A new national survey commissioned by Care Net found nearly 4 in 10 women who have had abortions were attending church regularly at the time of their first abortion.

Sadly, three things in our culture and within the church have contributed to abortion’s prevalence among church-going Christians.

• The politicizing of abortion.
  
  
• A lack of broad-scale ministries within the church to specifically help women and men make pregnancy decisions.
  
  
• 50 years of our culture devaluing the role and contribution of fathers to child well-being.

The result? Most post-abortive women don’t view the church as a place to go for help with a pregnancy decision.

But there is hope!

The women surveyed who are most familiar with the church had the most positive view of the church’s potential to aid those who are at risk for abortion. For example, the survey found that regular church-goers were four times more likely than non-church-goers to expect a loving reaction from the church to their unplanned pregnancy.

The church has an enormous opportunity to create ministries to present expectant mothers and fathers with realistic, life-affirming alternatives to abortion.

To reference Christ’s words recorded in Matthew 7:5, abortion is a log in our eye as Christians, compared to a speck in the culture’s eye. It’s time for us in the pews to get into the log-removal business. Only then can we see clearly to lead the rest of the culture out of the darkness of abortion.

Be sure to check out our new Making Life Disciples resource this spring, a curriculum designed to equip churches for effective pro-life ministry at: www.care-net.org/mld.