Pro-life efforts have been an integral aspect of the work and ministry of faithful believers since the dawning of the faith in the first century. Through all the convulsions of the patristic era, into the upheaval of the medieval epoch, on toward the Renaissance and Enlightenment, through the great missions movement and the emergence of America, and into the modem period, the true church has always stood for the sanctity of all innocent life—in contradistinction to the pagan consensus for abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and euthanasia. Admittedly, there have been dark days when the institutional church failed to uphold its covenantal responsibilities, but, thankfully, those days have been short-lived aberrations.
Whenever believers have successfully defended the helpless, their efforts have adhered to a predictable pattern—a covenantal pattern. The elements in that pattern, like the commitment to life itself, has remained remarkably consistent: an emphasis on the necessity of orthodoxy, the centrality of the church, the indispensability of servanthood, the importance of decisiveness, and the primacy of patience. — George Grant, The Third Time Around:
A History of the Pro-Life Movement
from the First Century to the Present
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