By John Michener

In my last article, I demonstrated that Students for Life Action had undermined the fundamental right to life by promoting legislation that specifically protects abortion pill traffic. Now that most state legislatures have adjourned for the year, let us look at three more examples from Texas, Georgia, and Oklahoma in which the pro-life establishment exerted tremendous influence over pro-life legislators, with deadly consequences.

This past January in Texas, twenty-three state representatives sponsored House Bill 2197, which would have granted equal protection of the law to preborn humans in Texas. If it had been enacted it would have saved tens of thousands of lives per year, lives which parents currently sacrifice under the protection of state statute. The bill was scheduled to be heard on 22 April in a Criminal Jurisprudence subcommittee. But on 21 April, the Texas Alliance for Life (TAL), a massively influential pro-life political machine, launched a propaganda campaign against the bill, asking their followers to contact state legislators and voice their opposition. One of TAL’s social media posts, seen by tens of thousands of pro-life Texas voters, claimed that the bill would “deter women from seeking help” and “make it harder to stop illegal abortion providers.” Amy O’Donnell, communications director for TAL, posted that the bill to abolish abortion “undermines the heart of the pro-life cause.”

Immediately following TAL’s hit pieces, Chairman Smithee, a pro-life Republican, abruptly pulled the bill from the hearing schedule, and eight pro-life representatives removed their names as sponsors of the bill. Smithee told one supporter of HB 2197 that TAL had called his office to ask him to remove the bill from the hearing. In the aftermath Representative Money who authored the bill said, “Today, leadership betrayed…their duties as elected officials by pulling House Bill 2197 [which] aims to close the last remaining loophole in Texas law that keeps abortion legal via the abortion pill.” The Texas legislature adjourned on 2 June, so the bill to abolish abortion is dead for the year. Clearly, the pro-life establishment is responsible for keeping murder by abortion legal in Texas.

We saw similar shenanigans in Georgia, where the Georgia Prenatal Equal Protection Act (HB 441) was filed by six representatives on 13 February. If enacted, it would allow the same laws that currently protect born humans from murder to protect preborn humans equally. The bill was assigned to the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee. This time it was National Right to Life (NRL) through its local affiliate, Georgia Life Alliance, that worked behind the scenes to sabotage the bill. Members of the Judiciary Non-Civil Committee received a two-page letter from the pro-life establishment asking them to vote against HB 441. The letter claims that “the mother who aborts her child is also a victim of a callous industry created to take lives.” The letter continually refers to both “unborn children and their mothers” as victims of abortion. While some young women may truly be victims, the vast majority of mothers and fathers knowingly and willingly choose to murder their preborn children. The letter also claims that “imposing criminal penalties on women could lead to unsafe, unregulated abortions,” implying, of course, that the state should continue to sanction safe and legal murder by abortion. The Republican Speaker of the House and committee chairman have disallowed a vote on HB 441 for 2025. Once again, it is the pro-life establishment protecting child sacrifice in a conservative pro-life state.

National Right to Life has gone beyond opposing bills of equal protection to actively working with pro-life legislators to expand abortion access in pro-life states. A full-time NRL lobbyist sent a letter to Republican legislators in Oklahoma urging them to legalize the abortion of children conceived in rape, in opposition to current Oklahoma statute under which it is a crime for a doctor to perform an elective abortion in cases of rape or incest. According to the letter, in a national poll of voters (not a local poll) paid for by NRL, only ten percent of voters favor keeping abortion criminal in the case of rape or incest. The lobbyist’s argument is that if the legislature does not willingly and preemptively sacrifice these children now, then voters in the future might become so upset by this limitation that they demand legal abortion for any reason through an initiative petition.

The lobbyist’s argument is fatally flawed for at least five reasons. First, the data is suspect. National poll numbers, which would include voter opinions from New York City and Los Angeles, are irrelevant in small, conservative states.

Second, the pro-life lobbyist makes radical assumptions. He presumptuously pretends to know the future thoughts and actions of a fickle people and assumes the worst possible outcome is a certainty. He ignores the fact that people generally tend to follow the rules and their leaders, even when they disagree.

Third, the lobbyist proposes an immoral strategy to deal with the problem that he imagines. He asserts that we must fight child sacrifice with child sacrifice. But we should never commit actual evil today in an attempt to avoid the possibility of experiencing evil at some point in the future. Since the dawn of time, those in power have made the argument that the ends justify the means, that those in power are justified in killing a few (millions) to secure a peaceful empire. This immoral political strategy was embraced by the totalitarian states of the twentieth century, resulting in hundreds of millions dead in the bloodiest century ever recorded in history. George Lucas famously portrayed such twisted philosophy in Star Wars through the Empire’s use of the Death Star, imagery that inspired the cover art of my book Overcoming the Dark Side of the Pro-life Movement. The cover depicts an attack ship in space labeled PLM (for Pro-life Movement) blowing up a planet that looks like a baby in the womb. The pro-life establishment has adopted an ends-justify-the-means philosophy that has led them to sacrifice worlds of preborn humans for their political ends – keeping the peace with those who love child sacrifice.

Fourth, his argument is so weak and speculative, that he resorts to committing the appeal-to-authority fallacy when he concludes: “It is the unanimous view of pro-life legal experts, legislative experts, electoral experts, and strategic experts with whom I have worked closely at National Right to Life…that a rape and incest exception is essential.” Objection! Hearsay! Who are these unverified, unnamed experts? Appealing to so-called experts, whether real or imaginary, is not a valid argument.

Finally, and most importantly, the pro-life lobbyist fails to trust and obey God. Rather, he trusts in human “wisdom.” Regardless of any possible results, we are called to trust and obey God. When King Nebuchadnezzar issued a government statute that required Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah to commit an immoral act, they refused. Facing the death penalty, they told the king: “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” (Dan. 3:17-18). They refused to do evil, and so should we.

Conspicuously absent in these stories of pro-life establishment duplicity are the chief executives of each state. Those elected officials with the highest name recognition, the most power and authority, and the most leadership clout are completely AWOL. Where is Governor Greg Abbott of Texas? Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia? Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma? Do they not care that tens of thousands of preborn humans die in their jurisdictions, under their unwatchful eyes? It is time to call upon our chief executive officers to use their authority and leadership positions to support the brave legislators who are desperately attempting to make their state statutes agree with the law of God and our constitutions. It is time for chief executives to usher in the abolition of abortion.

I am mindful of our Lord’s warning: “Truly, whatever you did to the least of my family members you did to me.” (Matt. 25:40). To National Right to Life, Students for Life Action, Texas Alliance for Life, and those like them: What have you done? Every traditionally conservative politician calls himself “pro-life,” and there are a plethora of organizations – including my own – which contain the term “life.” Just because ministries, lobbyist organizations, and politicians use the word “life” does not guarantee that their philosophies, strategies, and actions value each life equally and seek equal justice and protection for our preborn neighbors. We must rightly discern between sheep and wolves, between self-styled shepherds and thieves.

Excerpt from Granite Hearts, by Nadia Michener

Your pockets are lined with gold,

Your hands are stained with red,

You haggle back and forth for weeks

While innocents fall dead.

Protected by “Christian” and “pro-life” brands,

By turning your back, there’s blood on your hands.

What happened to a human heart

That it cannot be pierced?

It must be made of granite,

Or of cowards’ worldly fears.

Our souls are torn in tatters, our values are in shards,

All because you will not change your greedy granite hearts.

You hold your seat of power;

Dead children are the price.

Those we trust to run our land

Bargain with human life.

You change the rules

But not the game–

Leave gaping holes,

It’s all the same.

You dismissed the executioner,

But the gallows tree still stands,

And souls are swingin’, second by second,

At their mothers’ hands.

John Michener is the Director of Oklahomans United for Life (OUL). You can contact him at:

john.michener@oku4life.org