Voters in Virginia and Nevada approved constitutional protections for abortion on Nov. 3, while Idaho voters defeated a ballot measure that would have set a statutory right to abortion until fetal viability. In Missouri, voters turned down an amendment that would have repealed the abortion right approved there in 2024.
Unofficial results showed Virginia's Question 1, a constitutional right to what the amendment calls reproductive freedom, passing with roughly 62 percent, about 2.1 million votes to 1.3 million. In Nevada, Question 6 passed on a second straight vote, which state law requires before a constitutional amendment takes effect. Nevada's tally ran on for a day after the polls closed.
In Missouri, Amendment 3 would have undone the 2024 measure and also addressed transgender procedures for minors. Unofficial returns showed it failing by about 1.17 million votes to 941,000. In Idaho, which bans nearly all abortions from conception, Proposition 1 was defeated. A major church body in the state gave $1 million to oppose it, and the measure still failed.
The score from four states, then, is three wins for abortion advocates and one loss. Those numbers are unofficial, and certified counts may shift them slightly. The direction is plain enough.
What a vote cannot settle
I will not pretend that this is a good week for the unborn. In Virginia and Nevada the law will now call the ending of a child's life a right, and a constitution is a hard thing to unwrite. Neighbors who love their children, who sit in the same pews and coach the same ball teams, marked their ballots that way. I do not think most of them are cruel. I think many were told a soft word for a hard thing.
The policy deserves a sharp answer. A measure that strips protection from a child in the womb at any stage is contrary to what the Bible teaches, and no majority makes it otherwise. A vote can change a statute. It cannot change what a child is.
The Scripture is not vague about what is knit together in the dark of the womb.
"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13)
Notice who does the work. Not the mother alone, not the doctor, not the state. God covered him there. The psalmist does not say a thing was made that later became somebody. He says me. The person was there, known and kept, before a single eye had seen his face.
The prophet heard the same from the Lord: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee." (Jeremiah 1:5) God's knowing came first. That is why conception to natural death is not a slogan with me. It is simply where the Bible starts counting.
The work after the count
Elections run on a calendar. The church runs on a commission. When the returns come in against you, the temptation is either to despair or to rage, and neither one has ever saved a baby or a mother. Idaho shows that a state can hold the line, and Missouri shows that a repeal can fall short. Neither of those results is a place to rest. A law on the books protects no one if the people around a frightened young woman have nothing to offer but a sign.
Think of the woman who walks into a clinic in Richmond or Reno next month with a positive test and no one to call. She is not an argument. She is somebody's daughter. The Word says to speak for those who cannot speak: "Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction." (Proverbs 31:8) That means the pulpit, the voting booth, and also the casserole, the spare room, the diaper drive, and the patient friend at two in the morning.
My friend, there is one more thing to say, and it is the heart of the matter. Some who read this have stood in that clinic parking lot years ago, and they carry it still. The gospel is not first of all a rebuke. It is the announcement that Christ died for the very sins that weigh on you, and that the blood He shed is enough. No ballot measure in any state can close that door. No amendment can write over the mercy of God for the sinner who turns to Him.
So let the church keep two truths at once and hold both without flinching: the child in the womb is a person known to God, and the sinner who has failed that child is a person God will forgive. Say the first plainly. Offer the second freely. That was the message when the Baptist cried in the wilderness, and it is the message still.