Neutrality Is Not an Option: Why the Pro-Life Movement Must Lead, Not Linger

History has judged harshly those who stood still in the face of evil. In Nazi Germany, ordinary citizens, churches, and nations justified silence while millions of Jews were methodically exterminated. In the American South, neutrality on slavery allowed generations of brutality to persist under the guise of economic necessity and states’ rights. Even during the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail, “The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”

Neutrality is not harmless. It is permission. And in the case of abortion, it is the quiet consent to end human lives.

Today, the pro-life movement stands at a similar moral crossroads, again. With lives on the line, taking a neutral stance is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous. We are called not merely to speak out, but to lead. This includes supporting and advancing laws that challenge the status quo, stir controversy, and confront injustice head-on.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, the battleground has shifted from federal courts to state legislatures, and we must take definitive, courageous action.

The cost of neutrality is tangible and measurable. According to the Guttmacher Institute, over 930,000 abortions were performed in the U.S. in 2020 alone. That’s one life lost every 34 seconds. Every delay, every failure of neutrality, is another life that could have been saved.

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This is why we fight. This is why we lead.

Pro-life leadership means backing legislation that protects the largest number of the most vulnerable, even when it sparks backlash. Consider the following three laws, once controversial, now credited with saving tens of thousands of lives:

Heartbeat laws, such as the one enacted in Texas in 2021 and upheld in states like Florida and Georgia, prohibit abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detectable—typically around six weeks of gestation. Critics called them draconian. Yet, in the first month following Texas’s law, abortions dropped by 60% according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Behind that number are thousands of babies now alive, breathing, growing, laughing. Laws like these are not theoretical—they are lifesaving.

And now Texas is again taking the lead by vigorously working to enact the “Woman and Child Protection Act,” which empowers private citizens to bring civil lawsuits against anyone responsible for manufacturing, distributing, prescribing, or mailing abortion‑inducing drugs like Mifepristone into the state. Texans can now hold out-of-state abortion profiteers legally accountable, circumventing shield laws in pro-abortion states by authorizing private enforcement rather than relying on government action, and save an additional 18,000 lives.

And yet, there are pro-life groups who, in a misguided interpretation of the law, are choosing to be neutral. These groups have hesitated to support this bill, citing optics or potential legal hurdles. But leadership means setting the tone, not following it. As National Right to Life, we must be unapologetic in pursuing life-saving protections, even when the media misrepresents us, even when our allies hesitate.

The pro-life cause cannot afford to drift toward political palatability or social comfort. Our movement exists to protect human life, not appease public opinion. As William Wilberforce, the great British statesman and opponent of slavery, once declared, “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”

We lead because the unborn cannot.

We lead because history demands it.

We lead because neutrality is never neutral—it is a decision, and it is deadly.

LifeNews.com Note: Raimundo Rojas is the Outreach Director for the National Right to Life Committee. He is a former president of Florida Right to Life and has presented the pro-life message to millions in Spanish-language media outlets. He represents NRLC at the United Nations as an NGO. Rojas was born in Santiago de las Vegas, Havana, Cuba and he and his family escaped to the United States in 1968.

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