By Dwain Currier
It is no dirty secret that factions exist within the pro-life movement. Some organizations believe that regulating the killing of preborn children is a viable strategy to end abortion for good. Others, American Life League included, find the practice of preborn child killing so wicked and abhorrent that the only means of ending it is legal recognition of the obvious: Preborn children are people, no different than anyone else, and they deserve the same equal protections enumerated in the US Constitution.
Scott Klusendorf, president of the Life Training Institute and a prominent pro-life speaker and author, frequently keynotes pro-life banquets, summits, and training events. His pro-life apologetics influence the policies of many advocates and organizations. These apologetics include, as outlined in a recently published commentary, an opposition to equal protection for preborn children.
You read that right. A pro-life advocate argues against human equality.
We’ve reached a crossroads within the pro-life movement where equal protection for the preborn child is deemed to be, as Klusendorf phrases it, harmful to pro-life efforts.
Justifying murder
In his commentary entitled “Why Equal Protection Bills Harm Pro-Life Efforts,” Klusendorf follows the Republican line of thinking: To ban abortion, we must work within the political and cultural frameworks of our time. In other words, politicians and pundits, not the pro-life advocates who wish to see a permanent end to the slaughter of babies, dictate the terms of fighting evil. But it isn’t the pragmatists in Washington who determine the rules of engagement. Klusendorf argues that we must abide by the fearmongering of abortion advocates, stating, “The relentless drumbeat of stories claiming that women will die from abortion restrictions or be prosecuted for suffering miscarriage resonates not only with the general public but also with marginally pro-life voting blocks.”
According to Klusendorf, the pro-aborts lie about prosecuting miscarriages; therefore, we must act according to that deception. We shouldn’t be surprised by such messaging. The pro-life establishment’s glad-handing of self-proclaimed pro-life Republicans in Congress is notorious, but what have these “pro-life” votes amounted to? Consider the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act of 2017, which aimed to ban abortions after 20 weeks. By what standard is a 20-week ban considered pro-life? What is different about preborn babies prior to 20 weeks that makes them unworthy of protection?
It is incumbent on everyone repulsed by preborn child killing not to depend on pro-life labels. Decades of abortion polling focus on how American voters identify across the pro-life/pro-choice divide. Klusendorf states that forty-three percent of churchgoers identify as pro-life. This is a meaningless statistic given the fact that less than half of self-proclaimed pro-life voters understand that every abortion is immoral, no matter the circumstances.
Additionally, the Knights of Columbus’ 2026 abortion poll found that 37% of the adults polled identified as pro-life, but only 6% of those adults agreed that abortion should never be permitted under any circumstance. By all appearances, the majority of people identifying as pro-life are just pro-abortion with exceptions.
To read the remainder of this article, visit the Celebrate Life Magazine site at clmagazine.org/topic/human-dignity/if-klusendorf-speaks-for-the-pro-life-movement-we-want-nothing-to-do-with-it.
To read additional articles that will both educate and inspire, visit clmagazine.org.