There is a comfortable lie that well-meaning people tell themselves when it comes to abortion. It goes something like this: I personally would never have an abortion, but I do not think it is my place to impose my views on others. It is a divisive issue. People disagree. The best thing I can do is stay out of it.
It sounds humble. It sounds respectful. It sounds like exactly the kind of measured, reasonable position that thoughtful people are supposed to take.
It is none of those things. It is cowardice dressed up as courtesy.
The Myth of the Neutral Position
When we say we are staying neutral on a moral question, we are not actually staying neutral. We are making a choice. And that choice has consequences for real human beings.
Consider slavery. At one point in American history, slavery was legal, socially accepted, and vigorously defended by a significant portion of the population. The question was deeply divisive. People disagreed. And there were plenty of well-meaning citizens who chose to stay out of it.
Were they neutral? No. Their silence gave the slave trade room to operate. Their inaction was a form of action. By doing nothing, they were doing something. They were allowing it to continue.
This is what moral neutrality always produces. It does not split the difference between two equal sides. It protects whoever currently has the power to do harm.
What Bonhoeffer Understood
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who watched the German church go silent as the Nazi regime rose to power. Most church leaders chose the path of least resistance. They told themselves it was not their place to get involved in politics. They stayed neutral. They kept quiet.
Bonhoeffer called that out for what it was. He helped launch what became known as the Confessing Church, a movement that refused to offer the cover of Christian legitimacy to the Holocaust. And he went further than words. He joined a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler, was arrested, and was executed just days before the war ended.
Bonhoeffer put it plainly: Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless.
Silence in the face of evil is not a neutral position. It is a position. It just happens to be the one that evil prefers.
The Same Logic Applies Today
One million unborn children are killed every year in America alone. That number is not a matter of opinion. The humanity of the child being killed is not a matter of opinion. The science of embryology settled that question long ago.
And yet the response from much of the culture, including much of the church, is the same response the German church gave in the 1930s. It is too divisive. People disagree. It is not my place.
Bonhoeffer’s generation learned the hard way that neutrality in the face of atrocity is not a virtue. It is a failure. And it is a failure that history does not forget.
The unborn do not need your neutrality. They need your voice. Staying silent is not staying out of it. It is choosing a side. It just happens to be the wrong one.
