February 21, 2024 Show with Jason Storms and Scott Klusendorf Debating “Abolition vs. Incrementalism: Which is the Wisest Approach for Christians Seeking to End the Slaughter of Infants through Abortion?”

The Debate Over Abolitionism and Incrementalism in the Fight Against Abortion

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 21st day of February 2024.

And today, I am excited that we here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio are having another debate. It's not a regular occurrence. In fact, I think I should start making it a regular occurrence, maybe even a weekly occurrence or at least a monthly occurrence to have a debate on the show.

But we have a fascinating debate today that far too often has created far too much heat and not enough light. And it is my hope and prayer that today we will reverse that and provide for our listeners far more light than heat over a highly contested issue that divides Christians who are seeking to bring an end to the slaughter of unborn children through abortion here in the United States and even across the world.

But we have two individuals who strongly disagree with one another, although they recognize each other as brothers in Christ and they recognize each other's value in the fight to end abortion. But they still have very strong disagreements over the actual approach within our legal system to accomplish that goal of ending abortion.

We have, first, Jason Storms, who's been a guest here before. He is the National Director of Operation Save America and an avowed abortion abolitionist. Welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jason Storms.

It is good to be with you, Chris. Thank you for having me on.

And why don't you quickly tell our listeners about Operation Save America?

Yes, sir. We have been on the front lines of the fight to end the Holocaust of abortion for 35 years, formerly the organization Operation Rescue, started by Randall Terry. And I took over leadership from a good friend and mentor, Rusty Thomas, who ran the organization for many years and have been running it for three, the last three years.

And we are committed to awakening the church, mobilizing the church to her duty to protect life and to engage prophetically as a voice against injustice in this culture and exalt the name of Christ and to strengthen the foundations that are crumbling in this culture.

So that is that's who we are and what we do. We have conferences and events all over the country, a network of faithful believers and families and churches across the nation and partners and ministry partners we work with and just trying to be a voice for the voiceless.

And what is your Web site?

Operation Save America dot org.

Great. Well, today, Jason's opponent in this debate is Scott Klusendorf, who is an author. He's the president of Life Training Institute and an avowed pro-life incrementalist. And welcome back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Scott Klusendorf.

Chris, Jason, it's good to be with both you brothers, even despite our disagreement. I love chatting with both of you.

And why don't you tell our listeners about the Life Training Institute?

We exist to equip pro-life Christians to make a case for life in the public square where public truth claims are often dismissed as mere opinions. And we equip pro-lifers with arguments that resonate with unchurched people.

We do debates. We do presentations in Catholic and Protestant high schools. We go on secular campuses and make a case for life and do it with arguments that are not easily dismissed. We hope to equip Christians to be disciples who can make a case for the biblical worldview on the issue of life.

Well, why don't you provide your Web site for our listeners?

Pro-life training dot com is probably the best place to get me. Or they can go to Scott Klusendorf dot com and watch some of the podcasts, including one I recently had with Jason.

Great. And we'll be God willing, repeating that towards the end of the program. Well, today, the debate thesis is when do incremental attempts to limit evil fall prey to unjust or counterproductive compromise?

And for opening remarks to affirm that thesis is Jason Storms, who is the abortion abolitionist in this debate. Jason, you have 10 minutes.

All right. Excellent. So a question of when when does incrementalism go bad? And so I would argue initially about the gay incrementalism is not inherently evil. It is not necessarily a biblical term. I don't really like the term incrementalism.

I don't typically even use the term. I think we should we should couch our language and our rhetoric more in biblical terminology. And so I would ask the question, are we advocating for justice? Are we working towards justice or are we subverting whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Justice?

And in this case, justice for our pre-born neighbors. And so my my my central thesis would be this, that the pro-life movement by and large, in terms of especially its legislative policies, has been an abject failure at defending pre-born children in this culture.

And I would say in large part, that's due to not just incremental strategies, but due to, I would say, a lack of properly grounding ourselves theologically in the gospel and in the work and life of the church through the spirit and power and grace of God.

And so as a result, I think what we have is a muddled mess of all sorts of things within the pro-life movement. I have been a part of the pro-life movement for 25 years. And so there has been much good and much to praise and much to applaud, much to commend within the pro-life movement.

But sadly, so many of particularly the bigger organizations that are engaged in political lobbying and setting forward the political agenda simply are not grounded theologically. And as a result, I believe there is a moral confusion that emerges and also a political compromise that emerges and a cowardice that emerges that has led to 50 years of the slaughter of pre-born children.

Let me give some examples of this. So during the Roe era, it is clear that there was not one substantial policy victory for the pro-life movement. But 50 years, pro-lifers won elections. Pro-lifers, in fact, dominate many states politically.

And there have been many times in the last 50 years where pro-life Republicans have held all three branches of our federal government. And yet, just as many babies continue to die under their leadership as under pro-abortion leadership.

Well, what in the world then does it mean to be pro-life? Think, for example, during the George Bush era, George W. Bush Jr., he was president for eight years, for six of those eight years. Pro-life Republicans, which he considered himself, controlled all three branches of the federal government and had a majority of state governments.

And yet, just as many babies died under George Bush and those pro-life leaders. In fact, President Bush and the Republican Congress in those six years did not even defund Planned Parenthood. You'd think that's a bare minimum, that they could defund Planned Parenthood.

Fast forward to Donald Trump, who in many ways was much more of a fighter. And there's a lot of things that I liked about Donald Trump. First two years of President Donald Trump's administration, 2016, 2017, Donald Trump and pro-life Republicans, again, controlled all three branches of the federal government and 32 state governments.

And yet, just as many babies died under Donald Trump. And in fact, that pro-life Congress continued to write $500 million checks to Planned Parenthood in the budget that Donald Trump signed. Donald Trump claimed he was going to end abortion.

Pro-lifers applauded him for claiming he was going to defund Planned Parenthood.

He didn't.

He didn't end abortion. He didn't defund Planned Parenthood. Now, I'm thankful that he overturned Roe. The overturning of Roe and the appointment of three Supreme Court picks, I think, is something to celebrate.

Though, in many ways, the Dobbs decision fell short of establishing what they could have and should have done, which was providing recognition of the full humanity of preborn children as human persons protected under the United States Constitution.

That would have been wonderful. And that would have been something to truly celebrate. But the reversal of Roe was good. And we have now seen that the Dobbs decision has gone forward. We are seeing now just exactly how weak and anemic so much of the pro-life movement actually is.

As we see, there are 14 states that presently have passed quote-unquote bans on abortion. A great number of pro-life states have not even done that. But even in those 14 states, take Texas, for example, babies are still being murdered.

Every one of those 14 states, they grant legal immunity to mothers. Mothers are not held accountable for killing their own children through self-managed abortion. Mothers in Texas, in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee.

They can order pills, have them delivered to their home. They can take those pills and abort their child right at home. They could film it, do hashtag shout my abortion. And they could boast about killing their own child live on the Internet.

And that's legal in every single pro-life state in this country. And so statistically, in Texas, the latest statistics we've seen, the abortion rate has dropped from I think was around 55 ,000 abortions down to just under 50 ,000.

So some would say as many as 58 ,000 abortions. So there's a debate in the numbers. Somewhere between 5 and 10 ,000 babies have been saved in Texas. And we rejoice for that. And that is good. And we should certainly say that that's a good thing.

But there are pro-life organizations running around the country, Students for Life of America, who I think they do a lot of good things. But they're claiming that Texas is an abortion-free state. And yet 19 ,000 self-managed abortions were done in Texas.

30 ,000 Texas mothers left Texas to go to a different state to get an abortion and come back to Texas. So almost 50 ,000 babies, Texas babies, were murdered, have been murdered since the Dobbs decision.

Now that's just absolutely unacceptable. And I would say in large part that is a result of the failure of the pro-life movement to think and act consistently and courageously and biblically on this subject.

So the duty of those states prior to Dobbs would have been, and we were arguing for this, to defy the federal government, to defy the lawless Roe v. Wade opinion. We see this as a longstanding precedent where states' governors have a rightful jurisdiction to say no to bad federal court opinions or laws or policies or executive actions.

And many did this during the COVID era and were applauded for that. Of course, liberals have done this. They did this with gay marriage. They started to legalize in their states gay marriage in defiance of the DOMA Act.

And so why were pro-life governors not willing to do this? Well, they were not being asked to do this by pro-life leaders and pro-life organizations. And so that's a problem. So the 50 years of what I would say is, again, abject failure politically, the inability to achieve one single substantial political victory is what really gave birth to the abolitionist movement.

And so we were involved from pretty early on in the abolitionist movement about 10 years ago. Prior to that, we were involved in the personhood movement. And prior to that was the rescue movement. Our organization was involved in both of those movements, which were movements within the pro-life movement to reform and revitalize and bring moral consistency to the strategies and rhetoric and tactics of the pro-life movement.

The rescue movement, of course, under Randall Terry, who simply said, if babies are being murdered, then let's act like it. And that was a profound statement that motivated a lot of people, energized a lot of Christians to take action.

The personhood movement also built on much of that and tried to ground the policies of the pro-life movement in first principles, in the recognition of life beginning at conception and life being made in God's image.

And thus, our political policies should follow suit in establishing those things without compromise or without undermining that. And so much of the incremental legislation that goes forward, in contrast to that, it in fact undermines our core principles and our core premises.

To set forth, for example, a bill that says that you can't kill a baby after 15 weeks or you can't kill a baby once there is a detectable heartbeat undermines our core principle, our core premise. We're actually undermining our very foundational arguments.

Not only are we undermining our very foundational arguments and thus miseducating the population, we are also actually giving cover to the bad politicians that are actually preventing actual abortion bans from taking place.

In many states, even right now, post Dobbs, states have passed heartbeat bills. Georgia, for example, South Carolina and Florida have passed heartbeat bills. Those states all had the opportunity with pro-life leadership to pass outright total bans on abortion, giving full legal recognition to pre-born children.

Instead, they settled for a heartbeat bill. The leadership of the Republican Party in those states basically acknowledged that they didn't want to do anything about abortion, that they believe it's a losing issue.

They only were willing to do the bare minimum to satisfy their pro-life base. And my goodness, how easily satisfied the pro-life base is to accept that it's OK to kill these babies, but we'll protect these babies.

That's unacceptable and largely was the result of simple cowardice.

And we're out of time. And now and now, Scott Klusendorf, who is the pro-life incrementalist in this debate, has 10 minutes.

Well, thank you, Chris. Thank you, Jason, for your opening remarks. I would like to start off by saying that I'm not totally satisfied with the language of abolitionists versus incrementalists. I think it's unclear and kind of clouds the true debate.

Three quick reasons for that. First of all, all principled pro-lifers are abolitionists in principle, and we would vote to protect all humans immediately if we could. The real debate is about what to do in a fallen world when we can't immediately do that good justice act.

To that end, I think we need to distinguish between prudent lawmakers who are committed to protecting all unborn children, all unborn children, and some of their colleagues who hide behind a pro-life label but have no intention of actually banning abortion.

I agree with much of what Jason said. We've got some pro-life, allegedly pro-life politicians out there that I doubt have any real interest in protecting children, either because they're cowards or because they're determining it's not politically feasible for them to do it.

Secondly, though, I would say that historically, Christians have always been forced to live with a troubling tension between moral principles and the reality of a fallen world. Here's a few examples. If you were a Christian in Congress in 1776, should you have signed the Declaration of Independence, even though the language condemning slavery was intentionally removed to keep slave-holding states in the Union?

Or imagine it's 1860, and you're an abolitionist Christian. Should you vote for Abraham Lincoln, even though he campaigned saying that he would not go beyond his constitutional authority, meaning he would not seek to abolish slavery in states where it currently existed?

Even today we face this. Those against abortion face this question, for example. Is it morally permissible for us to practice geographical incrementalism by introducing a bill to ban abortion in one state instead of protecting children in all of them at once?

Then we have the issue of IVF embryos. What if a bill is put forward that would ban all abortion but leaves IVF babies unprotected? Is that a moral compromise? Christians have to wrestle with this. Even at a high level of abstraction, there's tension.

Suppose we could end abortion in 10 years, Chris, with an incremental strategy, or in 100 years with an abolitionist one. Should we opt for the 10 years over the 100? If we answer yes to any of the above, we've just ruled out incrementalism as being wrong in principle.

My point here isn't to convince abolitionists to become incrementalists. My point is that all of us already are incrementalists at some level. We can't help but be. It's not the practice of incrementalism that is wrong.

It's the intention behind it. That's where the moral crux lies. For example, to cite another one, when abolitionists introduce an abolition ban in one state but not all of them at once, they are working incrementally.

They are practicing what we call geographical incrementalism. Or when they introduce a bill protecting embryos from abortion but not IVF embryos from destruction, they are practicing strategic incrementalism.

Either way, though, it would be unfair to say they are consenting to the deaths of those unborn humans in other states or in test tubes that their bill does not protect. So I guess I would say if abolitionists aren't consenting to the deaths of embryos, they are not in a position to save.

Why are pro-lifers guilty of consenting to the deaths of children? They aren't in a position to save. Put simply, what this comes down to, is it okay to practice geographic incrementalism based on longitude and latitude?

Why is it wrong to practice it with gestational age if you don't have the votes to protect all of them? And I think this leads to the third reason I'm troubled by the abolition versus incrementalist paradigm.

We don't have to choose between unprincipled pragmatism that downplays evil and unrealistic purism that allows the political status quo to go remain unchecked. We don't want to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

I think there's a third way, and it's called political prudence, that does not compromise our principles but seeks to limit evil and promote the good insofar as we can given current political realities.

We should never compromise on our principle. I totally agree with Jason on that. But we can compromise on tactics and legislation, as Lincoln and Wilberforce reminded us. Politics is always going to be the art of the possible.

There's no way of getting around that. I think that the idea that abolitionists versus incrementalists is the proper framing is a false choice. It's not either or. In fact, I don't think pro-lifers who are committed in principle have to choose between incremental legislation that saves some children now or total abolition that saves them all at a later time.

Rather, I think we should advance both strategies at once and save as many lives as we can in the process. So while unborn humans ought to enjoy the protection of law, political realities may sometimes make that unachievable.

In other words, we won't be able to immediately do it. When that is the case, enacting the most pro-life law realistically possible is justified. We shouldn't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

However, we must never stop with imperfect bills. And this is where I think Jason was spot on. When we hear politicians start talking about settling for a 15-week ban or settling for a 20-week ban, no, we can never settle for anything less than full protection for all unborn humans.

We've got to practice what I like Doug Wilson labels as smash-mouth incrementalism. We are never going to quit until all babies are protected. We're unwilling to sacrifice the lives of babies who could be saved right now through incremental bills, but we're not stopping until we can protect all of them.

And you do have four minutes left, Scott.

Well, I'll conclude with this. We can vote for an imperfect bill if no realistically achievable alternative would give unborn children more protection. Pro-lifers have not wronged babies they were never in a position to save in the first place.

They do wrong babies when they settle on a limit and say we'll quit there. That's very disturbing to me. I would also add that I point a disagreement with my friend and colleague Jason. I don't think that the pro-life movement has been an abject failure for 50 years.

I think that's an overstatement, an oversimplification, and it doesn't have the nuance it needs. For example, the Dobbs decision was an incremental victory. But without the Dobbs decision, you don't even get the federal ability to limit abortion congressionally or to limit it at the state level because Roe and Casey were the law of the land, and that superseded all other bills.

So that incremental step opened up the possibility of curtailing abortion nationwide. The Hyde Amendment, according to several sources I looked at, has saved at least 2 million lives since 1976. I think that's a significant legislative victory.

Clinics have closed in many states. Some states have none or only one. And if you look at Texas, who Jason mentioned a moment ago, it's true that abortion is still legal at six weeks, and we should keep working to where that's not the case.

However, you look at the birth rates in Texas, and according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, they're up 1 ,000 per month. And they point to the new law as being the source of that.

I think, too, that it's an oversimplification to say that it's pro-life incrementalism that has caused the problem. The worldview premises that make abortion plausible to millions of our fellow citizens are deeply entrenched in culture.

In fact, we can trace them all the way back to William of Ockham, who in the 13th century was arguing we should quit looking at objective principles and look only at the particulars. And then you get to the Enlightenment, where all nonmaterial truth was dismissed as personal opinion or subjective experience.

And you start to understand why the culture today is deeply entrenched with the moral relativism that makes abortion plausible to so many. The problem isn't pro-life incrementalists in the main. It's a worldview challenge we face, whether we're abolitionists or whether we're pro-lifers.

The culture does not agree with us that the intentional killing of an innocent human being is wrong. And the worldview premises that make that plausible to them have been deeply entrenched in our culture for several hundred years.

And to think we're just going to get rid of them overnight, I think, is wishful thinking. It's not going to happen.

OK, we are going to go to our first commercial break. And when we return, each of our debating opponents is going to be providing a seven minute rebuttal to his opponent's opening statement. And we are going to be taking listener questions for the very final segment of our program today, likely somewhere around 530 or so.

And so if you'd like to submit a question, just be patient for it to be asked and answered on the air. And that email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with our debate after these messages.

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Go to royaldiadem .com today, mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with our debate between Jason Storms, an abortion abolitionist, and Scott Klusendorf, a pro-life incrementalist. Both of these men are not happy with those terms, but we are trying to use the vernacular that is fairly well known amongst Christians and specifically those involved in the battle to end infanticide in America and across the world.

And just like when we have debates between Calvinists and Arminians, there are participants that don't like those terms. We're just using a language that hopefully will be understood by the majority. And now we've reached a point in our debate when both of our opponents are going to give seven-minute rebuttals to the opening statements that they heard by their opponent.

And, Scott Klusendorf, it's your time to have seven minutes of rebuttal.

I thought you said Jason. Did I get that wrong?

Oh, I'm sorry. Jason Storms, I'm sorry.

Oh, okay. All right. I thought you were switching it up on me there. Well, I would say, yeah, I'm getting back to sort of some of what I had opened with there. And I don't disagree with some of the things Scott said.

I do agree and appreciate him saying that we do need a biblical worldview to fight this battle. And I think he and I are very much in agreement with that, that this is a spiritual battle that we are in.

We need to utilize all the spiritual weapons that God has given us and to this issue and speak truth plainly and persuasively and passionately. And so to your concern, Scott, that with my statement that the pro-life movement has been an abject failure.

The reason I say that, you know, I certainly recognize there's been a lot of good that has been done by pro-life people all over the country. I, as a pro-life person for many years, was very active preaching the gospel on the streets, college campuses, in abortion clinics and seeing hearts and minds changed and in seeing babies saved and many good things happening.

But the reason I say that is because we have 62 million dead babies as this as the track record. Now, that's obviously not all to be placed at the feet of the pro-life movement. The pro-life movement is not the reason why abortion was legalized.

The pro-life movement was a response to the legalization of baby murder. But I would say it's largely been a poor response in many ways, a poor response. And it's been a poor response, as I said, insofar as it has abandoned the proper theological foundations and the vehicle, the church that God has established to be the the instrument through which he brings justice and has established, I would say, this nation and its foundations.

This country was built upon a Christian worldview. And insofar as we've abandoned that Christian worldview, we're going to continue to plummet into moral chaos. And we cannot fight that with a Christless conservatism, but we must fight that with the full weaponry that God has given us and the spiritual truth that he has revealed to us in his scriptures.

And we must be unashamed of that. And for too long, the pro-life movement has been dismoored from that foundation. And I think that is why the pro-life movement failed to properly stand up to the lawless Supreme Court in 1973.

Roe was an absurd and unlawful court opinion, and it should have been resisted by every governor in this country. There is a longstanding precedent for this. Roe is not the law of the land. Courts do not make law.

And so every state government has a proper check and balance role to play in our system of federalism. And every state government has a right and duty to stand up against unlawful, unjust federal court opinions or executive orders, whatever the case may be.

Abby Johnson, of all people, rightly pointed this out when Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott were defying the Biden administration over lockdowns and mandates regarding the COVID crisis. She said, I am so happy to see Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott defying the unlawful and unjust actions of the federal government.

But then she said, you know, then I realized I was listening to these abolitionists calling for defiance of Roe, and I thought that was crazy. But I realized, well, hey, if they're doing it over lockdowns and mandates, how much more should it have been happening over the killing of babies for decades?