Pioneer of pro-life movement reflects on Roe v. Wade

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Dr. Harold O. J. Brown has been waiting a long time. Sitting in his office at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, where he teaches theology, ethics and history, Brown, 71, is still thinking of new ways to wage a battle he began more than 30 years ago. And he’s still waiting for a victory he prays will come soon.

Thirty-two years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in its landmark Roe v. Wade decision, Brown still remembers that bleak January day. He was then an associate editor for “Christianity Today,” and an expert in medical ethics who had become increasingly concerned about the prospect of a broad legalization of abortion.

On Jan. 21, 1973, Brown was in New York, where he had been invited to a discussion about abortion with members of the American Medical Association and the Christian Legal Society.

“We discussed the issue of abortion that day not realizing that the very next day the Supreme Court would throw what amounted to a nuclear bomb into our discussion,” he said.

The nuclear bomb was Roe v. Wade, handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 22, 1973.

Brown still remembers the headline in the Washington Post the next morning: “Court legalizes early abortion.” But after reading Roe v. Wade for himself, Brown realized that the Post had grossly underreported the breadth of the decision.

“What the court had actually done,” he said, “was legalize early abortions, mid-term abortions, and late abortions, right up to birth.”

Back at “Christianity Today,” Brown wrote the lead editorial about Roe v. Wade for the magazine’s February 1973 issue. He summarized the implications of the decision: “It appears doubtful that unborn infants now enjoy any protection prior to the instant of birth anywhere in the United States.”

But the grim implications went further, according to Brown’s editorial: “This decision runs counter not merely to the moral teachings of Christianity through the ages but also the moral sense of the American people … Christians should accustom themselves to the thought that the American state no longer supports, in any meaningful sense, the laws of God, and prepare themselves spiritually for the prospect that it may one day formally repudiate them and turn against those who seek to live by them.”

Brown had issued the first wake-up call to evangelicals about abortion. Sadly, no one woke up.

A question of enlightenment
In the weeks after Roe v. Wade was handed down, Brown and his colleagues thought it was only a matter of time before moral outrage would sweep the nation.

“Many of us at that time thought that as soon as people realized what the Supreme Court had done, there would be a major rebellion, especially among Christians,” he said. “We thought it was sort of a question of enlightenment.”

Months later, no outrage, no rebellion had surfaced.

“Christians were awfully slow to wake up,” Brown said.

Major evangelical leaders barely made a peep about Roe v. Wade. Protestant churches initially raised no protest.

One group that wasn’t slow to react, according to Brown, was Roman Catholics. The Catholic Church had long opposed abortion, and was an outspoken critic of Roe v. Wade from the moment it was handed down. Brown thinks that evangelicals’ reticence to work with Catholics caused them to initially ignore the issue.

But Brown was determined to keep bringing it up.

Council established
In 1975, Brown, along with his wife, Grace, and former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, founded the Christian Action Council, the first major, evangelical pro-life organization in the United States.

“We started the organization intending to bring a Christian witness to several areas, including the abortion issue,” he said. “But the abortion issue has stuck with us. We’ve never gotten out of it.”

In its early days, the council focused almost exclusively on legislative efforts, lobbying zealously for the tightening of abortion laws. Over time, the group’s lobby didn’t get far.

In the early 1980s, CAC changed its focus. Instead of pleading with lawmakers, they would plead with the women considering abortions. The council formulated the concept of pregnancy care centers and formed Care Net, an umbrella organization of independent care centers with nearly 800 locations in its U.S./Canada network today.

Compassion and truth
Kurt Entsminger is the current president of Care Net, overseeing a national hotline that takes in more than 5,000 calls a month. Entsminger estimates that Care Net centers helped nearly 110,000 pregnant clients last year, and that counselors working with abortion-minded women helped save as many as 21,000 unborn children.

Entsminger is convinced that compassion is indispensable to winning the war against abortion.

“We need to re-cast public debate to focus more on the woman and not just on the baby,” he said. “Because the fact is abortion hurts babies and women.”

Brown agrees, and points to another key weapon: the truth.

“What needs to happen is that we need to be able to change the minds of large numbers of Americans,” he said. “That is difficult to do because the facts are regularly distorted by the media.”

In an effort to promote the truth about abortion, Brown and Entsminger traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18 to meet with a White House liaison, and brought a proposal for the Bush administration: the creation of a government agency that would disseminate information about the impact of abortion on the American culture.

“We need for the government to tell the American people that this nation has 45 million fewer citizens because of abortion,” Brown said. “We need more studies about the consequences of abortion for the girls and women who have them. We need to get accurate information into the hands of Americans.”

Entsminger agrees.

“There is a woeful lack of understanding of the impact abortions have beyond the fact that the life of an unborn child is taken,” he said. “The impact that abortions have on women has been woefully underreported.”

Trauma denied
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, denies that women often experience trauma after abortion. The organization’s Web site claims that most women “feel relief” after having an abortion: “Some people who oppose women’s right to make their own decisions claim that abortion often causes long-lasting emotional problems, or ‘post-abortion syndrome.’ There is no scientific proof for these claims ... Hundreds of so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ scare women about abortion. They lie about the medical and emotional effects of abortion.”

But, according to Entsminger, abortion providers are the ones manufacturing lies. He said that Care Net works with thousands of women each year who suffer from post-abortion trauma. The organization has an entire program devoted to helping women cope with the emotional and spiritual impact of abortion. Entsminger hopes that Congress will fund more studies on post-abortion trauma, as well as treatment programs for women who suffer after an abortion.

And Brown hopes that the efforts of pregnancy care centers and pro-life activists will continue to pay off. He’s encouraged by some of the progress that has been made, but with an estimated 1.3 million abortions taking place in the United States each year, he knows there is still a road long ahead.

While he waits, he quotes Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”

Published by Keener Communications Group, February 2005

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