[Correction: An earlier version of this piece misidentified the imprisoned prolifers discussed in it as members of Operation Rescue. While they participated in what is referred to in the pro-life community as a “rescue,” they are not affiliated with that organization.]

Just how pro-life are you? Can you check all these boxes? (Any of them?)

q   Pray for the end of abortion

q  March for Life each January

q Write your state and federal officials

q  Counsel outside of abortion mills

q  Donate to pro-life causes

q  Volunteer at pregnancy centers

Don’t worry, there’s no failing grade. We all do what we can in our unique circumstances.  But the recent sentencing of participants in a rescue-like operation that blocked access to the killing center of a late-stage abortionist in the nation’s capital back in 2020, shows just how far some brave prolifers will go—up to 57 months in prison, in fact. Reading the statement of one of these individuals made me think of Jesus telling his disciples that the Holy Spirit would give them the proper words when they were brought before “magistrates and officials” (Lk 12:11-12). Listen to this recent testimony:

So all the years of court-protected slaughter have led us here, where I stand convicted, though guiltless, sent, as I am, to take upon myself the guilt of this court. I stand here for Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, to accept the punishment rightly hers. The Latin term for this is spem in alium. And as I open my arms to plead the mercy of this court on Kollar-Kotelly, I ask the One True Judge, whom she and I will be seeing very soon, to accept my act of love toward her as expiation of her great guilt of pride, indifference, and intolerance.

 So from the depths of my cell I will continue to unite my cries with those of the children, whose cries rise nightly to their mothers’ ears, who weep, with Rachel, for their children who are no more.

 Those are the words of John Hinshaw, sentenced last month to 21 months in prison, after having served nine months following his conviction for violating the FACE Act last August. His full statement, which is posted on the Human Life Review’s website, is worth a careful reading.

The court came down hardest on Lauren Handy, who prosecutors described as the ringleader, sentencing her to four years, 9 months. It’s difficult to see from publicly available videos what Handy and Hinshaw or any of the other rescuers* did to deserve such severe sentences, especially when so many cases of theft, trespassing, assault, and vagrancy go unprosecuted in our major cities these days. Clearly, the Justice Department, under radical pro-abortion advocates enraged by the overturning of Roe, is sending a message to all prolifers to stand down and confine our protests to think tanks and op-eds.

Yet the biblical basis for rescue that inspired Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and so many others in the 1980s still proclaims its challenge: “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter” (Proverbs 24:11).

Innocent unborn babies are the ones being led to death, and their mothers are living with the physical, moral, and spiritual damage of abortion, often not a free choice but a desperate act in response to pressure from boyfriends or families or in the midst of depression and despair. Even apart from any biblical injunction, human decency tells us to defend the innocent and counsel those facing destructive, life-changing decisions. Minds open to prenatal science know the humanity of the unborn child. Eyes open to ultrasound evidence see that the child is a living being, active and growing and reacting to stimuli. Hearts open to love for both mother and child oppose abortion as a barbaric crime that not only ends a nascent life but also attackssociety at its most innocent and vulnerable stage.

Never having risked arrest by participating in a rescue myself, I pray for those who are now incarcerated for having done so. That is the first box to check; something we all can do. Each one is a precious witness to the sanctity of human life, each suffers not only for the babies and their mothers, but for me and for all of us—lawmakers, judges, prosecutors, our whole sad nation, still in the grips of an abortion mindset even with Roe no more.

Let us pray and thank God for raising up men and women of such courage in our time.

* Will Goodman, Herb Geraghty, Joan Bell, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, and Jonathan Darnell.