The reversal of Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court last Friday is certainly cause for rejoicing among those who are pro-life. And I do rejoice. But a profound conversation is lurking below the surface in the opinions of the various justices. It will be a critical mistake for Christians not to understand that conversation and not to consider how best to join it. Not joining the conversation and not doing so wisely will perpetuate our existence under what is, in principle (as I will explain) a tyrannical state and federal government.

Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked abortion decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization seems to have put many pro-life policy advocates in a rush to enact newer, stricter laws prohibiting doctors from performing abortion procedures. But by Justice Alito’s legal logic, all of us, the born and the unborn, are not much more than an aborted fetus. To be pro-life, one’s view of law and the constitution must go much deeper than prohibiting abortion procedures.

I am delighted that the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to reverse its abortion precedents, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The opinion does a great job dismantling the faulty historical analysis employed in Roe between abortion and its treatment under the common law. However, one thing I have not mentioned previously was particularly grievous to me in two ways.

People have begun to protest the leaked U.S. Supreme Court decision that would overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey outside the homes of several Justices. I believe the Court has been fostering for decades the climate of threats and violence the Justices are now experiencing for the following reasons.

Pro-life advocates are naturally excited that the United States Supreme Court may be ready to reverse its abortion-rights jurisprudence.  But I found the leaked opinion amusing.  One such amusement was the Court's opening and closing its opinion with the assertion that abortion presents a “profound moral question” and then proceeding to ignore it. Truthfully, Justice Alito’s opinion is more despicable and disgraceful than the Court’s treatment of slaves and their descendants in the infamous decision involving slave Dred Scott.

Eighty briefs were filed with the United States Supreme Court by pro-life organizations and persons in support of Mississippi’s constitutional authority to ban all elective abortions after 15 weeks. My name went on one of those briefs as its author. A lawyer friend and colleague whose state organization joined on that brief said, “This theory is brilliant…Florida will sign on to the brief.” Brilliant or, as another friend of mine says, “evil genius”? You decide.

Today I want to speak to what a non-Christian friend calls “the Church that’s substituted Mr. Nice for Jesus Christ” and, using Jesus’ own words, consider how He might have responded to those in American society complaining about their oppression and victimization. I suspect those of the Church of Mr. Nice and those to whom it seeks to appeal would be horrified, and they, along with the others, would “cancel” Him again. It may even happen to me.

I got a text from a state legislator on Wednesday that read, “How can a [U.S.] Supreme Court decision overrule our state Constitution? The [U.S.] Supreme Court has been wrong on Roe v Wade, Dred Scott and many others.” I get this question and others like it quite often. If you don't know the answer or if you mistakenly think the answer is "the Supremacy Clause," read on. The right answer is important because when you don’t know the rules of the game—which is what our state and federal constitutions are—then, in time, you will lose on every political issue you care about.

It has been building for a couple of years, but it hit me like a ton of bricks on Wednesday that the basis for my pro-life advocacy for the last 20 plus years has been predominately upside down and backwards. Thankfully, that mistake will not be made in a friend of the court brief soon to be submitted to the United States Supreme Court on that issue that God led me to write.

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear a case involving Mississippi’s ban on all elective abortion from and after fifteen weeks gestation. The options before the Court in terms of whether to affirm Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v, Casey are limited. But the key for conservatives isn’t just the reversal of Roe, but the grounds on which it might be reversed. Seeing Roe and Casey only in terms of abortion is a huge mistake.