Tim Challies linked to an article, You're Not Really Pro-Life Unless..., that quotes a book where the author chastises those who ask why the pro-life movement is so narrowly focused on just abortion when there are other ills in the world. His response is typical and includes the usual labeling of the argument as being liberal (because only liberals care about life outside of the womb apparently) and a loutish complaint about scare resources. Malarkey. It is not just a lack of tangible action, it is all too often an utter lack of concern or even a tortured position where one weeps over murdered babies in the womb but demands preemptive military action around the world to defend our "freedom".If being "pro-life" for you means being anti-abortion and a concern for little else when it comes to the loss of life for innocent (or even not so innocent) image bearers of God, your concern for unborn children is laudable but your understanding of the sanctity of life is woefully underdeveloped. I don't oppose abortion because I think killing unborn children is wrong (although I do and it is). I oppose abortion because Scripture teaches me that all human life is made in the image of God. While I have a special loathing of infanticide as a act of violence inflicted on the most vulnerable of God's image bearers in the one place in the world that they should be cared for and comforted in a way never to be duplicated, that does not give me a free pass to ignore the other unjust killing of my fellow image bearers just because they have a different skin color, a different passport, a different language or are part of a different faith.
Being pro-life is not less than being anti-abortion but it certainly is more than that. Our life witness to the world is incomplete and hypocritical and even if we refuse to see this by closing our eyes, hands over our ears and chanting "liberals!", the very people that we hope to and must influence see right through it. Even more so, Christ sees through it when we pray to end abortion on Sunday and vote to send more children to their death on Tuesday. All human life is precious and deserving of justice from the unborn child in Boston to an unarmed 12 year old gunned down by police in Cleveland to the elderly woman in Afghanistan killed as collateral damage in a drone strike to the teen in Syria killed in the civil war we meddle in. We cannot ignore the unjust taking of life no matter where it happens if we claim to be pro-life and follow the Prince of Peace.
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