Has anyone ever told you that “You can’t impose your morality on me!” as you defended your pro-life views? How would you respond? Would you respond with the view that morality is simply subjective, based on the current trends of society?
Or, would you respond with the statement that morality is based on a transcendent standard which is written on every human heart?
Think of the question that Pontius Pilate asked before Jesus was crucified: “What is truth?” Jesus Himself said He was the way, the truth, and the life. All truth is ultimately found and rooted in Him.[1]
Objective Morality vs. Subjectivism
In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis writes about “the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”[2]
Disturbingly, most Americans no longer believe in “objective value.”
The American Worldview Inventory 2025 found, in surveying over 2,000 American adults 18 years of age and older, the following: “One out of every three adults (33%) contends that the very idea of moral truth is a social creation, believing that truth cannot be an absolute and consistent reality that is unaffected by cultural realities.”[3]
A 2024 Gallup Poll surveyed Americans on a variety of topics, including abortion. This is the question that was asked (emphasis added):
Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong?
54% of those surveyed agreed that abortion was morally acceptable.[4] Even the way the question was worded demonstrates the worldview behind the question. The question is based on personal, subjective feelings and not on an objective, moral standard.
The work Georgia Right to Life does on college campuses highlights this. Most students who claim to support abortion do so because they believe in platitudes such as “my body, my choice” and “you can’t impose morality on others.”
Both statements are rooted in moral relativism.
“My body, my choice” is steeped with the implication that one is morally free to do whatever one wants to fulfill hedonistic pleasures.
However, since the preborn baby is a separate, unique person inside of the mother’s body, the preborn child’s right to life must be considered.
Of course, if one rejects the idea that there is an objective standard of right and wrong, then no one can impose morality on other human beings. However, no one truly lives this way.
Regarding relativism, the late theologian, R.C. Sproul, has stated,
In a relativistic culture, nobody is a consistent relativist…People say they don’t believe in any ultimate rules of right and wrong until you steal their property. The moment you take their private property, they’re jumping up and down saying, “That’s not fair. That’s not right.” Now, the myth of moral relativism is modern man’s attempt to create an ethical license for sin. To call evil good and good evil. But of course, if there is no God, there is no good, there is no evil.[5]
The truth is that the statement “there is no truth” is itself an absolute statement, proving that the philosophy of moral relativism is self-defeating.
Legislating Morality
Our laws are rooted in a worldview. Either God’s moral law and natural law, revealed in Scripture and written on men’s hearts (Romans 2:15) will impact our laws, or secularism will. Our founding fathers were impacted by natural law when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, as well as Martin Luther King Jr., when he wrote his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” and quoted the early church father, Augustine of Hippo’s, maxim that “an unjust law is no law at all.”[6]
The government has a duty to protect life and preserve its citizens’ lives. If the government does create an unjust law, not rooted in God’s moral law, then the citizens have no obligation to obey.
Further, the preamble to the United States Constitution states that some of the purposes of the Constitution and government in general are to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”[7] Our government was established to do what Romans 13:4 says a magistrate should do as an “avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
This is even seen in our speeding laws. Why do we have laws against speeding? So that citizens do not drive too fast, crash, and harm other human beings in the process. A law against speeding is rooted in a worldview that values natural law and the protection of the right to life of all human beings.
When we apply this to abortion, which always intentionally destroys an innocent human life, the stakes could not be any higher. The government must “impose morality” on its citizens so that defenseless human beings that are being taken away to death (Proverbs 24:10-12) are saved from a brutal slaughter.
The next time someone says that “you can’t impose morality on others,” ask them if they believe the same thing when it comes to someone else stealing their own private property or trying to harm them. Moral relativists want subjectivism when it comes to issues such as abortion, but not when it comes to someone harming them.
A Call to Consistency
While pro-lifers can and must use science to show the humanity of the preborn, our efforts will not truly take root if they are not based on a transcendent standard, or in God’s moral law. Scientific arguments have their place, but unless minds and hearts are both changed on the value of human life in the womb, the fight to abolish abortion will not progress.
Thus, we must be unashamed to boldly use Scripture to fight against the evil of abortion and fight for personhood.
The abortion advocates of today might be convinced that life in the womb is a human being, yet, for them, the question becomes the morality of “forcing” a woman to continue a pregnancy.[8]
This is where personhood advocates come in with the truth that the baby inside the womb is a person made in the image of God with inherent value, dignity, and worth. This idea is not based on subjective feelings, but on an objective standard.
Without our pro-life efforts being rooted in God’s transcendent standard, based in His inerrant word, we are building a movement on shifting sand. Let’s use God’s truth, revealed in both science and His Word, to convince our fellows Americans of the humanity of preborn babies.
Learn more about engaging in pro-life apologetics at a Georgia Right to Life Pillars of Personhood training. Please reach out to stateoffice@grtl.org to learn more and schedule a training.
Sources:
[1] John 18:38 and John 14:6
[2] Lewis, Clive Staples. The Abolition of Man. HarperOne, 2001.
[3] American Worldview Inventory 2025
[5] Sproul, R.C. “The Myth of Moral Relativism.” Ultimately with R.C. Sproul, May 10, 2021. Podcast, 1 min., 33 sec. https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/ultimately-with-rc-sproul/the-myth-of-moral-relativism
[6] Natural Law vs. Legal Positivism and No Escaping Natural Law
[7] Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
Brooke Robyck
Georgia Right to Life
Project Coordinator