Interacting with Toby Sumpter & Smash Mouth Incrementalism

Matthew 16 and the Need to Read the Signs of the Times

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived. Who are the Pharisees of our day?

This strong hold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

We need to do better. The Church, rich in theological scholarship, has lingered in academic sanctuaries and ivory towers failing to translate its lofty doctrines into a tangible and practical cultural apologetic.

At the Worldview Youth Academy, we bridge this critical gap. Here, theological depth is not an end in itself but a means to engage with contemporary cultural issues for the glory of God and the expansion of His Kingdom.

Our mission is to cultivate thinkers who can articulate and apply Christian truths within contemporary societal challenges. So embrace this call to worship God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your mind.

We will do better as this next generation tears down the idols of our modern culture and works to build a brighter future toward Christendom. 2 .0.

Non-rocker boaters must stop! I don't want to rock the boat, I want to sink it!

Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional? Delusional's okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional.

You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men lauding them for their courage. Go into all the world and make disciples.

Not go into the world and make buddies.

Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

That's a joke, pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. But blessed is he who keeps the law. Proverbs 29, 18, one of my favorite verses. And we're going to discuss today why I chose that verse.

Just not yet. But we will. What's up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Apology Radio. Luke DeBear hosting today. Pastor Jeff just got back from Indianapolis at the SBC conference where there was more treachery and slithering like snakes going on by certain people in power.

Tough time for the SBC. Which we'll be talking about at some point I'm sure. But for now, you got me and you got Little Caesars over here. Yes, sir. That's me. Little Caesars. The memories, man. Used to be $5 pies.

I just ordered a bunch for our youth group this week and yeah. The $5 ones are now like $7 .50 or something. So they're still relatively affordable.

Which is in keeping with just about everything that you purchase with your money nowadays.

Especially here. Inflation's the highest in Arizona and the nation. Food's about a third more. Really? Are we number one? We were. Yeah, I don't know where we're at now. But we definitely were. But yeah, food's about a third higher if you do the math on that.

So we've been feeling it. Thank you, Sleepy Joe. The weather's inflating. So is the prices of goods and services. I'm hot right now. We had to turn the A .C. off and within five minutes I was like, well, I'm already sweating.

The bear's burning up again. It's going to be a fun one today. I don't know. It's supposed to be like 110 today.

Something like that. Just another beautiful Arizona day. So what's up everyone? Excited for today's show.

I'll talk about that here in a second. But first I want to thank our sponsors as always. So you got your NAD patch on today? I don't have it on today, no. I got mine, Ion Layer. You can go to ionlayer .com, put apology in the coupon code and get a sweet discount.

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Actually this hat I just got in. We're gonna have these up. They're not up yet but they will be up soon. Probably tomorrow hopefully. But anyways, let's just get right into this conversation here and I'm running everything today and I forgot to do my timer so forgive me.

Let's just get right into this. So we're gonna be interacting and I was careful how to word it because I didn't want to be like like we're coming at Toby because we love Toby. Toby's my guy. He's one of my favorite dudes in the world and he's been such a blessing to me personally in my own ministry and I know to our church and stuff and I love that guy a ton and so I don't want to be coming at him but I want to interact with it because there's some good stuff.

Some really good stuff that I agree with wholeheartedly and there's some stuff that we want to address as well. He did a recent podcast. His podcast he does is called Having Two Legs which is really good.

I really like it. He's had a lot of really good stuff to say. But he did one called We're All Incrementalists so we're gonna just kind of play through that and interact with some of that. But before we do that I just want to say this because you know he proclaims to be a smash mouth incrementalist which he's going to explain and I want to say they are not our enemies.

Those men especially up in Moscow that are holding to this position they are not our enemies. There are plenty of people in the abolitionist camp that treat them like they are our enemies and have even come after us and our friends who are like minded saying we're compromisers for working with them and being friendly with them and stuff.

That's nonsense that needs to be shut down and knocked off. They are very much in support of equal protection of abolitionist bills. Immediatist as Tobey describes our camp. They're very much in support of what we're doing.

They're not against what we're doing. They are just where we differ is that they're for basically all of the bills. All the plays. They want to run all of them. But they are not our enemies and we need to not treat them like they are enemies.

We need to treat them like they are our brothers whom we love and not so discord with them. So I just want to say that off the bat. So Tobey if you happen to see his brother I love you very much. Appreciate you and I'm just hopeful and prayerful that this is a helpful show.

The only thing I would add in addition.

To that is I don't question Pastor Tobey or anyone in Moscow's commitments to uphold and protect the sanctity of human life. Yeah. I do believe that as far as this issue goes he's incorrect. He's wrong on it.

But that's where we're seeking to interact with what he's written and posted publicly. I know he's had a public discussion even recently on this. Did you watch that? I did. I did not. It was a little bit of what I expected on both sides.

I think it's a good opportunity for each position to be interacted with in the process of iron sharpening iron. It's beneficial to see it laid out. To see I think what was interesting about that is you have both sides seeking to have the same foundation in terms of attacking the problem of child sacrifice.

And everyone is claiming to base their strategy on the Bible. The Word of God is the foundation. And that's most of all what I appreciated even if I would differ with Tobey's interpretive aspect of taking certain passages in the New Testament, for example, on the issue of divorce and polygamy and using that as an interpretive mechanism to extrapolate that principle and say, well, that should form the basis of our public policy as it relates to the murder of the pre-born.

So, Tobey's method on this, or his position at least, how he presented it is God regulated certain practices in the Older Testament and because he did that, because you know, he didn't just do away with it in one fell swoop.

He actually made provision for it to continue with certain things being put in place to take care of the victims, right? The women and the children in particular in these situations. Therefore, Christians today, in the modern day, have a basis for someone to say, I'm gonna support this bill a lesser measure than equal protection, something like a 20-week ban or a heartbeat bill or what have you if it allows me to gain a hearing before the court system and present a solid Christian defense of the sanctity of human life.

Now, I have qualms about that procedure in terms of the strategy behind it, so we're gonna stand by this because it's gonna give us the opportunity to present the Christian position. I think there's a consistency issue there, which you know, I hope to finalize writing something about this, but I just wanna kinda give everyone an idea of where he's coming from.

He wants to have a biblical case on this. I think it's better to rather than just extrapolate a principle and try to use that as an interpretive mechanism and apply to this issue that God never regulates, really, you know, the murder of children in the womb, I think the abolitionist position is we're taking we're trying to take the plain meaning of Scripture, right?

What does it say? What's the command? And we're trying to apply it directly to the practice of abortion. God says you shall not murder, stop doing it completely right now, right? That's where we're coming from.

And therein lies the distinction between our two positions, and as we'll hear more from Toby in just a moment, he kinda lays out things that we agree with, the same things that our eyes have been open to.

We would hope that he would press that harder in certain areas, and we hope to interact with some of the things that he wrote in his blog as far as Christians being involved in the political process, and what exactly a righteous law looks like on this issue.

Yeah, perfect.

Alright, cool. Well, I'm just gonna get this going here. Gabe, if you wanna pull this up, I'll start playing it if you want me to stop. Let's do it. Just say something, and we'll probably be wanting to stop at the same places anyway, so here we go.

Introduction. We here in the Moscow mood have been celebrating and implementing a particular tactic for ending legal abortion in our land that we like to call smash-mouth incrementalism. This is a full-throated recognition of the humanity of pre-born babies from the moment of conception, and the insistence that God's law provides equal protection for those human lives, and so human laws should do the same, along with a deep commitment to embracing all of God's word for the wisdom, tactics, and principles necessary to do so in full obedience to Christ.

Just quickly, yes and amen. And thank you, Toby, for using equal protection. Yeah. Shows you're listening. Yeah, thankful to hear it. Appreciate that. We stand on the shoulders of our faithful pro-life fathers and mothers with deep gratitude for the way that they stood in the gap for decades, some of them sacrificing significantly, ultimately leading to the overturning of that bloody monstrosity Roe versus Wade.

At the same time, we do not mind calling out some of the rot that has developed in the pro-life industry, the suits and haircuts that show up at any relatively successful ministry in order to shrink wrap it and sell it, creating various perverse incentives along the way.

It's one thing for a pro-life ministry to decline to be at the tip of the spear for some particular bill, different parts of the body of Christ with different strengths and tactics. It's another thing entirely to actively campaign against lawful attempts to end legal abortion.

Pro-life organizations that have actively teamed up with abortion supporters to kill bills of abolition should be ashamed of themselves. Smash mouth incrementalist. Can we pause right there?

Go ahead. Very thankful to hear that. Yes. It's obvious that Pastor Toby has seen the fatal flaw. It's obvious that he's been following the conversation closely enough to understand what we've said for quite some time, and that's who the true opposition to this work is.

Of course you have the pro-abortion lobby fighting tooth and nail to enshrine these things even at the state level into our constitutions as a fundamentally protected right. You have all of the efforts that they have employed over a generation now to affect this issue over the past 50 years.

They're active of course, but in terms of actually putting a practical end to legal abortion, as Toby puts it, outlawing the practice, abolishing it, whatever word you want to use, the enemy, truly, when it comes to what decides whether or not this type of righteous legislation sees the light of day and ultimately passes, the greatest barrier standing in the way of us realizing that has been those that he is alluding to.

The suits and ties, the pro-life establishment, the pro-life industry, the mainstream pro-life organizations and their national and state affiliates and their heretical anti-Christian doctrine that is standing in the way of justice being established for pre-born children, namely this idea that women who knowingly and intentionally take the lives of their child in whatever way, and this is something you brought up even recently, you made great points about this, not just through pills, but through potions and various other barbaric methods, we have an entire establishment and industry of people that believe that that woman who knowingly and intentionally does that is to have complete civil and criminal immunity under the law.

She has a fundamentally protected right to murder her child. That is their position. We just saw Brent Leatherwood, the lead ethicist for the ERLC at the SBC, maintain that position in so many words. This is their stated position because they write and sign off on letters doing the very thing that Toby is outlining and that is opposing our bills of equal protection.

The one that Brent Leatherwood and the ERLC signed off on was the letter for Louisiana, the bill that would have ended legal abortion there. So, I'm very, very thankful to hear that Toby is affirming that, something that we've said for a long time, and.

There's a recognition of that. So, grateful. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Toby, for that. I'll save some of my thoughts for the later part of this conversation, but yeah, I mean, it's the pro-life industry that's stopping these bills and every state that we've worked in, it's been the pro-life industry.

It's not been the left wing, the leftists. It's not been the socialists. It's not been the Democrats. It's been the pro-life industry that's stopped every single one of these bills. And so, yeah, we'll get into that here further.

There's so many thoughts I have, I'm trying to keep them organized here so we'll keep going.

Why Lawful Incremental Steps Still Matter

Smashmouth incrementalism is therefore happy to cheer on all lawful attempts to end legal abortion as quickly as possible in our land. We support heartbeat bills and bills of complete abolition because a left jab to the gut is just as much part of the battle as a right hook to the jaw.

And wherever possible, we should run one or the other bill, and not both at the same time. Politicians will tend to take the less courageous route. But if you live in New York or California, I doubt very much that they would conflict.

Every opportunity to proclaim the full humanity of the unborn is to be celebrated. We are incremental in that we believe it is biblically permissible to advance the cause of equal protection by passing laws that stop short of full justice for the unborn.

Not because we're okay with injustice, but because God's word allows for some regulation of immoral practices as steps towards discouraging and limiting immoral practices. Can we stop there?

There's something, a good positive thing on the front end. Another thing that he recognizes is the tendency of politicians to always take the lesser measure that you put in front of them. Exactly. So, even people that have been involved in this fight a lot longer than we have, have said that for years.

When you give a politician an easy way out, when you do not require them to go all the way and demand complete abolition in this area, they will take the lesser measure every single time because their primary interest is maintaining their seat, maintaining their office, and they're not about to commit political suicide and risk giving up their seat by doing something controversial like making murder illegal for everyone.

Right. Right. So, I'm I just point that out to say Toby, I'm grateful that you see that because that's the very thing that we've experienced. Yeah. In this fight is, you know, politicians will go so far, will go as far as you allow them to go.

If we don't rein them in with the rule of law and hold them to the bills that we want them to pass and really threaten to upend their political security if they don't do what we want, you know, that's what they do.

Yeah. We've seen this time and again with our politicians. They will go so far as we let them. If we don't hold them accountable, if we don't rein them in, you know, with these things, then they'll do exactly that because at the end of the day, you know, I wish that they, the majority of them actually cared about this and wanted to see it ended as bad as we did but in our experience, they're going to take that little nibble off the edge instead of this other choice because then when it goes forward and it fails, which it virtually always does up to this point, then they can turn around to their constituency, the people that put them in office, and they can say, I did everything I could.

I checked the pro-life box. I took this appropriate action that you wanted me to take and darn, we just didn't get it this time. But next time, we'll come back and we'll get it. But the rule of politics, as we are told by people that have been in politics for decades, the fundamental rule is, of politics, is make it look like you're doing something when you're not actually doing anything at all.

Yeah, and.

I mean, we, I think we had, we were in 18 states this, or we're in 18 states this year because there's some states that still have stuff going on and the majority of the states, not all of them, but the majority of those states where we've had strong Christians running our bills, faithful believers, they believe in equal protection, the majority of them, when it came down to it, didn't act.

And every single time this year has been, we can't afford to lose this election this year. Yeah, that's been the primary excuse. It's, every single time, and I've heard it time and time again, and they say, well, we'll do it next year.

I can't, we can't lose the election this year, we'll do it next year. And it's the same thing over and over and over again. And again, not all of them, we have some faithful ones like Zach Deacon, I've been talking to in Iowa, for example, who's, you know, he didn't falter, he ran his bill and there's some other creative politicians have done the same, but yeah, but just I wanted to bolster your point.

You're making there. Yeah, and there's something else that could be said here too, I think in terms of framing this, because he says we cheer on and support all lawful attempts to end legal abortion even if those things fall short of full justice on the way to equal protection on the way to total abolition and I would just maybe and I know that Toby has heard this in some measure, but maybe just back the car up and drive by this again here.

I think there's a difference in category between a bill that falls short of establishing full justice and a bill that is inherently unjust. So, for example, equal protection we believe, we're convicted by the reality that it is a just step in the right direction, because it removes the inequity that exists currently in our legal system due to the pro-life laws creating an inequity, saying that mothers are exempt from any responsibility when they take the lives of their pre-born children.

That's an inequity that needs to be rectified, and that's what equal protection does, is it makes murder a crime that everyone is accountable for, that no one just has blanket immunity to commit. But, we realize that things like the justice system are woefully lacking in categories that provide full justice, because Toby's a theonomist, we love God's law, he knows that there are entire categories that lead up to capital punishment, which is what you have to have in order to make justice in God's law, for murder, right?

I mean, capital punishment is God's just prescription for a sanction for that, given the evidence and the witnesses are there, and the evidence and the witnesses on all those requirements, those things are currently lacking in our legal system.

So, equal protection, while not perfect, is a just step in the right direction, even though it falls short of establishing full biblical justice. That's one category, because we know we got a lot of work to do on the back end of making a just penal system, or a penology.

There's a difference between that and a bill that does something explicitly that God commands us not to do. So, Deuteronomy chapter 1, God says to the judges, you shall not show partiality in judgment.

These bills, the pro-life bills, virtually every single one of them, the ones that Toby's mentioning, the 20-week ban, the heartbeat ban, partial birth abortion, you know, all of the bills of permission, what we would call them, every single one of those shows partiality.

And so, the principle is within the law itself, there's an injustice. That's different than what we're saying, in that this bill, while it falls short of biblical justice, it is a just step in the right direction, because it is removing that inequity that exists there.

I hope, I hope that Toby hears that,.

And we understand the difference. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. We'll probably get into this more later in this conversation, but one thing that we've been trying, the conversation we've been trying to push forward is not abolition versus incrementalism, and he's going to get into why there's increments and stuff, and we would say, yeah, there are just increments, but the question is, like you said, is this a just law?

And that's what we've been trying to say, is this morally a just law? Is this a partial law? That, for us, is the argument. And just quickly, before I move on, I want to make a quick point, and this will come up several times in Toby's video.

He keeps mentioning liberal states like California and New York. Right. And how our approach should kind of necessarily change. I get.

The point he's making. I wouldn't agree, but I understand the point he's making. But what I want to say is we don't even have anybody in those states putting bills at all. We want to argue from what's actually happening, and I feel like using those states as an example to argue against what we're saying is like pulling something that's not really happening.

It's kind of ethereal. It's out here, but it's not even, at this point, I don't even see that even as a reality or possibility. What we're arguing from is experience and what is actually happening in real life, in real time.

All the states that we're working in, that we're putting bills in, are conservative states that it is possible to end abortion outright in those states, but it's not happening because of the pro-life movement.

Because of the pro-life industry. And that's what we're trying to argue. So anyway, just a small point. I wanted to say that now, so as he's bringing this up later, you can kind of hear that coming.

Up. It's a good one. I think he would gladly recognize, well, yeah, if you have the opportunity and those legislators know better because they're professing Christians, they're professing pro-life, then yeah, grab them by their Christianity and hold them to their professed values.

That's what Toby would say. But then he would say kind of over here, if you have a state like California or New York, where it's Lib City, baby, and you're just trying to get your foot in the door to get a hearing, switch up your tactics a little bit because there's room for this kind of thing.

There's room to get your voice heard if you propose this kind of bill instead because otherwise they won't even hear you. Whereas we would say, well, still don't compromise. You know? The standard doesn't change just because we don't get an opportunity to proclaim it.

Right, exactly right. That's a great point. Okay, let's keep going.

A couple examples of that in just a minute. We are smash mouth in the sense that we are committed to not resting until the laws of our states and nation provide equal protection for the unborn. Thank you.

While we will celebrate minor victories along the way, we are committed to working for the eradication of all laws that protect the murder of any unborn person for any reason.

In the midst of this conversation, just quickly I would say, because we get criticized for this, we absolutely praise God when there are those small victories and there are lives being saved. We praise God for that 100%.

But again, the question is, are those just laws? Are they partial laws? So I just want to make that quick point there.

Other brothers have responded by calling themselves immediatists. I'm not identifying anyone in particular. I've just seen the term bandied about. And so what I want to do here is explain why basically everyone is an incrementalist of some sort and true or consistent immediatism is either impossible or immoral and possibly both.

So the very purest form of immediatism, the immediate end of all abortion, is not humanly possible because that would seem to require a Thanos-like snap of the fingers, ending all human abortion in the world.

We're not God and we do not have that power. Speaking of which, clearly God is an incrementalist. Okay, just quickly at that point too,.

Agreed. In a sense. In a sense. But I don't know anyone that's arguing for that either.

It seems as if Pastor Toby might be hung up on this idea of if you are an immediatist, then that means that you are an overnightist. As in abortion must be outlawed overnight. And we don't maintain that position.

Like we said, there will be steps to get where we want to go necessarily because we are finite creatures and we exist within time and space. And not only that, we exist within a legal system that we are working to put these laws in place that we must follow through, as he will go on to talk about in the article.

And we can interact with a little bit of his comments there. But, yes Toby, in that sense, we all make progress. And we are going to make progress in this area. The question is, will our progress be pleasing to the Lord?

And how do we measure that? How do we measure progress if the goal is just, well, does it save lives? Okay? That's a measure of progress. And we praise God when He does that, of His own accord. When He intervenes and when He allows innocent lives to be spared, we praise Him for that.

But the question is, the duty of faithfulness and the obligation, the moral obligation that we have to do justice to write, propose, and put just laws in place. Right? The law is a didactic mechanism for teaching, of course.

We're teaching the nation what's righteous by the kinds of laws that we write. And that's why if we gain a hearing before the world, and we've written one thing in our laws, and when we gain that hearing, we're saying something different?

You know, Bonson talks about this a lot. Don't lie to defend the truth. If we're presuppositional in our approach here, we can't present one thing. Abortion is murder. Abortion is homicide. It needs to be treated the same as any other case of homicide, and the laws against homicide need to be applied equally to all persons.

That's what our law says. Babies are human beings made in the image of God. That's what we're saying with our laws, but if we gain our hearing before the world's courts, and we um, or I'm sorry, if we put a law in place, if we propose a law that says, you know, heartbeat.

Heartbeat bill, for example. And then we gain our hearing, and we're before the courts, and we say, well, actually life begins at fertilization. Then we've, in a fashion, lied with what we've written.

What we've written is contradicting what we're saying. So what we write and what we say have to be consistent. Otherwise we're lying to defend the truth. That's a great point. I hadn't even thought about that.

And yeah, Toby, you're right. God could do that if he wanted, but he's chosen not to. And we're not arguing saying that, you know, we're not arguing saying that all abortion has ended all over the entire world at once.

Like, that's not possible. You're right. Unless God did it. And, you know, I would agree that there are even righteous increments in that in our nation, right, we're a republic, you know this. We're a republic.

We have to do this state by state. That's how our nation is established. And so those are righteous increments. But the thing we're arguing for is, in each of these states that we're working in, are the laws in each of these states just or partial?

And so, yeah, we are trying to do this state by state. And, you know, that's the goal. But I want to say this, too. Going back to if God God's the one that's got to do this. Agreed. He has to change the hearts of men.

And that's what we're seeing. The issue, again, is with conservatives. The hearts of conservatives are the ones that are stopping this. And that goes back to the verse. This is a good place to insert this.

The verse I read at the beginning, Proverbs 29, 18. There's no prophetic vision that people cast off restraint. We agree 100%. In every state that we're working in, these bills that we're working to put into legislation come with that prophetic vision, with calling the people to repentance.

Upholding the standard. Yeah, exactly.

And we rightly agree that this is only going to happen if that is the case. And with God working through his people, through the gospel, through his law, to change the hearts of men, that's the only way it's going to happen.

And they have to, it has to be these laws have to be based on that principle. Just one thing I would add to that just came to me.

Maybe this will help, Toby. Help you understand where we're coming from a little bit. Agreed. God will bring these changes about incrementally. But our duty is to hold up the standard and to not back off of that standard.

Yeah. And God will change that slowly over time. But we don't believe, we are not of the conviction that he will change things by us not telling the truth. Right. By lying about this, essentially. If we're going to tell the truth, he's going to change things in his time.

Even with us not budging from our standard. Like, he's going to do it. He's going to bring it about. It's going to happen over a period of even years it could, right, take for this to happen. At least that's how it was with the issue of slavery where that was abolished.

But I hope that helps with this. It's like, yes, God will do this in steps and stages but what's our duty?

Yeah, and the back end of that verse is, but blessed is he who keeps the law. And so we're saying that we cannot have a prophetic vision if we're not willing to uphold God's law in these bills. So if we're championing impartial laws where we're saying, well, you can murder your baby up until they have a heartbeat or up to 15 weeks, which is now what's going on here in Arizona.

You can murder those ones. That's not a prophetic vision. That's an impartial unjust vision. Partial. I'm sorry, partial. Thank you. Sorry, that's my timer. That's a partial vision. That's holding up only part of God's law.

And so how do you expect to change the hearts of men if we're not even willing to stand on God's law and proclaim.

That vision to the people? And I know he'll say this in just a moment but he says and nobody, none of us are saying and then you can kill the baby by these laws that we write. And unfortunately, I know that might not be what you intend but that's the practical reality of what they do being bills of permission.

We'll interact with that in a moment. Okay, yeah, here we go.

God’s Incremental Providence and the Duty to Tell the Truth in Law

We are 2 ,000 years out from the resurrection and God is making slow but steady progress on putting all of his enemies beneath his feet. Death will be the last enemy and then will come the end, 1 Corinthians 15.

But God is the only one who has the power to end all suffering and injustice immediately and in his infinite wisdom, he's chosen not to. This is no excuse for apathy or laziness on our part but it does form the context in which we labor night and day for justice to be established.

We labor at his pleasure. We labor as his.

Servants. Okay, just quickly big picture, yes, like we said only God has that power to do that and he has to change the hearts of men but here's, please hear me on this brother, here's the struggle we're having.

This is the crux, I think. Every one of these states again, these conservative states that we've been working in, that we have bills of equal protection in, those legislators absolutely have the power to end abortion in those states and the conservatives, the pro-life industry has chosen not to.