I believe in an incremental approach to right to life and Townhall has an article up that explains what it is.
So here is the article, by a couple of pro-lifers who I am friends with with: Marc Newman and Scott Klusendorf. (H/T McKenzie)
Here’s is some of Marc Newman’s bio from Speakers for Life:
Dr. Marc Newman is president of Speaker For Life, a training firm dedicated to equipping pro-life advocates nationwide with public speaking skills. He has spoken at nearly every major pro-life convention in the nation and is in demand as a banquet keynoter. He is the former Director of Speech and Debate at the University of California at Irvine, and is retired from teaching in the doctoral program in the School of Communication and the Arts at Regent University.
The other one is my favorite pro-lifer, Scott Klusendorf. I’ve met Scott personally, with a girlfriend, and he offered to marry us on the spot. He’s an ordained minister.
Here is some of his bio from my favorite pro-life charity, Life Training Institute:
Scott has appeared on nationally syndicated Christian programs such as Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, The Albert Mohler Radio Program, Lee Strobel’s Faith Under Fire, Hank Hanegraaff’s The Bible Answer Man, Dr. D. James Kennedy’sTruths That Transform, Richard Land’s For Faith and Family, Tim Wildmon’s American Family Radio, Kerby Anderson’s Point of View, Todd Wilken’s Issues Etc. …
Nationally, Scott has participated in numerous debates at the collegiate level. His debate opponents have included Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU (1991-2008) – Kathryn Kolbert, an attorney that has argued for abortion rights in a United States Supreme Court case – and Kathy Kneer, President of Planned Parenthood of California.
Scott has debated or lectured to student groups at over 80 colleges and universities, including Stanford, USC, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, Loyola Marymount Law School, West Virginia Medical School, MIT, U.S. Air Force Academy, Cal-Tech, UC Berkeley, and University of North Carolina.
Each year thousands of students at Protestant and Catholic high schools are trained by Scott to make a persuasive case for life as part of their worldview training prior to college. He’s provided that same training to students at Summit Ministries and Focus on the Family Institute.
Scott is the author of The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture, released in March 2009 by Crossway Books and co-author of Stand for Life released in December 2012 by Hendrickson Publishers. Scott has also published articles on pro-life apologetics in The Christian Research Journal, Clear Thinking, Focus on the Family Citizen, and The Conservative Theological Journal.
I know a secret about Scott, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say. Let’s just say that he’s trained other people at the highest levels of influence. If you want to make the case for the pro-life position, then you cannot do better than being trained by Scott Klusendorf. If you are looking for a great pro-life speaker to support, this is your guy.
Anyway, here is their column at Townhall:
Pro-life Christians should promote good and limit evil insofar as possible given current political realities, but the Southern Baptist Convention just passed a resolution that turns that truth on its head.
The resolution, forwarded by abolitionists, calls the SBC to be a “prophetic voice to abolish abortion” immediately and without exceptions. Incremental strategies – the resolution declares – are nothing more than “regulatory guidelines” for determining “when, where, why, and how” adults may intentionally kill innocent pre-born children. In other words, all pro-life work to date has done nothing more than promote evil. Any incremental strategy – rather than immediate abolition – is suddenly a shameful act of which leaders must confess, lament, and repent because it makes them complicit in abortion. Such a charge is scandalous, and factually untrue.
More:
To the extent abolitionists succeed, the SBC will find itself fighting against abortion restrictions; an unwitting ally of Planned Parenthood. The latter fights them because they want unrestricted abortion; the former will fight them out of a misguided sense of ideological purity. The result will be the same: more dead children.
The first line here is important:
Every pro-life advocate wants abortion abolished. But the abolition resolution conflates the laudable goal of ending abortion with the unfeasible tactic of immediate abolition. How, exactly, is immediate abolition to happen, given current political realities? The abolitionist response is a kind of magical thinking: just decree it. But in the real world there are two ways to win a war. If you command overwhelming forces, you crush the opposition swiftly and establish victory. If, however, you are outnumbered and outgunned, then you fight a war of attrition. You wear down the opposition. That’s precisely what pro-life advocates have done with the support of the SBC. The wording of the resolution alienates and slanders them.
And finally the shocking conclusion:
By insisting on “prophetic” purity, the abolitionist position trades actual lives that could be saved right now for hypothetical ones they hope can be saved at some undisclosed future date. Consider the 2015 exchange between pro-life leader Gregg Cunningham and abolitionist leader T. Russell Hunter. Cunningham held up Dr. Michael New’s research on the effectiveness of incremental bills and asked Hunter, “Should these babies saved by incremental legislation have been allowed to die?” Hunter repeatedly attempted to dodge the question, but Cunningham pressed him. Instead of answering, Hunter dismissed the question as a “charade.” But Cunningham was not playing games. He deftly exposed a bankrupt strategy.
I was actually able to confirm this with a smart, effective abolitionist pro-lifer. I presented to him a list of state-level incremental restrictions on abortion, and actions taken by President Trump and his Republican allies in the legislature. He replied that these incremental measures were actually done in collusion with the pro-abortion crowd, in order to protect abortion rights. I pointed out that abolitionists and pro-abortionists both opposed these incremental measures. He would not back down.
So where do you stand on the two approaches?
