Prominent pro-life leader Lila Rose urged Christians to step up from the sidelines and engage in the battle for life.
Speaking to the Christian Post, Rose challenged the church to act because “our country is at a crossroads” and children’s lives are at stake.
“We need to decide what kind of culture we’re going to be and that requires people of conviction and character to stand up and say we want to make a country that is just and loving,” Rose said. “… Obviously, in the fight for life, it means standing up and saying we need to abolish abortion and make sure every child is safe.”
The president and founder of Live Action, Rose, 32, is well known for her undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood. Among other things, Live Action exposed the abortion chain’s willingness to ignore sexual abuse and human trafficking and debunked its claims about mammograms and prenatal care.
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She recently wrote her first book, “Fighting for Life: Becoming a Force for Change in a Wounded World,” available May 4, about her work and the challenges the pro-life movement faces.
“There’s no time to sit on the sidelines anymore,” Rose told the Post. “We can’t pretend like there’s not a battle to engage and I wrote this book to focus the fight for the topics that matter the most.”
Rose said she grew up in a large Christian family in California, but she “almost never” heard about abortion at church.
“I think the church, even good Christian people, are afraid of ruffling feathers. They’re afraid of offending … and many are not educated,” she said. “They don’t understand what’s exactly happening. They sense that something’s wrong in our culture, there are problems, but we’re so desensitized.”
Rose said American Christians lead such comfortable lives that they do not recognize “the battle that’s raging.” She urged the church to become more involved in the work to end abortion, and she said the change needs to start with individuals.
“If our pastors aren’t standing up and preaching the truth on Sunday mornings, and … if our church doesn’t have a pro-life ministry, the change begins with us,” she continued.
“We can get into that battle. We can engage, we can meet with our pastor and support him and tell him ‘we’ve got your back … we need to hear from you,’” Rose said. “… We can go out and work to start that pro-life ministry at our church. We can go out and volunteer with a pro-life organization. We can go out and educate others.”
A new parent herself, she said one of the biggest things Christians can do is to educate their children about the truth. She told the Post that the family is “the natural church” where “faith is first taught” and “love is first known.”
“That’s where I think that the first education needs to happen,” Rose said.
Starting out in pro-life work, Rose said she knows that many people feel alone. She did as a young adult trying to establish a new pro-life organization, and it was not easy.
“You might feel like you’re the only person at your high school that’s pro-life, but I guarantee you there’s another person,” she said.
Rose continued: “Yes, you might get started and you’re alone because sometimes when you take the initial initiative to stand up for your cause, to stand up for life, maybe you are standing alone. And you need to be willing to do that initially.”
But in a world that accepts and even celebrates evil, Rose said Christians need to stand up for what is right.
“God has given us talents and gifts to stand up … and respond to the needs of the world, and it’s on us to do it,” she said. “And the beautiful thing is, when we do do that, when we stand up and respond to the crises in the world and fight for the problems that matter most, we ourselves are changed for the better. We become more the people we are meant to be.”
