The least of the least

From the Dashboard >

I first came across Methodist elder David Barnhart’s viral quote about “the unborn” when a self-described “post-evangelical” preacher I follow posted it to his social media feed. Barnhart’s statement is a more eloquent version of an argument heard often from progressive activists, that Christians who defend unborn life are choosing an “easy cause” to avoid doing the hard work of justice.

The statement carries the tone of moral sophistication, but beneath its clever phrasing rests upon a deeply confused moral framework.

“The unborn,” Barnhart wrote, “are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you… They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe.”

That sounds prophetic until you realize how hollow it is. The idea that it’s easy to care about the unborn is belied by one simple, brutal fact: roughly 2,000 of them are killed every single day in America. It’s hard to even imagine a more demanding moral cause than one that has cost decades of effort, millions of dollars, countless hours of prayer, protest, and heartbreak, and yet still snuffs out thousands of innocent lives every day.

If the last 50+ years have proven anything, it’s that the unborn are not a convenient cause to fight for, they remain the most vulnerable, most voiceless, and least protected human beings among us.

Though there are high-profile, public manifestations of it, the Christian pro-life conviction is not built on political posturing but on a theological truth: every human life bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27). That image-bearing confers an intrinsic dignity that no stage of development can erase. To a mind transformed to Christ’s, the right to life is not a privilege granted by law or society, it is the first and most basic of all human rights, the one on which all others depend.

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Intentionally or not, Barnhart’s argument turns this moral order upside down. He suggests that to focus on the unborn is to neglect the poor, the widow, the prisoner, and the immigrant. But that’s a false dichotomy Scripture never makes. Neither the prophets nor Jesus Himself chose to pit one vulnerable group against another; they demanded justice for all who suffer.

Far from being a zero-sum game, Biblical justice is comprehensive. It protects life before birth and defends it after birth. Advocating for the rights of the unborn is not to reject the widow; it is to honor the same God who formed her and who “knits together” every child in the womb (Psalm 139:13–16).

Barnhart lists those who, as he puts it, are “morally complicated.” He implies that the poor, the incarcerated, the immigrant alone test our true love for God. But Jesus never instructed us to measure compassion by the perceived difficulty of the recipient. His command was simpler: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for Me” (Matthew 25:40).

The unborn are not excluded from “the least of these.” In fact, they are the least of the least – utterly dependent, silent, unseen. The fact that they cannot make demands of us is not an argument against their worth, it is the very reason Christians are called to defend them.

Lifting the cry they cannot make.

To love those who cannot love you back is the purest form of Christlike love, is it not?

Barnhart’s statement inadvertently reveals something tragic about modern progressivism, inside and outside the Church: many would rather signal compassion for causes that win applause than stand for those who cannot thank them, vote for them, or redeem their image.

If advocating for the unborn were really as convenient as Barnhart claims, we would not see pro-life ministries defunded and vandalized, smear campaigns against pregnancy centers, and peaceful prayer intercessors assaulted and publicly shamed. In a culture where half the population celebrates abortion as feminine empowerment, standing for the unborn doesn’t enhance credibility, it comes at a cost.

• The easy thing today is not to defend life, it is to stay silent.
  

• The easy thing today is not to grieve sin, it is to baptize indifference in the language of nuance.
  

• The easy thing today is not to confront with truth, it is to call moral clarity “simplistic” and moral courage “virtue signaling.”

And too often, it is to drape cowardice in compassion.

Barnhart’s argument also misses a basic moral fact: every category he lists – widows, orphans, immigrants, the poor – is already protected by law. To assault or murder any of those individuals brings swift legal punishment. But the unborn alone remain legally disposable. That makes their defense the most urgent moral issue of our time.

To argue, in essence, “they are too vulnerable to advocate for” is a perverse confession that comfort has replaced conviction.

To be sure, the pro-life ethic does not end at birth, and those who pretend otherwise are not serious voices. The same movement that defends life in the womb also funds adoption services, fosters children, runs pregnancy centers, supports single mothers, and offers counseling and housing to those in need. The real inconsistency is to claim to care for the born while denying the right of the unborn to exist. That is moral absurdity.

The Church’s mission is not to choose which vulnerable lives to value. It is to defend them all, beginning with those in greatest peril.