There is still much work to be done to fulfill the “ends of the earth” part of Jesus’ last command recorded in Acts 1:8. According to Wycliffe Bible Translators, of the 7,000 known languages in the world, 1,800 of them still do not have a Bible translation project underway. According to the Joshua Project global statistics—slightly more than 40 percent of the world’s people groups (4,051) are still unreached by the Gospel.

As much as we should be praying for and supporting world evangelism, however, there is another “people group,” if you will, that yet needs to be reached here in America. Still largely overlooked by the evangelical church, this group consists of women who are contemplating aborting their babies or those who have already had an abortion. These women, and the many men who have also been touched by abortion, see little help or hope for healing coming from the churches in their local communities.

While the number of pregnancy centers has increased over the past decades, and the number of abortion centers has decreased, the fact remains that 21 percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) in 2011 ended in abortion. That translates to approximately 1.06 million babies killed by abortionists. In addition, as Guttmacher Institute research also shows, about half of all pregnancies in 2011 were “unintended,” and of these, about four in 10 of these babies were aborted before they breathed their first breath.[1]

Although many churches support local pregnancy centers financially, the overall perception among women who are facing an unplanned pregnancy is that they will not find help from the church. Although 4 in 10 women were churchgoers when they ended their pregnancy, only 7 percent of them discussed their abortion decision with anyone at their church.

According to LifeWay Research, only 41 percent of women believe churches are prepared to help with decisions about unintended pregnancies, and 64 percent believe church members are more likely to gossip about a woman considering having an abortion than to help her understand options.

Within the church more than half of churchgoers who have had an abortion say no one at church knows it and nearly half say their pastors’ teachings on forgiveness don’t to seem to apply to their having ended a pregnancy by abortion.[2]

What is needed says John Ensor, president of Passion Life, and author of The Great Work of the Gospel, is for our generation to hear explicitly that “the blood of Christ cleanses us from acts that lead to death, even and explicitly abortion, ‘that we may serve the living God’” (Hebrews 9:11).

Citing the statistic that 42 percent of American women have had one abortion by the age of 45, Ensor says, “Our generation needs a gospel presentation that addresses the blood-guilt of abortion specifically and openly as a gospel issue. To view abortion as a secondary, or worse, a political issue is to fundamentally misunderstand the defining experience of our times. Imagine preaching the gospel in the town of Dacau in the 40’s and intentionally avoiding, rather than pressing head-on, as to how the gospel addresses the sin of shedding innocent blood. Our silence would be interpreted to mean that it is outside the reach of what the gospel offers.”[3]

Yet, many pastors fear that if they address the issue of abortion directly, they will be pegged by their congregations as being “political.” As one writer wrote on the churches blog for Care Net, a network of 1,100 pregnancy centers, “I have found that pastors are unwilling to engage the issue of abortion in their churches from the pulpit. Usually, it’s fear driving their decision. The result is that these pastors abandon their congregations on this issue, leaving the narrative to be written by the world.”   

Another fear, besides being considered “too political,” is the fear that addressing the issue will alienate and drive away women who have had an abortion. However, as the author of the blog post, Mark Campbell, notes, “Silence speaks. Silence on the issue of abortion communicates that this is an issue not to be discussed because it’s either too shameful, or too difficult to address.”[4]

However, when the issue is not addressed, hundreds of thousands of women are left without a Gospel answer to the pain and suffering they experience as post-abortive women. And an equal number are making their decisions to abort their baby without hearing the truth about the sanctity of human life from their pastors. According to a Guttmacher report, 54 percent of women who had abortions in 2014 identified as Protestant or Catholic—this included 13 percent who identified as evangelical Protestant. There are women attending churches Sunday after Sunday who are sitting silently in church pews with their sin of abortion unconfessed and therefore unforgiven. If pastors do not address the issue of abortion and preach the full power of the Gospel to forgive all sin and to save “to the uttermost,” these post-abortive women will not receive the full healing and deliverance that Jesus offers to all who would come to Him. The percentages of those who suffer from depression, suicidal thoughts, and drug addiction is substantially higher among post-abortive women as a group.   

Thankfully, however, there are pastors, who like Dr. D. James Kennedy did, do not hesitate to address this issue, and who preach powerfully on the topic of abortion, revealing its myths and lies. In his preaching, Dr. Kennedy clearly showed how the Gospel applies to the sin of abortion, proclaiming that God offers forgiveness and mercy in Jesus Christ for both women and men who have abortion in their past, for the Lord is kind and merciful to all who will come to him.

Thirty years after I had an abortion as a young woman in my early 20s, that message reached into my heart when I heard Dr. Kennedy preach about the lies of abortion. Only then did I begin to experience full forgiveness and healing for my sin of aborting my baby.

As John Ensor writes, “If you care about the primacy of the gospel and have a passion for missions, I beg you to stop seeing abortion as a secondary issue. Understand that it is the primary mark of this generation. And understand the anguish it causes. It is a megaphone of endless satanic accusation . . . .  The blood-guilt of abortion festers under the surface of all Christian endeavor. . . .  It needs to be called out by name, confessed by name, and brought under a gospel that declared that there is no forgiveness for the shedding of innocent blood except by the shedding of innocent blood.”