A quick, but important note: This is not a hit piece. I’m not trying to hurt Texas Right to Life or any other person or organization. I care about advocating for the preborn, and I’m hoping that my writing spurs Texas Right to Life and others to advocate for Equal Protection under the law for the preborn. Soli Deo Gloria.

By their own admission, “Texas Right to life is the oldest and largest statewide Pro-Life organization in Texas.” Additionally, Texas Right to Life (TRL from here on out) is a heavyweight in the Texas political arena, fielding 93 endorsements for the 2022 midterm election alone.

Financially, they do pretty well for a one-state pro life organization, with $4,961,977 in revenue between their two operational organizations in 2020. For context, that’s almost four times the salary of each member of the Texas House of Representatives and Texas Senate combined.

So, what does TRL do with all this money and power? What are they about?

Here is their mission statement, “Texas Right to Life legally, peacefully and prayerfully protects the God-given Right to Life of innocent human beings from fertilization to natural death.”

Elsewhere on their website they say, “We fight for the rights of the unborn (including the nascent humans created in laboratories), the disabled, the sick, the elderly, and the unloved in a world where the lack of respect for innocent human life has escalated to the point where we are all at risk.”

TRL supports these goals through education, advocacy, and heavy involvement in the political process.

Or do they?

TRL claims to protect “the God-given Right to Life of innocent human beings” and that, “We fight for the rights of the unborn.” Do they do that?

Certainly, they fight for laws that will place certain restrictions on abortion, thereby regulating abortion. In their education they talk about the value of human life, but they don’t go so far as to educate people on the full extent of what rights are and how they are secured.

For instance, in the United States of America, all humans are supposed to have a right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Our Bill of Rights secures other rights, like the Right to Worship, Right of Free Speech, Right of Assembly, and Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

A right is more than an ideal. It is more than a statement about a belief. Rights, legally speaking, are secured by the force of law, and the law is enforced by the force of arms. If you violate rights, especially cardinal rights, like the Right to Life or Liberty, by forcibly depriving another person of life or liberty, the state will enforce the protection of these rights through its armed agents: The Police. They may be local, state, or federal law enforcement agents, but they are all authorized to use lethal force to enforce these laws. Furthermore, if perpetrators of crimes in violation of these rights are taken into custody, they will stand trial, and their own right to liberty, and sometimes life, may be taken from them in accordance with the law.

Rights are tangible. They are protected measurably. We don’t simply hope or wish our rights into existence. We right laws enumerating appropriate penalties in pursuit of the enforcement of those rights.

The Right to Life is the most fundamental human right in the United States or anywhere else. Without it, all other rights are forfeit. Often it is protected with severe prison sentences, or even the death penalty.

Immediately following the flood, God gave a command to all people, saying, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6 ESV).

It is fitting that murder, which deprives individuals of the Right to Life, should carry so weighty a penalty. By God’s own mouth, we see that murder is the destruction of that which God has made in his own image, and ought to be punished with death.

So when we talk about rights and protecting them and fighting for them, we can rightly assume that we’re talking about working towards equal protection under the law for the preborn. After all, the preborn are human. Human life begins at the moment of fertilization. Therefore, the intentional destruction of the preborn is murder.

But Texas Right to Life does not support equal protection under the law. They do not support treating abortion like murder.

This may come as a shock. After all, it seems to be directly at odds with their mission statement and their name.

Texas RIGHT to Life.

But rather than concerning themselves with securing or defending the actual right to life, they have been determined to simply regulate abortion. Despite being confronted for the last six years with the option to pursue full legal protection for the preborn, they have chosen to remain firmly in the regulation camp.

Here are the ways TRL has rejected the effort to Abolish Abortion over the last several years:

2018 Texas Republican Convention

John Seago, who is now the President of TRL, but was at that time the Legislative Director, opposed the abolitionist legislative priority. I believe TRL has actively opposed it during other Party conventions, but that’s the only one I’ve attended.

Failure to Support Abolitionist Bills

The Texas Legislature has a legislative session every other year. For the last three legislative sessions in a row, bills to abolish abortion have been submitted. TRL has declined to support these bills during any of these sessions (example: https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2019-02-04/far-right-legislator-files-bill-to-completely-outlaw-abortion/). Although I suspect TRL has done more behind the scenes to actually oppose these bills, they have definitely not supported them, and as the most powerful “pro life” group in Texas, their endorsement (or lack thereof) carries a lot of weight in the legislature. 

It’s worth noting that the committee chairs who chose to kill these bills in committee such as Rep. Jeff Leach and Rep. Stephanie Klick have received hearty support from TRL as well.

Outright Opposition to Abolitionist Amendment

In 2021, HB 3326 was killed in committee due to, among other things, lack of support from TRL and other groups like it. In May 2021, Rep. Bryan Slaton was the lone individual in the legislature trying to support abolition. During open debate on the Texas House Floor, Slaton recommended an amendment to HB 1280 that would have moved it closer to being a bill of abolition. Texas Right to Life responded with this Tweet:

In other words, they threatened to hurt the scoring of those who supported Slaton’s amendment. Full story here: https://abolishabortiontx.org/texas-pro-life-groups-oppose-amendment-that-would-abolish-abortion/

Strong Opposition to Abolitionist Candidate for Office

Earlier this year David Lowe ran for State House of Representatives in Texas against Rep. Stephanie Klick, who was responsible for killing Rep. Slaton’s abolitionist bill in 2021. Since TRL is a major supporter of Klick, they came out hard against Lowe, authoring hit pieces such as this and posting them on social media. According to Lowe, the former political director of TRL (Luke Bowen), also spread rumors about Lowe that he had been involved in human trafficking. Something like the inverse ended up being true. 

TRL has been so committed to discrediting Lowe and bolstering Klick, that even as recently as 9/14/22 their home page carousel was still featuring the hit piece they had written against Lowe, months and months after the election took place.

Personal Testimony

Over the years I’ve had a lot of personal experience with TRL. I’ve watched TRL President John Seago testify in front of the same House and Senate committees as me, always in support of incrementalism, and not in support of abolition. In 2021 when Seago was testifying before the Texas State Affairs Committee in support of SB 8 (heartbeat bill) he said that someday we may need to “abolish abortion,” but the time is not now. 

In August I had a one-hour phone call with John Seago. The purpose of my call was basically to ask him if he has finally come around to the idea of abolishing abortion. After all, Roe v. Wade is out of the way, and for many years the argument had simply been that there’s nothing we could do because of Roe. 

On that phone call Seago intimated that he does not anticipate ever supporting the abolition of abortion as we define it. When I asked him if he would support “Equal protection under the law for the preborn,” he said that the term “equal protection” is “manipulative language.” Seago, and the organization he represents, is not simply neutral to equal protection under the law for the preborn. They are downright hostile to it. 

In Summary – What does all this mean?

Texas Right to Life would have you believe that they have wiped out the vast majority of abortions in Texas through the legislation they have supported. This is not true. Based on data I’ve meticulously collected and analyzed, when you take into account mail-order abortifacients, and women traveling out of state for abortions, there has been very little drop in the number of Texas babies being aborted, and the same is true in other states that have passed similar restrictions.

TRL is the most powerful pro life organization in Texas, and one of the most powerful political organizations in Texas in general. Their opposition to abolition represents the greatest obstacle to equal protection under the law for the preborn in our state. They should not receive your support. They should repent of their commitment to be an obstacle to equal justice for the preborn, and they should stop pushing incremental regulation of abortion, and start supporting bills to abolish abortion by granting equal protection under the law to the preborn. They need to treat abortion like murder.

I know that TRL can reform. I am praying that they do. I’m inviting you to pray with me, and to contact them and ask them to stop supporting the regulation of abortion, and start supporting equal protection under the law for the preborn.

On a final note, I want to repeat what I said at the beginning. My desire in writing this is not to hurt TRL or anyone involved in that organization. My desire is that they would see the truth, repent, reform, and join us in our righteous battle to Abolish Abortion in Texas once and for all.