After abortion ruling SBC president says rejoice, mourn
The new leader of the Southern Baptist Convention was pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and he made his feelings known in a message to denomination members heading into the weekend.
Southern Baptists ought to note the overturning of Roe v. Wade with “celebration and rejoicing” in their worship services Sunday, said Bart Barber, a Texas pastor elected as president of the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, in a livestream Friday night.
But they should also mourn, “because we recognize that a number of children have died under the abortionist’s knife,” Barber said.
Barber, in the stream hosted by the denomination’s official news service, Baptist Press, was joined by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Brent Leatherwood, acting president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and Dana Hall McCain, a member of the convention’s executive committee.
It was Barber’s first statement on abortion as president in a setting with other prominent figures such as Lee. The speech came just hours after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and allowed states to ban and regulate the medical procedure.
In states such as Texas, where abortion was immediately made illegal upon the court’s decision, people who oppose abortion need to show its abolition “can happen without the world falling apart,” Barber said.
“It’s not the ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ in Texas,” Barber said, referring to the popular book and Hulu series. “Women are not deprived of the opportunity to flourish in Texas. Everything we were told would come apart at the seams is not coming apart at
the seams in these states that made abortion illegal. The only difference is their children get to live.”
According to the 2014 religious landscape study by Pew Research Center, 66% of members of the Southern Baptist Convention say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while 30% say it should be legal in all or most cases.
At the SBC’s recent annual meeting in Anaheim, some in the denomination argued for the criminalization of women who have abortions.
That, McCain said, is “a pathway … that does not get us to real justice.”
Ultimately, voting members of the denomination rejected a resolution that would have called for the criminalization of those women.
The Southern Baptist leaders also called on members of their denomination to care for people in crisis, including through pregnancy resource centers.
Lee also advocated such centers, mentioning that he has served on the board of one.
He also said the state needs to strengthen its foster system and adoption laws, and referenced a decision last year to
expand health care benefits for pregnant and postpartum TennCare members from 60 days to 12 months after pregnancy.
Now, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission will move toward not just focusing on families in crisis, but also on advocating for an end to abortion on the
state level, said Leatherwood, the acting head of the convention’s public policy arm.
“Today is the biggest achievement in
the history of the prolife movement, there is no doubt about that,”
Leatherwood said.