Conservatives have been fighting abortion on the wrong ground. Abortion is not a political issue to be debated, but a moral crime to be abolished.

Associate Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday, September 18th from pancreatic cancer at the age of 87. When the news hit the pro-life movement, some responded with hope and optimism. Others reacted with macabre jubilation and glee, or even worse. Still others chose to celebrate her championship of women, even though her feminist ideology had a largely negative effect on the American family.

As a pro-life Christian, I’m left with a profound sense of sadness. It’s difficult to mourn for a woman who devoted her life to death and depravity. But for her grieving family and the state of her eternal soul, these only, can I feel sorrow.

Supreme Court watchers have recognized that Justice Ginsburg had not been well for many years. She surely endured great pain and discomfort in recent days. Pancreatic cancer is a highly aggressive disease that does not respond well to treatment.

While the savagely pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ stalwart leaves a vacancy on the Supreme Court for President Trump to appoint a constitutionalist replacement, nothing has changed. And in the short-term, nothing will.

We all know what lies ahead. Battle lines are being drawn, narratives formulated, and talking points written. President Trump will be pressured to put off appointing Ginsburg’s successor until after the November election. He should not delay and most likely, he won’t.

Radical left-wing Democrats (which includes nearly all of them today), will attempt to filibuster any appointee that President Trump sets before the U.S. Senate. Whomever that man or woman is, he or she will endure intense personal and professional scrutiny and a barrage assault of false accusations and malicious deceitful innuendos.

Once confirmed, that jurist will have to shoulder enormous pressure to waffle from time to time, in order to appear reasonable and apolitical. As we have seen, the most promising Supreme Court appointees often betray their steadfast professions of honesty and constitutional integrity once they clear the bar of confirmation.

One year from now, nothing much will have changed. In fact, if Roe v. Wade is overturned tomorrow, one year from now, abortions will still be committed in numbers similar to today. Why? Because abortion is not a political issue, it’s a moral failure of American society.

Conservative activists and politicians have been fighting and losing the debate because we’ve been battling on the wrong ground. As long as abortion is couched as a political preference, all opinions are of relatively equal value. The barbaric ripping of a human fetus out its mother’s womb is a gruesome crime and a moral horror with life-long consequences for the participants and our society. Because it occurs in secret, we can look the other way. Because we’ve allowed Democrats to co-opt abortion as a political issue, good people refuse to see it clearly.

Jeff Steinberg is an author, singer and comedian. In song and speech, Jeff inspires his audiences to overcome life’s obstacles to become all that God created them to be. At under five-feet tall, this “tiny giant” knows something of hardship. Jeff entered the world with severe birth defects similar to those sustained by thalidomide babies(1). He was born without arms and with badly deformed legs. If not for a Christian family, Jeff would probably have languished in a state home alone and broken until death.

But a Christian couple saw him differently than everyone else. They saw that Jeff was fearfully and wonderfully made; that he was an image-bearer of God. He endured years of frustration and pain, the rejection of his own parents, and numerous grueling surgeries. Today, with the aid of a prosthetic arm and leg braces, Jeff is able to drive a car and perform concerts up and down the east coast.

Just yesterday, Jeff left my hometown towing a trailer filled with audio equipment to reach a venue hundreds of miles away in Pennsylvania by himself. Had abortion been legally-sanctioned twenty years earlier, Jeff would probably have been aborted and the world would be much poorer in his absence. The world needs people like Jeff Steinberg to teach us humility and grace.

Abortion is commonplace in America for two simple reasons. First, it is championed by stiff-necked and rebellious, immoral people who seek to escape the consequences of one bad decision by committing another, more heinous act. Secondly, the brutal practice is ignored by ostensibly-good people who lack the moral courage to stand up and speak out on behalf of the women and children who pay the highest cost.

Abortion is not a new or modern invention. Tertullian spoke against it in the second century saying, “Prevention of birth is a precipitation of murder.”  

At some level, everyone knows that abortion is morally wrong. It is not the function of the U.S. Supreme Court to impose moral guidance, but neither should the court undermine moral law. It falls to the Church to provide moral leadership and clarity in civil society, and regrettably, cowardice and negligence prevent most pastors from boldly telling the truth to their members.

The sad fact is that until the American people reclaim moral authority and guidance, abortion and worse atrocities will continue. In 1949, Will Rogers wrote in his autobiography, “If we ever pass out as a nation, we ought to put on our tombstone ‘America died of the delusion that she had moral leadership.’”

That day may soon be upon us.