By John Ensor for THE CHRISTIAN POST
Every February during Black History Month, I choose to learn about influential black figures in history. Two years ago, I took in the life of Bishop Richard Allen and the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Last year, I was reading The State of Black America. This year, it’s W.S. McFeely’s biography of Frederick Douglass. But having served the cause of life now for 35 years, this is also the month I pray for the glorious black history yet to come.
I am convinced that the end of abortion as a business is in sight when our movement is not only joined by but led by the African American and Latino Christian communities. To our black and Latino Christian brothers and sisters, belong the honor of leading us to victory in the abolition of abortion and the establishment of righteousness in the land. I call it the Third Wave.
The First Wave of the modern pro-life movement was the Catholic Church. In the late 60s, as abortion “rights” were argued for in New York and California, many Catholic doctors, ethicists and laypeople understood the horrifying truth of abortion and began to organize. They opened educational offices to explain fetal life; launched political efforts to elect pro-life leaders and started “emergency pregnancy services” to help women struggling with pregnancy issues. The modern pro-life movement was born. It was considered (disparaged) as a “Catholic” thing.
In the late 70s, the Second Wave arose. The Evangelical Church joined the cause. Several rushing tributaries formed when Francis Scheaffer and C. Everet Koop produced a book and film called Whatever Happened to the Human Race? Then, Evangelical leaders with broad outreach into the community — James Dobson, Jerry Fawell and James Kennedy —summoned Evangelical pastors and lay people to answer the call to cherish and defend innocent human life. Evangelicals flooded into the pro-life movement. They volunteered in various pro-life organizations, but primarily focused on opening pregnancy help centers to rescue one mother at a time in their neighborhood.
