirming God’s design for marriage and family and opposing pornography, the denomination voted 56.89 percent to 42.84 percent to retain its increasingly leftist lobbying arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.