Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared in the Billings Gazette.
Rugged individualism and self-reliance are highly prized traits in Montana. We agree that people should be as free as possible to make their own way in life. To succeed through your own effort is a worthy goal. If we’re being honest, though, most of us, probably all of us, have needed someone to be there for us at a crucial moment.
That’s why even in Montana, you’ll find neighbors helping neighbors. You’ll see churches ministering to the vulnerable all around them in their communities. And you’ll witness moments of incredible generosity as complete strangers lend a helping hand to those in need. In short, the big skies of Montana are only matched by the big hearts of her citizens.
Despite this big-hearted neighborliness, Montanans are being asked to turn away from those who need the most help, who have no voice, and too often find themselves with no one to defend them: our preborn sons and daughters. We’re being prodded by a multi-million-dollar, out-of-state campaign to withhold the simple decency and Montana values that unborn children need from us to get their own start in life.
This badgering comes in the form of Constitutional Initiative 128 – a ballot question that seeks to drive a deadly wedge between mothers and their children in the name of freedom. Because Montanans rightly cherish the idea of self-determination, it makes sense that the pro-abortion authors of this initiative would use the language of freedom to try to persuade us to vote for it. But, how is it a Montana value to kill the innocent in order to advance a personal agenda?
In the name of freedom for one, freedom for the other is being trampled. Snuffing out the life of a defenseless child is antithetical to freedom. Proponents of CI-128 don’t want voters to recognize its one-sided argument. Instead, they craftily highlight only one party in an abortion in an attempt to cause us to conveniently forget the life that is taken in the process.
In reality, the freedom that abortion promises not only robs innocent children of their own right to life; it also threatens to ensnare women in a lifetime of guilt and regret for the rest of their lives as they eventually come to grips with the staggering realization of the life they denied to their own child.
CI-128 is not even a Montana initiative. Montana is one of 10 states where this abortion initiative is being voted on. It’s being promoted here because its backers think our highest value is freedom. But freedom isn’t our highest value. We restrict freedom in many ways. That’s what laws are all about. When the freedom of one person harms another person, we demand justice. Abortion not only harms another person; it kills another person.
Where is the justice in that?
The best path forward for Montana is one created by Montanans, one that takes us down a trail marked by the best of our principles: personal responsibility, service to others, and freedom for all – including that most essential right to live. CI-128 does not represent the best of who Montanans are. We’re better than this. Montanans should soundly reject it.
Barrett Duke serves as the executive director of the Montana Southern Baptist
Convention. Brent Leatherwood is the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty
Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
