This is a sequel to Mark Warner’s piece about abortion and complements it.
This article is primarily about the practice of abortion. Is it an option for Christians? Is there a Biblical perspective to help us understand if it is morally wrong or ever right? A study from a post abortion study programme found that “one of the biggest things women recovering from abortions have to work through is their anger towards those who knew abortion was child killing but didn’t speak up and try to talk them out of it” 1 Is abortion child killing?
I will also touch on the related question “What about the person who has had an abortion?” Is there any way out of guilt and regret? Is there any hope? The Biblical answer is ten thousand times yes!
I became interested in this subject when I was an English teacher in my twenties and it was the 1980s. Then abortion was a discussion topic under the English curriculum. It wasn’t an open discussion and has subsequently led to a widespread endorsement of the practice. The feminist ideology of the day- it’s the woman’s body so she can decide, the foetus is not a person and other spurious arguments were used to justify abortion.
I found the writings of Francis Schaeffer (Particularly “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”2), and the Christian group C.A.R.E. very helpful in countering this liberalisation, and tried to present both sides fairly in the classroom. I have retained an interest ever since.
Randy Alcorn’s publication “ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments”3 is definitive in the debate, and systematically answers every pro – choice question that can be asked. I highly recommend it.
But to discover a truly Christian perspective we have to go back to the Bible’s teaching on this issue as with any other.(Matt. 15:1-9, 22:31, Gal. 1:8, 9, Acts 17:11, 2 Tim.3:15-17 among other references testify to its own final authority on all questions of belief and practice). This authority includes ethics and moral matters.
In the chapter “Abortion in the Bible and Church History”4, Alcorn states “There is a small but influential circle of prochoice advocates who claim to base their beliefs on the Bible. They maintain that “nowhere does the Bible prohibit abortion” Yet the Bible clearly prohibits the killing of innocent people (Exodus 20:13). All that is necessary to prove a biblical prohibition of abortion is to demonstrate that the Bible considers the unborn to be human beings.” This is what Alcorn proceeds to do:
Job described the way God created him before he was born (Job 10:8-12). Alcorn adds “The person in the womb was not something that might become Job, but someone who was Job, just a younger version of the same man”5.
Similarly God said to Isaiah “This is what the Lord says- he who made you, who formed you in the womb.” (Isaiah 44:2). David says, “Surely I was sinful at birth.” He goes back before birth to the beginning of his life and says he was “sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).
God tells Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). And when Rebekah was pregnant with Jacob and Esau, Scripture says, “The babies jostled each other within her (Genesis 25:22). Here the unborn are regarded as “babies”.
It’s worth quoting Alcorn in detail about John the Baptist: “In Luke 1:41, 44 there are references to the unborn John the Baptist, who was at the end of his second trimester in the womb. The word translated baby in these verses is the Greek word brephos. It is the same
word used for the already born baby Jesus (Luke 2:12, 16) and for the babies brought to Jesus to receive his blessing (Luke 18:15-17). It is also the same word used in Acts 7:19 for the new born babies killed by Pharaoh. To the writers of the New Testament, like the Old, whether born or unborn, a baby is simply a baby. It appears that the preborn John the Baptist responded to the preborn Jesus in His mother Mary, when Jesus was probably no more than ten days beyond his conception.”6
The angel Gabriel told Mary that she would be “with child and give birth to a son” (Luke 1:31). Alcorn adds “In the first century, to be pregnant is to be with child, not that which might become a child.”7.
So, the Bible clearly prohibits the killing of innocent people (Exodus 20:13), and as Alcorn demonstrates the Bible considers the unborn to be human beings. Abortion is therefore murder.
Alcorn adds that “Christians throughout history have affirmed with a united voice the humanity of the unborn child”8. He cites Tertullian, Basil the Great, Jerome, Augustine, Origen, Cyprian, Chrysostom, John Calvin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Bath who, because of this, had all written specifically against the inducing of abortion.
Alcorn’s following chapter outlines the “Biblical Passages Relevant to Life Issues”9
The headings in this section are:
1. Life begins in the womb
2. God is Creator and Owner of all people (Which gives the lie to the woman having a baby aborted because it’s in her body).
3. God has exclusive prerogatives over human life and death
4. God hates the shedding of innocent blood
5. God has a special love for children
These headings are well argued and established from the Scriptures just as in the previous section.
Once you see the act of abortion as the murder of a human being, then it’s hard to see how it can be brought to bear even where the mother was raped:
Alcorn list seven points in response to the question “What about a woman who is pregnant due to rape or incest?”10
31a Pregnancy due to rape is extremely rare, and with proper treatment can be prevented. (On the latter clause Alcorn writes “Since conception doesn’t occur immediately after intercourse, pregnancy can be prevented in nearly all rape cases by medical treatment that removes the semen before an ovum can be fertilised”11
31b Rape is never the fault of the child; the guilty party, not an innocent party, should be punished.
31c.The violence of abortion parallels the violence of rape.
31d. Abortion does not bring healing to a rape victim.
31e. A child is a child regardless of the circumstances of its conception.
31f. What about already born people who are “products of rape”?
31g. All that is true of children conceived in rape is true of those conceived in incest.
Each point is fully argued.
Further, if the mother truly cared for the child, then the child could be given up for adoption rather than have it killed in the womb.
As for all ‘hard cases’12 Alcorn adds the following:
1. No adverse circumstance for one human being changes the nature and worth of another human being.
2. Laws must not be built on exceptional cases.
The only concession I can see to murder of the unborn is the one predating the 1967 Abortion Act, which was if the mother’s life was in serious jeopardy. “In this understanding, only in those rare cases where continuation of the pregnancy would present a threat to the mother’s life would abortion be morally justified”.13 It would be a choice between two evils.
Alcorn’s publication and other sources14 detail just how advanced the baby in the womb is when abortions can still be legally performed. For example the baby at this point feels pain. The present answer of the abortionist is to give the baby ‘pain relief’ before killing it (see https://christianconcern.com/news/half-of-nhs-trusts-recognise-fetal-pain-during-late-term-abortion/). It is a terrible indictment of our culture when you consider God designed the womb to be such a safe place for the unborn child.
This is one of those areas where human beings flout God’s ordinance that sex be reserved for marriage (See my article “Holiness. Accommodation”). Abortion is maintained, in part, to clear up ‘unwanted pregnancies.’
“What about the person who has had an abortion?”
As with other sins, murder can be forgiven, such is the grace of God (King David 2 Sam.11-12, and the apostle Paul (Acts 8:1; 9:1, for example). Once we acknowledge our sin and repent and ask God to forgive us, we are no longer guilty.
We are made right with God through His provision. Through faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice for us our sins are forgiven, we are now reconciled to God. He has opened up the way of Eternal life for us. These are all gifts. Given by God, and for which we can only say “thank you” 15
None of us deserves forgiveness. If we deserved it we wouldn’t need it. Christ received what we deserved on the cross, so we could get what we do not deserve– forgiveness, a new beginning, and an assured hope. Martin Luther called this “the great exchange”. Referring to 2 Corinthians 5:21 he showed how Christ took on himself the punishment of our sin, and in exchange, God reckoned to our account the perfect righteousness of His Son.
The Psalmist writes of God’s amazing grace in this way, “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities, as far as the East is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”(Psalm 103:1).
So there is a wonderful forgiveness and hope for the woman who confesses her sin of abortion and trusts in Christ for her salvation.
And let’s not forget the man: a pregnancy is always a matter of two people and men often pressurise women to have an abortion. Yet for them too there is forgiveness.
But the unrepentant and teachers who promote abortion lay-up judgment for themselves because God is holy.16
“The unborn child is from the very first a child…it is a man and not a thing, not a mere part of the mother’s body…Those who live by mercy will always be disposed to practice mercy, especially to a human being which is so dependent on the mercy of others as the unborn child.” (Karl Barth).17
…………………………………………………………………
1 p365, Randy Alcorn, “ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments” (Expanded and updated, Multnomah Publishers, 2000)
2 Francis Schaeffer “The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer” (Crossway Publishers) Volume 5, Book 3
3 Randy Alcorn, “ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments”
4 Ibid. p313-318
5 Ibid. p313
6 Ibid. p314
7 Ibid. p314-315
8 Ibid. p316
9 Ibid. p319-322
10 Ibid. Section 31, p231-234
11 Ibid. p231, citing PPAC Issue Library, www.ppacca.org/issues/index.asp
12 Ibid p235-238
13 John Jefferson Davis, “Evangelical Ethics”, (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1985), p147
14See https://www.votelife.co.uk/science
15See my article “Holiness. Sanctification and Sexuality”. Specifically the section “Justification and Sanctification” (Evangelical Baptists website)
16 Ibid. “Holiness. What about love?” Specifically the sections on “Repentance” and “Church Discipline” (Evangelical Baptists website)
17 Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics, Vol. 3, ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961) p415, 418
