Emotional Sabotage and the Abolition of Abortion
Over one million abortions take place across America every single year, and the murder of preborn image-bearers of God has no stronger bulwark than emotional sabotage.
As there is no actual moral rationale for murdering millions of babies over the course of years and decades, proponents of child sacrifice have leveraged emotional sabotage, the use of weaponized and subversive emotional manipulation, to defend what should be indefensible.
Dr. Joe Rigney, a fellow of theology at New St. Andrews College and the author of “Leadership and Emotional Sabotage,” has incisively warned that while Christians are indeed called to share in the sufferings of others as they adhere to the truth, untethered empathy can quickly become “a power tool in the hands of the sensitive,” and the means by which “the most immature, reactive, and invasive members of a community hijack the agenda and derail the mission.”
Anyone who has been involved in the battle against abortion will recognize a handful of tired pro-abortion talking points. The abortion activist insists that a baby is a mere clump of cells, that abortion is somehow healthcare, or that the state should not be involved in health decisions.
These assertions fall apart under even the slightest scrutiny. That is when the sabotage starts.
Pro-Abortion Sabotage
Christians opposing abortion have likely heard that they are apologists for rape or incest, that they have hypocritically failed to adopt enough babies, that they overlook acts of purported systemic racism, or that they are violating the rights of others. None of these claims are true, but pursuit of truth is not the point. The point is to emotionally manipulate Christians into silence.
Rigney defines such tactics as using “ugly labels for true things, and ugly labels for false things.” On one hand, biblically orthodox Christians are “called haters and bigots for condemning homosexuality,” which are labels “meant to silence our witness by appealing to our desire for approval and acceptance and our fear of ostracism and rejection.” On the other hand, our Lord Jesus was called “a drunkard and a glutton” by the Pharisees during his ministry, showing how “the world misrepresents our beliefs and then slaps an ugly label on their misrepresentation.”
The purpose is not to make a sincere moral accusation. The purpose is merely to emotionally sabotage Christians until they back away from the truth of God, in this case the truth that babies in the womb are image-bearers of God who should not be murdered under cover of law.
We have seen this phenomenon across the country in recent months as Christians advance equal protection bills in the state legislatures, simply applying the exact same laws against homicide and assault that already protect born people to also protect preborn people.
Christians in the state of Georgia, for instance, worked two months ago to advance the Georgia Prenatal Equal Protection Act, while pro-abortion zealots worked to emotionally sabotage them.
One such activist complained that “some white Christians” had the nerve to invoke the slavery abolition movement to defend abolishing abortion before asserting that women who have abortions should not be held accountable. “The call for enslavement and punishment, and calling that helping women? That’s not it,” she contended. “There are a lot of ways to support women. There are a lot of ways to support children. Throwing them in jail? That’s not the way.”
Another pro-abortion activist, a progressive Episcopalian female pastrix, falsely insisted that Christians who oppose abortion “do not speak for all Christians, not today in this country, and certainly not over centuries of Christian witness and practice.” The pastrix then claimed that more public welfare programs are an alternative to simply outlawing baby murder. “I believe that we must protect life here in Georgia. To do that, let’s please invest in systems of care and support, rather than systems of punishment,” she commented to lawmakers. “This bill claims to be on the side of life, but it’s demeaning and cruel, and it will only bring about more death.”
Do you hear the emotional sabotage at play? Christians who dare to seek the abolition of abortion are told from outside their camp that they are “demeaning and cruel,” and that they are calling for “enslavement and punishment,” quite possibly driven by the color of their skin.
But they also face similar accusations from inside their camp, particularly from those who claim that women are categorically victims of abortion and therefore should not be subject to penalties for willfully murdering their own babies. That stance is held by most major pro-life establishment entities, many of which have written laws codifying immunity for women who have abortions.
Pro-Life Sabotage
Georgia Life Alliance, the affiliate of National Right to Life in the state of Georgia, sent a letter to members of the committee before they heard the Georgia Prenatal Equal Protection Act, maligning the effort to pass equal protection for preborn babies through emotional sabotage.
The letter said that “women seeking abortions find themselves in desperate and challenging situations,” which means they “require compassionate support, not punitive measures.” The subtle implication of the claim is that the Christians who support abolishing abortion also reject that women tempted toward abortion can be served with Christian compassion and charity.
In the same way, Georgia Life Alliance warned that “women suffer devastating physical and psychological damage following abortion,” which contradicts the claim that the woman who has an abortion is “also a victim.” If she was truly forced into abortion by “a callous industry” of abortionists, then why would she feel guilt for an action in which she had little or no choice?
The most severe misrepresentation in the letter was the claim that the bill “does not address or hold accountable the abortionist, the pimp, the sex trafficker, and the irresponsible man who will face no consequence and continue to prey on women and girls for their own selfish gain.”
That is wholly false, since the bill simply applies homicide and assault penalties to anyone who willfully murders a preborn baby, whether they are the abortionist, the trafficker, the father, or the mother. The bill criminalizes the act of abortion rather than certain types of people. Georgia Life Alliance would therefore have lawmakers think that Christians who desire the complete abolition of abortion are uncompassionate sadists who side with abortionists, pimps, and sex traffickers.
Anti-Sabotage Sobriety
We see that the murder of preborn image-bearers of God persists in America largely because of emotional sabotage. Both the pro-abortion activists who want full access to abortion and the pro-life advocates who want women specifically to have full access to abortion rely heavily on emotional sabotage when confronting Christians who are trying to establish equal protection.
Beyond defining emotional sabotage, Rigney presents a solution to that cultural cancer, indeed submitting that “the cure for our fever is sober-minded leaders who are grounded in the glory of God, and therefore possess clarity of mind, stability of soul, and readiness to act.” Such leaders “are able to weather anxiety storms, resist social stampedes, reject blame-shifting and excuse-making, and maintain their integrity in an age of anxiety, agitation, and turmoil.”
By the grace of God, more and more Christians are arising in our day to oppose legalized child sacrifice and to protect preborn babies, no matter what emotional sabotage comes their way.
The need for this hour, with respect to abortion and every other perverse institution in our land which spits in the face of God and provokes his divine wrath, is Christian men who are immune to emotional sabotage. They must not be prone to wavering even under intense emotional manipulation and false condemnation, whether from leftists or from supposed conservatives.
May the Lord Jesus be pleased to abundantly provide many such Christians in these evil days.