Over the years I’ve frequently been told that life issues are not what the church of Jesus Christ is to be about. A seminary student at my church once told me something I’ve often heard in one form or another: “Issues like abor­tion are just a distraction from the main thing.”

As should be obvious from the intensity of the outcries to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, when it comes to abortion, we are not talking about a topic that is just hotter than any other. Abortion is birthed by a force of darkness that will bitterly resist every effort to combat it.

Randy writes, "The Scriptures teach the psychosomatic unity of the whole person—body, soul, and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Wherever there is a genetically distinct living human being, there is a living soul and spirit."

I read someone’s argument on social media that “Human life occurs at the moment God breathes into [naphach] the biological life the breath of life [neshamat chayyim, ‘soul life’]. This happens at birth.”

I just love this story my friend Larry Gadbaugh, CEO of First Image (which oversees Portland’s Pregnancy Resource Centers) tells in one of his recent letters.

Sadly, as Randy notes in the book, the pro-choice movement now sometimes (or even often) acknowledges that the unborn are living and growing. But the idea is that unborn children aren’t people.

In 2020, Randy Alcorn was interviewed for the Steps for Life webcast. In this video, he talks on the topic of the sanctity of human life.

Some abortion advocates argue that even if a “fetus” is actually a person, that doesn’t change the fact that one person does not have the right to use the body of another person against their will (in this case, against the mother’s will). Therefore, she should have the right to “evict” the fetus from her body.

Sadly, this week the U.S. Senate blocked the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would have protected unborn babies from abortion after 20 weeks, when doctors say they’re able to experience pain.