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In my hometown of Binghamton, New York, I first confronted the question of how Christians should do battle on the abortion issue. In the early 1980s, the local K-Mart plaza also housed the Southern Tier Women's Services facility. Daily, I watched a young Bible-school graduate named Randall Terry silently patrol the plaza's sidewalk. His placard-carrying protest led him into the national spotlight on abortion. Terry's significant role in the history of the U.S. abortion debate was noted by Tim Stafford in The Abortion Wars. More than 20 years after his rain-or-shine march, Terry carries on his battle elsewhere, and Southern Tier Women's Services continues to operate.

The abortion struggle began in earnest when the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision changed the American legal landscape. A month later, a Christianity Today editorial warned, "It appears doubtful that unborn infants now enjoy any protection prior to the instant of birth anywhere in the United States. Until new state laws acceptable to the Court are passed—at best a long-drawn-out process—it would appear impossible to punish abortions performed at any stage."

That editorial has proven prescient. Recent disputes—over partial-birth abortion and the abortion pill, RU-486—involved both ends of the gestation timeline. The New Partial-Birth Abortion Bill and Old Myths tackled the disinformation about the former, while John Wilson deconstructed the significance of the latter in RU-486 Uncovers a Lie—And It's Not Just About Abortion.

Through the years, methods of argumentation have changed. Organizations such as The National Right to Life Committee marshaled biological facts to support the protection of life in the womb, while individuals like Francis Schaeffer and Lewis Smedes appealed to reason. In the 1980s, fetal images entered the debate, and nothing more graphically or controversially portrayed the act of abortion than the Silent Scream.

Over the past decade, ultrasound equipment allowed pregnant women a glimpse into their own wombs, creating in some a powerful desire to refuse an abortion. Other technological advances spawned ethical questions about nanotechnology, stem-cell research, embryos left from in-vitro fertilization, the use of fetal tissue, and human cloning.

Whatever the tactics used, the tone of voice on the Christian side of the debate has changed. The late Guy Condon challenged the language employed in You Say Choice, I Say Murder, calling for public speech to be compassionate as well as convincing, positive as well as negative. He also identified a need for prolife stories, such as those Condon used in Fatherhood Aborted, illustrating the impact of abortion upon men. Along the way, this emotionally charged issue has included many narratives recounting the regrets, cautions, and close calls tied to abortion.

In 1999, Frederica Mathewes-Green reported what she called good news. Writing that the abortion debate is over, she said the prolife cause continues. In fact, she writes: "The abortion debate is reemerging transformed. This moment of silence may have been necessary for hardened hearts to hear the whisper of conscience. Pro-choice leaders mourn that disapproval of abortion is rising while their own troops are graying." But polls show that American attitudes about abortion are strangely mixed: More Americans oppose abortion than favor it, but a majority oppose banning the practice. Clarke D. Forsythe commented on this phenomenon in Abortion Is Not a "Necessary Evil."

With the election of prolife president George W. Bush in 2000, expectations of progress increased. CT editors put prolife initiatives at the top of their list of priorities for the incoming administration. Presidential support against initiatives such as partial-birth abortion and stem-cell research followed.

On the 30th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in 2003, CT Weblog's What Both Sides in the Abortion War Can Agree On described one result of the debate: revenue generation. Both the National Right to Life Committee and Pro-Choice America have become multimillion-dollar operations, and Randall Terry managed to build a $432,000 house while claiming to have been impoverished in the abortion fight.

Meanwhile, although reported abortions continue in staggering numbers, they have been decreasing since 1996. This is one of several signs of encouragement that the tide is finally turning in favor of the movement, bringing new life to prolife.

—John Beukema is associate editor of PreachingToday.com and teaching pastor of The Village Church in Western Springs, Illinois.