The Church must stop chasing Planned Parenthood
The pro-life movement is losing the long game. Not because our arguments lack truth or our data lacks integrity, but because we are fighting on the wrong battlefield.
For decades, we have reacted to Planned Parenthood’s every move, attacking abortion procedure by procedure, law by law and statistic by statistic. And yet, abortion remains embedded in our culture, now more accessible than ever through telehealth, mail-order pills and blue-state shield laws. The question must be asked: have Christians conceded the moral high ground?
Planned Parenthood understands something the Church has forgotten — the real battle is cultural. It is spiritual. And it starts not with abortion, but with sex.
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Planned Parenthood stopped pretending some time ago about the range of “health care services” they provide. Just visit their website; it promotes four things: STD testing, birth control, abortion and the morning-after pill. That’s it. Every click, every drop-down, every image communicates one message: sexual freedom without consequence. Not moral questions. Not family. Not dignity. Just access.
And yet, many Americans — even some who call themselves pro-life — still believe Planned Parenthood is a necessary women’s health care provider. Why? Because their marketing is slick, their messaging is clear and the Church’s voice has gone silent.
Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of Medical Affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, recently wrote that "Planned Parenthood marketing has successfully gaslit Americans, convincing them that desperate women would have no health care options without them. This is untrue."
She’s right. But the bigger deception is this: Planned Parenthood has convinced our culture that sex outside of marriage is inevitable — and that the only question left is how to manage “the consequences.” And tragically, many in the Church have accepted their false premise. We don't preach purity; we just fight to regulate what happens after it's lost.
What would happen if the Church stopped reacting and started leading, if pastors returned to teaching sexual ethics without apology, if youth ministries stopped sidestepping conversations about purity for fear of offending, if pro-life advocacy returned to its biblical roots and refused to accept the sexual revolution as a foregone conclusion?
In a recent interview, when asked if the pro-life movement has conceded its moral ground, Dr. Skop put it this way: “When the house is on fire, you save the children first, then the pets, then if there’s time, everything else.” Skop also acknowledged the deeper issue: Eighty-seven percent of abortions are among unmarried women. We are in this crisis because purity was abandoned, and the fire started long before the baby was conceived.
People like Skop are doing an amazing job, but the Church should not abdicate its responsibility to her and others like her.
Church leaders, this is your moment to stop playing defense and start sounding the trumpet. We are the watchmen. And if we fail to warn the people then their blood is on our hands. The moral compass of our culture is not set by those in Washington nor those who sit in the White House. The moral compass has been set by the God of the universe and shared by faithful men in the pulpits across America. And it's time for the Church to stop whispering. It’s time to shout. It’s time to cry out in prayer for national repentance.
Planned Parenthood isn’t just ending lives. They are evangelizing a generation. And while we chase their policies, they’re shaping hearts. That ends when we start preaching truth again — boldly, unapologetically, and upstream of the crisis.
The fire is raging. It’s time to stop reacting and start repenting. It’s time to lead.
Peter Demos is the author of On the Duty of Christian Civil Disobedience and the host of "Uncommon Sense in Current Times." A Christian business leader from Tennessee, Demos uses his biblical perspective and insight gained from his own struggles to lead others to truth and authenticity in a broken world. To learn more, visit peterdemos.org.
