James Talarico Voted 100% Professional-Abortion in Texas Legislature
On Thursday, NRLC’s Rai Rojas wrote an exquisite post, asking the question “James Talarico: Who is this guy?” Rai hit all the high spots, actually all the low spots, of the hullabaloo surrounding the boyish-looking, hard-core pro-abortion State Rep. James Talarico (D).
Talarico’s goal is modest: to ”Reclaim Christianity for the left,” the title of the New York Times interview with the 36 year old who is a member of the Texas House of Representatives and is, conveniently, working on a Master of Divinity degree. Since that interview, he polished off fellow Democrat Jasmine Crockett in the primary and will be his party’s nominee for Senate.
Unless you’ve chosen to totally unplug yourself for Lent, it’d be pretty hard to miss this, the Democrats’ latest attempt to persuade people of faith that it is okay—indeed, much more than okay—to slice and dice helpless unborn babies.
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As Rai notes, Texas Right to Life “scored him at 0 percent in 2019, documenting his opposition to increasing funding for the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program, his efforts to block restrictions on taxpayer dollars flowing to abortion providers, and his refusal to support the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act by voting ‘Present, Not Voting.’”
But, as Rai continued, “Talarico’s danger does not stop with votes. He sells abortion politics with religious language. He does not simply argue for legal abortion. He tries to persuade Christians that the Bible itself supports abortion. That is the most corrosive part of his project, because it aims at the conscience of believers. It aims to neutralize moral resistance, not by refuting the humanity of the child, but by recasting abortion as a spiritual duty dressed up as compassion.”
It truly is sacrilegious to turn Mary’s “yes” from “a model of obedience that welcomes a child” into “a modern political template for ending a child’s life,” to quote Rai again.
I’m not going to go at length to rebut Talarico’s oft-time silly inversions. Where would I start? Let me instead quote two excellent sources.
They start with the real Bible, read as the inspired word of God, not as a cudgel to make misguided political points. (You could write an entire book about how Talarico tortures the Biblical text until it confesses, as someone quipped.)
For Jamie Wilder, Talarico “is preaching a faith that looks like Christianity on a TikTok feed but functions as a press release for secular progressivism.” He adds shrewdly,
As the saying goes, “Progressivism will hollow out your religion and wear its skin like a trophy.” We are witnessing a masterful performance of this strategy in Texas—preaching a new religion while masquerading as the old, authentic one. And it is specifically designed to capture a terminally online and disenchanted 2026 audience.
One other quote from Wilder
The problem isn’t that Representative Talarico is bringing his faith into politics; it’s that he is bringing a counterfeit faith, one that would be completely unrecognizable to the global and historic Church. To accept the progressive dogmas Talarico attempts to baptize, one must ignore the witness of believers across every century, language, and hemisphere.
Colin Redemer titles his essay for First Things, “James Talarico’s Backward Christianity.” Redemer writes that “Talarico is clearly exceptionally gifted. He is one of the most naturally talented communicators to emerge from the progressive Christian world in a generation. ….. If progressive Christians are going to achieve political relevance in the coming decade, Talarico is precisely the vessel they would choose.”
But then this:
The trouble isn’t the vessel, it’s what’s in it. Strip away the polish and the TikTok virality, and what Talarico is offering is the same program that has been on offer from the mainline left since at least the 1960s: a Christianity evacuated of its doctrinal substance and refilled with the priorities of the Democratic National Committee (if not the Democratic Socialists of America).
What Talarico adds, for example, on abortion, the veracity of the Bible, and male-female relationships “are not bold new insights,” Redeemer writes.
they are the exact positions one might have heard in the Princeton Theological Seminary lounge in 1984, and they were as wrong then as they are now. The only thing new is the medium of delivery.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.
