Every February during Black History Month, I choose to learn about influential black figures in history. Two years ago, I took in the life of Bishop Richard Allen and the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Last year, I was reading The State of Black America. This year, it’s W.S. McFeely’s biography of Frederick Douglass. But having served the cause of life now for 35 years, this is also the month I pray for the glorious black history yet to come.
I am convinced that the end of abortion as a business is in sight when our movement is not only joined by but led by the African American and Latino Christian communities. To our black and Latino Christian brothers and sisters, belong the honor of leading us to victory in the abolition of abortion and the establishment of righteousness in the land. I call it the Third Wave.
The First Wave of the modern pro-life movement was the Catholic Church. In the late 60s, as abortion “rights” were argued for in New York and California, many Catholic doctors, ethicists and laypeople understood the horrifying truth of abortion and began to organize. They opened educational offices to explain fetal life; launched political efforts to elect pro-life leaders and started “emergency pregnancy services” to help women struggling with pregnancy issues. The modern pro-life movement was born. It was considered (disparaged) as a “Catholic” thing.
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In the late 70s, the Second Wave arose. The Evangelical Church joined the cause. Several rushing tributaries formed when Francis Scheaffer and C. Everet Koop produced a book and film called Whatever Happened to the Human Race? Then, Evangelical leaders with broad outreach into the community — James Dobson, Jerry Fawell and James Kennedy —summoned Evangelical pastors and lay people to answer the call to cherish and defend innocent human life. Evangelicals flooded into the pro-life movement. They volunteered in various pro-life organizations, but primarily focused on opening pregnancy help centers to rescue one mother at a time in their neighborhood.
The critical Third Wave is yet to come. When black and Latino Christian leaders together, loudly and repeatedly expose the inhumanity of abortion and the pernicious racism of the abortion industry, the business of abortion, no matter the current politics and laws, will collapse.
The majority of abortion businesses prey on our urban neighborhoods. Black and Hispanic women suffer 63% of all abortions while representing only 33% of the female population. This means the abortion business is gorging itself off the blood of minority children all the while appearing as compassionate servants of the poor. It also means that the business of abortion cannot survive without the silent approval of the Black and Latino neighborhoods and the churches and pastors that lead them. It further means that our movement is paddling in place for the most part, losing here, gaining there, but largely stuck, until the Third Wave appears.
The black pastors I have talked to largely dismiss the pro-life cause as a “white issue.” Some have been honest enough to tell me that they resent the fact that the people now calling for the civil rights of pre-born children descend from people who dismissed the civil rights of African-American adults. This may be an unfair perception. It may be racial suicide. If it is hard for me to hear, I can assure you it is far more painful and frustrating for the Black pro-life leaders who are working so hard to spark the Third Wave. But when it comes, abortion will be ousted from their communities and mortally wounded as a practice across America.
The pro-life position is simple: It is wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Since abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being, abortion is wrong. We must not do it. We must not close our eyes to it. And we must call one another, across all our neighborhoods, to be cross-bearers for child-bearers. Given our painful racial history and the profoundly different filters through which white and black Christians and churches view that history, there is much hard work to be done.
William Wilberforce (1759–1833) gave his whole life to the abolition of slavery. He also anticipated a future glorious history that is well worth remembering today: “Never, never will we desist till we … extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonor to this country.”
John Ensor, an ordained Evangelical pastor, has been a leader in the pro-life movement for over 30 years as a speaker, author, mentor and co-laborer. Ensor serves as the President of PassionLife, where he concentrates on helping missionaries and indigenous Christian leaders serving in countries plagued by abortion to equip the church in bioethics and pregnancy crisis intervention services. John is the co-host of the “PassionLife Podcast,” with PassionLife Executive Director, Mark Nicholson. Together they discuss ministry updates and provide commentary on global current events.
