Bradley Pierce and Phil George have focused significant energy on the effort to abolish abortion in Texas. In this podcast, they explain why they think abolition must be preferred above incremental measures.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And we're here to talk about the ending of abortion and the long war that has been waged and some of the difficulties in that war. And we have with us two brothers to talk about that from the great state of Texas who have been involved in this war. And so it's so good.

We have Bradley Pierce. Hey, Bradley. Hello. Good to be with you. Good to see you.

Bradley's a co-founding attorney at Heritage Defense where he helps defend for parental rights, particularly Christian families and homeschool families against the threats of the state. He's an attorney, graduated from Baylor Law School. And then so it's so good. I'm just so thankful for all your work there in Texas and what a blessing it is. And then also from Texas is Phil George.

Hey, Phil. Hey, Scott. Hey, Jason. Great to see you, brothers. So Phil is a pastor at Grace Life Church in Dallas.

He's tri-vocational. He's a rancher and he's also a CPA. He's an accountant that helps people stay out of the way of the IRS. And anyway, these brothers have been working hard in Texas doing conferences. And I'd like you to tell about the next conference you're going to have maybe toward the end of this.

But we're here to talk about what is likely the greatest scourge across the world, and that is abortion. And the prospect of abolishing abortion, these brothers have taken the position, the only position is to abolish abortion. And, you know, we're, we're on a 48 year run of abortion running free in America. I was thinking about this law and many of the laws that have come after Roe vs. Wade of Isaiah 10 verse 1, woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, who write misfortune which they have prescribed, to rob the needy of justice and to take what is right from the poor of my people." This whole matter of unrighteous decrees, to write misfortune into the laws.

I know that's been a great focus of our two brothers here. You know, there have been many laws that have been enacted to try to restrain abortion, you know, over these 47 years, you had, we've had heartbeat laws, we've had ultrasound laws, we've had physician and hospital requirements, we've had gestational limits, We've had partial birth abortion laws and debates over public funding of abortion, state mandated counseling, waiting periods, parental consent laws. So there have been lots of laws that have been launched. And there's a term that to define, to describe these kinds of laws, they're under a principle of incrementalism. The philosophy that progress toward a goal, toward this goal of ending abortion is a legitimate way to eventually abolish abortion.

And, Nibbling away at the edges. Nibbling, yeah, I think that's a good way to say it. So, these guys are what you call abolitionists. Now there are some abolitionist groups that we think are off course, at least one in particular, which wages war against the local church and things like that, but that's not these guys. These guys have a high view of the local church and a high view of the Bible.

Now, the central argument against abortion is really very simple. There are several arguments against it, but the central argument is that it violates the sixth commandment, thou shalt not murder, or thou shalt not kill. And so when we consider incremental steps toward the abolishing of abortion, the moral dilemma is really a matter of law, and which are lawful laws and which are not lawful. And so there's a question that we ask, and that's this, Is the use of an unjust law that allows for murder righteous or unrighteous? Is it right to pass a law that allows murder, even if it might mean the murder of fewer?

Is it consistent with the Sixth Commandment to write laws and pass laws that allow certain types of murder or murder restricted to different ages of people, for example six months or 18 months, whatever it might be. So that's really the question. We're here to talk about the matter of these incremental measures, these incremental laws that most people believe are steps in the right direction. So that's what we're here to talk about. So talk to us, what are your thoughts?

Philly, I guess I'm gonna jump in first on this point if you don't mind, if you're okay with that. I think that it's ultimately a question of obeying God, right, and seeking his will. You know, God certainly uses unjust means to accomplish his will, right? He used Joseph's brothers committing a crime against him in order to accomplish his will. There's many sinful things that people have done throughout history that God has used, accomplishes will.

So, you know, so that's not really the question. The question is, you know, what would he have us do? What ought we to do? You know, I think God's commandments to legislators, to magistrates, to civil leaders are clear, and that is that they are not to show partiality and judgment. They are not to oppress the fatherless.

They're not to condone sin or not to treat sin as something other than sin. And I think that's an issue with a lot of the bills that we're describing here when it comes to abortion. And it's one thing that, you know, it's kind of, I think a question to ask is do the ends justify the means? Because I think we can say, hey, there's been lots of bills that arguably have saved some lives over the years. I think we could talk, you know, have they actually delayed the abolition of abortion by, you know, by kind of chipping away and have more lives been lost as a consequence of that.

I think it's certainly a valid discussion. But even regardless of the actual numbers of lives saved versus the ones who would have been saved under a different strategy, it's only a question of the ends. The ends do not justify the means. Right? The means that we pursue, the ends have to be just, which is the end of abortion that I think we all want, but the means also have to be just.

And what we oppose as abolitionists is any, any means that compromises God's standards of justice, any means that show partiality and judgment that oppress the fatherless, that treat and implicitly condone abortion as health care, any means that deny the humanity and the divinely infused dignity of the child from the moment of fertilization, any means that legitimize Roe versus Wade and the evil decision that it is, or treat it as law whenever it is not or any means that violate the governing authority of the Constitution, which requires that states provide equal protection of the laws to all persons under their jurisdiction. Any means that do those things we believe are are unjust. And we believe that it's by pursuing unjust means that we have failed to obtain a just result. And why we've ended up just perpetuating the very thing that we've sought to regulate. And really why actually the regulations that we've done, oftentimes they're counterproductive.

Abortion is going down faster in pro-abortion states than it is in many pro-life states And Planned Parenthood is only getting bigger and their market share is getting bigger because we're regulating their competitors out of the market, so to speak. And I hate to speak in those terms, but that's the way that we're treating abortion with the laws that were passed by regulating it like it's some kind of a business, instead of treating it like it's a sin that needs to be ceased immediately, instead of treating it like it's a crime that needs to be abolished now. And so that's the problems. And That's why our approach is different than what has been the traditional pro-life approach for the last 48 years. You were vigorous opposers of the recent Texas heartbeat law.

You know, Christians all over the country are rejoicing. You weren't rejoicing. So talk to us about that. That's a really good question, Scott. Let me start with just giving you a survey of where things are on the ground here in Texas with the Hartley bill and then maybe back up just a little bit and give a summary of why abolitionists like Bradley and I were opposed to bills like this and even testified against it in the House and Senate earlier this year.

I think Scott you and I talked a month or so ago after the bill passed and it was even someone in your church that was you know praising God that abortion had been effectively ended in Texas. I heard that same thing from Dr. Moller on the briefing the day after the bill passed and Texas Right to Life is saying things like this that 150 babies per day are being saved in Texas because of this law and you do the math, you multiply 150 times 365 and that is 54,750 babies being saved according to their count. Well, in all of 2020 in Texas, there was only 54,751 abortions. So what they're effectively promoting the idea that abortion has been ended in Texas.

But even when you go look at the prior data from Texas Health and Human Services, they show that 84% of all abortions in Texas in 2020 occurred eight weeks or prior to fertilization. And So we know that even if everything worked perfectly with the law, if these doctors that are murderers by trade abide by everything perfectly, that at best you may be saving 30 to 40 percent of our pre-born neighbors. And so it's a total, just a lie to say that abortion has been effectively ended. And from what we're seeing at different abortion mills where Friends of Arts minister in San Antonio and Fort Worth and Houston, the traffic has been maybe minimally diminished, if at all, during this time. And we know that there's mail order, a board of patients available.

We know that people can cross the border into Oklahoma very easily. So I think overall it has had almost no impact upon abortion. And so from a pragmatic standpoint, it seems like that would be something that you would want to stand against. But as you said, Scott, how the pro-life leadership would assess the justness of a law is, you would have to be able to tell them what state you're talking about. In New York, for example, a law that only prohibited abortion up to 30 weeks would be just in New York because that's better than what exists there.

And in Texas, that sort of law wouldn't be just because right now in Texas you have the heartbeat bill. And so that's just situational ethics applied to this issue of abortion. And what we know is that God has a standard. And so we have to understand the decretive versus the preceptor rule of God. And yes, praise, all praise to him that sometimes he does strike a straight line with a crooked stick but as Christians we're not called to be about making crooked sticks he's given us his law word and how it applies to ourself our churches and also to the civil magistrate and I think as as a church just corporately we haven't been good over the last 50 years actually calling out our civil magistrates and letting them know that God has a standard and they are accountable to it.

Yes, there is a separation between church and state, but there is no separation between Jesus and state. All authority in heaven and earth was given to him, including the civil magistrate. And so, I think our nation's under judgment for this, and I think a lot of that falls at the feet of the church. So, here's what I appreciate most, I think, about that abolitionist position is the way that it's addressing and forcefully pushing back on the culture of acceptance that has arisen since 1973. I was born in 1970, So I was three years old when Roe vs.

Wade was enacted. But I have friends who were adults then, and conservative Christians were not accepting that then. So I have friends that were blocking the entrances and being arrested and going to jail. But you're not in a position to keep that up, that level of intensity for 48 years. And so, we've sort of accommodated to the quote-unquote new reality, which is, as a church-going, Bible-believing, God-loving Christian, I can't be in jail every weekend, and so it just becomes an accepted reality in life.

And to make real progress, we're going to have to hit the point where we say we can no longer accept this, And we have to bring back the same level of passion and intensity and commitment that those Christians had in 1973 when they just couldn't live with it. Yeah, and maybe you guys could talk about sort of the impact of the incremental philosophy. I think the main problem with incremental philosophy, and when we say incremental philosophy, we're not, In some ways we're talking, we're using a word that people mean different things by. So just to clarify here, you know, everybody is about increments in the sense that we're all about step by step, you know, moving forward and accomplishing things step by step. You know, if I want to have a revival, you know, in my community, for example, you know, first it begins with me and then my family, and then we reach out, right?

It happens step by step. You know, God works, you know, step by step. We work chronologically. He's a God who created time and things happen one step at a time. So no one is really arguing about that.

Sometimes they just happen one jurisdiction at a time. But what we're really discussing is How do you deal with a sin? And that's the problem with those who say, well, let's just chip away at, or just say, you can keep doing it, but just do less of it. The main problem with that is you're not treating it like a sin, right? You're not treating it like it's a crime, right?

Because how often do we go to our children and say, honey, you can keep disobeying, But just a little less, please. Okay. Let's just, you know, let's just make some progress. It's a little less now that you do make progress, right? And they do sin less and less, hopefully, Lord willing.

But what is the demand? The demand isn't sinless, honey. The demand is sin is wrong. We must obey. Now, of course, we have grace as well, and we know that thank the Lord.

God is gracious and forgiving and merciful because we are incapable in our own flesh of keeping his commands. So we tell that to our children as well. But the point is, God's standard is not, you know, just do a little less sin. No, God is holy. You know, one single sin violated as long as deserving of death.

And so when we treat the crime, the sin of abortion by saying, let's just get a little less of it, then we're not treating it like it's sin. And that is fundamentally the primary problem with the issue of incrementalism as an ism. And that is, we're not treating it like it's sin. We're not treating it like it's a crime. We're treating it like it's a business, right?

Because that's how we regulate businesses. We say, oh, well, it's just, we can improve businesses by just chipping away at the edges or adjusting this interest rate or this or that. You know, that's what we're doing with abortion. And that's, that's why we believe it's wrong. I think something that's readily observable for people who are following it closely is that some of the most animated opposition to the abolitionist position are actually the people who are advancing incrementalism.

Why do you think that is? Well, I hate to speculate as far as motives go, but the pro-life industry, so I'm not going to talk about individual people that hold to a pro-life position, but the pro-life industry is full of lobbies and millions of dollars. And so, for example, with Bradley's organization in Texas, Abolish Abortion Texas, if all of a sudden tomorrow abortion was ended in Texas, then Bradley would have the next great thing he can go on and seek to do. He hasn't built up this multi-million dollar enterprise. And so I think that it challenges what the legislators have done for the last 48 years.

That's what we heard when we went down and testified. It was, you could sense this, man, we can't ignore the Supreme Court. That's the lie that they've told themselves for the last 48 years. And so all of a sudden have to turn around now and do so would really show the futility of how we've approached this issue for almost the last five decades. Well, And let me just, I mean, just assuming the best of motives among many wonderful brothers and sisters even, you know, lobbying and I don't have a problem with million dollar organizations and things like that.

But what I think it is, it's actually something that I was just reading with my children just the other night. You know, the children of Israel, God said to do something. He said to go into the promised land and to take it, and He promised it to them. And they sent in 12 leaders to go in and spy out the land, and 10 of them came back and said, we can't do it. We're like grasshoppers, they're giants.

The land devours them. But two men, one stood up and then the other one stood with them. But Caleb stood up and said, we will win. We will win. God will give us the victory.

He's promised it. I'm paraphrasing here, but, and then Joshua, Joshua stood with him. And the Bible says that Caleb had a different spirit in him that he followed the Lord fully. And he walked, and I would say using New Testament language, he walked by faith and not by sight. And so I think the primary issue really comes down to that.

It really comes down to, are we going to walk by faith, believing that God says it, so we're going to do it, We're going to stand up to the Giants. We're going to go into the land in his name by his will. And we're going to demand the total abolition of child sacrifice. Or are we going to be like those who say, no, can't do it. We got to know let's let's get stronger.

Let's let's just keep doing this and that. Let's you know, that's guess what? They wanted around for 40 years and that's what we've been doing in the pro life movement. We've been wandering around for 48 years in the wilderness, and we refuse to demand justice, that is equal protection of the laws. No pro-life bill says equal protection, that is that the laws that protect poor people should protect people before they're born.

We haven't done that in 48 years, and That's why we've been wandering. And that's why we want to be like Caleb. We want to be like Joshua. We want to say like, No, God has commanded us to end this evil and to rescue those who are being taken to the slaughter. And that's what we're going to demand that our civil magistrates do, and that is to do their duty and do justice for the fatherless and stop showing partiality and judgment.

Yeah, it's really interesting, brother, that when you go back and look at that Supreme Court opinion in Roe, that one of the things that was a strike against Texas was that they weren't doing equal justice even before Roe was in place. Yes, they wanted to say that the baby was worthy of protection, but that the penalty wasn't the same, you know, for killing a baby as it was for killing a born human. And so even in that opinion, the justices know, man, you guys aren't acting like what you're trying to make, depress this case home. And so I think that that sort of inconsistency was around even before row. And then unfortunately, As Christians, we've just picked up on it.

What would you say is the heart of your message toward the incrementalist mentality? Well I would say that the gospel and the law of God have to be our basis and are sufficient to tell us how to address this and every other issue. And so we don't seek men's wisdom, we don't seek pragmatism, we go to God's law and we obey what he says and we trust him with the results. And so, for example, as you talked about earlier, brother, like we, I would say as a pastor, that one of the primary, the nexus of this pro-life movement must be the local church. And so just like every other ministry, I think it is a local church focus that needs to be there.

I think you go down the line of, okay, how do we pull these precepts from God's Word? And is that sufficient for us? As Bradley said, we have to just trust and obey what God had said, and then let him bring the results in his time. Right, we don't overcome evil with less evil. We overcome evil with good.

And that's what we're to put forward is bills that establish true justice. Well, Let me just add one thing about Texas, brother, that I find fascinating, and Bradley as an attorney can certainly speak more of this than me, but when you look at the Texas law, it actually defines an individual as a live human being, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth. And then the Texas Homicide Code defines murder as intentionally or knowingly causing the death of an individual. And so Texas law has made it clear that abortion should be murder, but then you have to have exceptions that treat abortion as health care that then say it's not murder. And so I think that that heaps even more judgment upon the legislators in Texas to define things so clearly in that way and then have to backdoor abortion being something that's acceptable.

They acknowledged that this is a, this is murder that's happening, but they just think, well, as Bradley said, we don't believe that God can do this. We don't believe that if we stand up to the Supreme court, that will actually work. Even though, you know, 30 some odd states are standing up against the federal government when it comes to marijuana And that seems to be working just fine for them. I Think that's the heart of the matter incremental laws are permissions to murder maybe less than before. That seems to be the heart of the problem.

So here's a question for you two brothers. And I've been thinking about this a lot in the lead up to this discussion. As abolitionists, how do you win friends and influence people? And here's what I mean by that. Most professing Christians don't think of abortion at all from one month's end to the other.

And so, you have this group of professing Christians who actually have a high level of commitment and are potentially going about things in an unhelpful way, but they ought to be your best friends. You know, they're not the people who are sponsoring abortion. So you disagree vehemently with the propositions that they're advancing, but they're certainly closer to you, and they're actually the professing Christians who are doing something, who are lifting a finger where most aren't. How do you win them over? Well, I would say what I've experienced and what we've been doing is that when you raise a righteous standard, the righteous will be drawn to it.

And that has certainly been true in what we've done. I think there are a lot of people that this is what they've been looking for. You know, the pro-life movement has been putting forward half-hearted measures, you know, half measures for the last 48 years, and that inspires half-hearted enthusiasm. Whereas putting something forward that people say, you know what, that aligns with my view of justice that aligns with my view as a Christian of, of where we should be headed. That, that, that looks like something that looks like David standing up to Goliath.

That looks like something I want to get involved with. That looks like true justice. And so, you know, that's one reason why we introduce bills in states across the country. I've been involved with writing a number of those. You know, when you file a bill, even though you know, in the short term, it's not going to pass.

It raises a standard. And then that then attracts Christians who have been looking for something like this, or maybe they didn't know that they were looking for it. But when they see it, they're excited by it. And that's been my experience. Raise the standard and it will naturally draw, you know, draw faithful Christians to it.

Amen. Yeah, what I find, brother, is that when you talk to people that have the theological convictions we have, that are committed to the sufficiency and authority and inerrancy of God's word. You can walk them through the case from a biblical perspective. They'll agree. And then when you point out what the most pro-life legislators are doing and what we want to see happen, well, they're gonna think, man, we thought they were doing what you guys are calling for all along.

Like we didn't realize this. We didn't realize that it's the supposed pro-life champions who are the ones in Texas over the last two legislative sessions that have had a bill of abolition before them and one wouldn't let it out of committee. And this year, Stephanie Click wouldn't even let it be heard in her committee. Literally you were testifying, you mentioned the abolition bill and she would try to cut you off mid-session, mid-sentence. And this is the person that was awarded all the pro-life awards after the legislative session for, and she actually passed a lot of bills, as Bradley mentioned earlier, that really just serve as cover for not wanting to do the hard work of having to pass a bill abolishing abortion and calling us as a state to ignore row and promote equal justice.

You know, you brothers have been, you know, hard at work to bring people together to try to, you know, continue to promote the abolition of abortion. You have a conference coming up. Could you just tell us a little bit about that? And and we'll kind of wind up with that. Amen.

Yeah, brother. So our church, Grace Life Church, is putting on a conference on November 5th and 6th in McKinney, Texas. And Bradley and I are two of the speakers there. We also have Jeff Durbin, John Speed, Russell Hunter, Joseph Silk, former senator in Oklahoma who actually led the charge of the bill of abolition there, and then Pastor Cowley as well. So what we hope to do is really give a full org look at this issue of why we say that pro-life is not enough, starting with the foundation of the gospel, looking at the necessity of following God's word, looking at why we're opposed to incremental legislation, looking at the call of pastors in the local church and looking at how God is the one who has to give the victory here and we have to trust him for the results.

And so that's what we're hoping is to be able to help equip pastors, local church members on what this looks like and to be able to encourage them. And I'm very encouraged to see, for example, the recent Southern Baptist resolution on abolition that I think supports what we said earlier, that when you go to people and explain this to them, overwhelmingly, born-again believers will say, yes, I understand what you're saying. And I'm supportive of that. That's what we saw overwhelmingly at the Southern Baptist Convention. And so I'm hopeful and I'm expecting that more and more people will come on board and see this.

And again, I'm not concerned about names. It just happens to be that the name pro-life has a whole bucket load of stuff loaded into it. So yes, I'm pro-life, but using a term like abolition helps distinguish us from what has traditionally been associated with that term pro-life. And so That's why I would say pro-life is not enough. It's not sufficient enough to bring about the ending of abortion because It's not based on the sufficiency and foundation of God's Word Amen.

Well brothers, we're grateful for your work. We we pray it prospers in that great state of Texas that God would increase the reach of your voice and that we would see an end to abortion, maybe in Texas first and then other states following after. Maybe that kind of incrementalism might be okay. But we really appreciate your insights and focus really on the sufficiency of Scripture in thinking this matter through to really consider the law of God and what it actually means, what it actually says, and that's what you've done. So thank you so much.

Really appreciate you joining us today. Amen. Praise God. Thank you, brothers. Thank you, brothers.

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