In the nearly four years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the anti-abortion movement has been divided on how to end the legalized murder of preborn babies in America once and for all.

While many pro-life establishment groups continue to propose regulations on abortion, especially targeting the suppliers of abortion pills, a rapidly growing segment of the movement is recognizing the need to instead establish equal protection under the law for preborn babies.

The latter position seeks to recognize that the only consistent way to address the murder of preborn babies is by protecting them with the same homicide, assault, and wrongful death laws already protecting born people. If we affirm that preborn image-bearers of God are equally valuable and worthy of protection as people who have already been born, there is no other biblically and constitutionally coherent position with respect to anti-abortion legislation.

The messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention are by no means strangers to this debate. In recent years, the issues of equal protection and abolition have been considered in some form at nearly every annual meeting, with more SBC pastors and laymen over time seeing the merits of the position.

Southern Baptist leaders at the highest levels are increasingly willing to endorse equal protection, despite years of opposition from entities like the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. This more recent shift marks a closer alignment between the stated positions of the SBC on the way to abolishing abortion and those representing them in the public square.

SBC Messengers Affirm Commitment to Equal Protection

Even before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, messengers were overwhelmingly willing to endorse equal protection and abolition as the valid responses to abortion in the United States.

SBC messengers passed a resolution in the summer of 2021 contending that “governing authorities at every level have a duty before God to uphold justice asserting their God-ordained and constitutional authority to establish equal protection under the law for all, born and preborn.” The resolution criticized certain pro-life laws for enacting “incremental, regulatory guidelines for when, where, why, and how to obtain legal abortion of innocent preborn children, thereby legally sanctioning abortion.”

Invoking the Scriptures and the Baptist Faith & Message, the messengers committed to “establishing equal justice and protection for the preborn according to the authority of God’s Word,” and called on “pastors and leaders to use their God-given gifts of preaching, teaching, and leading with one unified, principled, prophetic voice to abolish abortion.”

The resolution on abolishing abortion, which advanced to the floor of the annual meeting through a motion despite an initial rejection from the Resolutions Committee, was reaffirmed when messengers passed another resolution in 2025 against chemical abortion. The measure contained similar language affirming that Southern Baptists “commit to pray and labor for the abolition of all forms of abortion by granting to preborn human beings equal protection.”

In addition to those two resolutions, various state conventions, such as those of Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah and Idaho, have passed their own statements calling for equal protection and the criminalization of abortion as murder.

Beyond the messengers of the SBC seeing the merits of equal protection, institutional leaders are increasingly contending for equal protection in the public square.

Major Figureheads Back Equal Protection Bills

Southern Baptist leaders at the highest levels are expressing their support for equal protection legislation in the states, acting consistently with the positions approved by the messengers as they exhort lawmakers to pass bills abolishing abortion.

SBC President Clint Pressley, a pastor at Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, was among the most recent to express such a view by endorsing House Bill 570, an equal protection bill in Tennessee. Pressley noted that “by protecting the lives of preborn children with the same laws that protect people who are born, we are simply loving our neighbors in the womb as ourselves.”

“Tennessee now has the opportunity to set an example of how states can protect the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death,” he wrote in a social media statement. “I am urging the Tennessee legislature to move these bills forward this legislative session.”

David Closson, the Director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at the Family Research Council, said he was grateful to see Pressley’s statement. Willy Rice, a pastor at Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, and a candidate for President of the SBC, likewise commended the statement and observed that “Southern Baptists want convictional, courageous leadership.”

There was already precedent for public stands from SBC leaders in support of equal protection legislation, with others endorsing similar bills last year. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler expressed his support for House Bill 523, an equal protection bill in his home state of Kentucky, asserting that “equal protection for the unborn” is consistent with the principle that “life demands full respect at every stage of human development.”

Andrew T. Walker, an ethics and public theology professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, endorsed the same legislation. “The moral principle is clear: Law should protect human beings equally at all stages of life,” he remarked on social media. “It is criminal to murder life outside the womb, so logic demands that it is criminal to murder life inside the womb, too.”

Though he made clear that he also supports “whatever measures will reduce abortion,” Walker added that “the full moral logic of law should be brought to bear when it comes to the dignity of human life, regardless of developmental stage.”

The Center for Baptist Leadership, which has regularly defended the 2021 resolution on equal protection, praised Pressley’s statements by saying, “The SBC has come a long way from Brent Leatherwood and the ERLC working to kill bills of equal protection for the unborn in the name of Southern Baptists. More to be done. But the conservatives are gaining ground.”

They also encouraged Southern Baptists not “to give up the fight,” and to start “planning for Orlando today,” since there may be other resolutions and actions that arise at the 2026 annual meeting to align the SBC more closely with equal protection.

While these public statements in support of equal protection are increasingly common, they come after years of opposition to such a position, especially from the public policy arm of the SBC charged with representing Southern Baptists in civic life.

The ERLC Faced Consequences for Subverting Equal Protection

Just one year after the 2021 resolution on abolishing abortion was approved by messengers, now-former Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Brent Leatherwood signed an open letter alongside dozens of other pro-life establishment leaders against equal protection.

The letter claimed that because “women are victims of abortion,” the signatories and the pro-life groups behind them “stand firmly opposed” to any legislation “seeking to criminalize or punish women” who willfully have abortions.

The document, which prominently featured Leatherwood’s signature, was first used to undermine equal protection legislation in Louisiana. But over the next several years, the letter was repeatedly wielded against similar efforts in states like Missouri, Kentucky, and North Dakota. Leatherwood was forced to defend his endorsement of the letter at multiple annual meetings, including from pastors whose states had equal protection legislation subverted by the letter.

This disconnect between the ERLC and the messengers contributed to a motion at the 2025 annual meeting to abolish the entity entirely, with 43% of the vote in favor. Leatherwood resigned weeks later, having clearly lost his mandate to lead the ERLC.

The ERLC is now searching for a new president, and the outcome of that selection matters greatly. If the ERLC trustees pick another leader, such as Russell Moore or Brent Leatherwood, who would work against equal protection, the encouraging trajectory toward equal protection could be slowed, and division and national embarrassment on this issue for Southern Baptists will continue.

But if the ERLC picks a new leader who, like Clint Pressley and Willy Rice, will support and champion protecting preborn babies in the public square, including with laws of equal protection, then Southern Baptists can assume a position of leadership on one of the most urgent moral and political issues in our nation.

Conclusion

As the largest association of Protestant churches in America, the Southern Baptist Convention indeed has the opportunity to lead the nation toward ending abortion, especially after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Southern Baptists are making their voices heard on this matter by upholding the simple biblical position that all image-bearers of God should enjoy equal protection under the law. When their institutional leaders follow suit, they should be praised. But those who do not, or will not, should and in fact must be replaced.

Note: Southern Baptists who want to support equal protection legislation in Tennessee and Kentucky, as mentioned in this article, should contact the Foundation to Abolish Abortion.