Abortion costs lives and our culture. Missouri voters should reject Amendment 3 | Opinion

What is the cost of an abortion?

Some will read that question and respond, coldly and callously, with a simple dollar amount. To an extent, it’s an understandable response and one that illustrates our larger point. For the cost of an abortion cannot be reduced to a mere financial figure. Nor does reducing it to one victim appropriately capture the extent of the real harm that is done by the procedure. No, the actual cost is far wider and deeper than any of us can fully comprehend.

Abortion is a grave evil. It snuffs out a life. It permanently fractures a family. It damages a community. It distorts the futures of a whole state. In other words, the cost of abortion is a culture.

That is precisely what proponents of Amendment 3 on this November’s ballot are asking Missourians to sacrifice. They just hope you won’t realize this is the fee they’re seeking.

To be clear: Asking for the ability to even take one innocent life should be seen as an unacceptable price for Missouri. But pro-abortion-rights forces and their extreme allies are hoping to usher in a new era that goes far beyond that. This is because to eviscerate the current pro-child protections in state law is to strike at the very heart of what it means to be human — and doing so at our earliest and most vulnerable stages. If backers of the amendment can get you to accept this premise, then the guardrails are obliterated for additional extreme ideas about marriage, children, family, gender and sexuality.

We should not be naive about the financial incentives driving all this as well. The nation’s largest abortion provider reports revenue in the billions. And that is without the ability to do its monstrous activities in Missouri and other states where precious lives are protected and their mothers are supported.

Why do we care so much about this? Both of us are Southern Baptists, representing more than 1,700 churches across the Show-Me State. This means we are part of a broader community of Christians who care deeply about life and human dignity in this state. This is because the Bible reveals that each person is made in God’s image, meaning every individual intrinsically possesses infinite worth, and this value comes from the very moment we are created, for we are “knit together” by God himself.

Logically, it follows that something of such incredible value should be safeguarded. Right now, in Missouri, that is the case. But voters are being asked to discard those protections and turn away from all the good work that has been done to defend pre-born lives, serve mothers and help families in the last few years. In short, Missouri has been a leader for the cause of life.

And that brings us back to where we started. The stakes are incredibly high this election. The immediate question before voters is about codifying the taking of innocent lives belonging to our future sons and daughters. Should Amendment 3 pass, the cost would not be measured only in lives lost, but would be seen and felt in ways that sanction a predatory industry’s practice of exploiting scared mothers, accept the reality of forever broken families and tolerate a future inalterably dimmed because luminous lives are missing from it. In short, we are being asked to sacrifice the soul of a culture.

Missouri should reject Amendment 3 and stand for life this November. Doing otherwise would extract a cost that is unbearably high.