Up to this point, in my discussion on abortion, I have said nothing about religion. I do not believe you need religion to know that a pregnant woman is carrying a human life.
But I want to shift and now talk directly to the Christian who honors the Bible as holy. So to the Christian:
Christians do not abort their children.
All humans are created in the image of God (Gen 1:27). This doctrine is the foundation for human rights, and human rights belong to all humans. Here are some Scriptures that speak of the unborn as humans or having human capacities.
The unborn can be filled with the Holy Spirit: For he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb (Lk 1:15).
The unborn can rejoice: And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy (Lk 1:41-4)
God knows and calls the unborn to serve Him: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations (Jer 1:5)
The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name . . . And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant . . . (Is 49:1, 5)
But when he who had set me apart before I was born . . . (Gal 1:15)
God is the God of the unborn: Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God (Ps 22:9-10).
God knows the unborn and is with them. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them (Ps 139:7-16).
In this psalm, David speaks of God forming him, knowing him and making him within his mother’s womb. The idea is that God is with David even there. The flow of ideas runs like this. Where can I go to escape God? If I go to heaven, God is there. If I go to hell, God is there. If I go to the other side of the sea, God is there. Darkness can’t hide me from God (Psalm 139:7-12). Why, God was with me even in my mother’s womb (Ps 139: 13-6).
Unborn twins can struggle together: The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided . . .”(Gen 25:22-3).
Scripture says that children are a gift of God (Ps 127:3). Abortion destroys that gift. You cannot say that a child is a gift from God and then abort her.
Scripture commands the human race to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28). Abortion negates that command.
The Bible considers the unborn to be people. It describes them experiencing things only people experience – the filling of the Holy Spirit, joy, struggle, being called to be a servant or a prophet. It refers to them as babies and children, and the pronouns it uses are personal: I, me, he.
Biblically, a fetus is a human being.
The Early Church
Early church tradition also is quite uniform in opposition to abortion. Here are a few quotes on abortion from early church fathers.
The Didache (1st cent): “You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” [i]
Barnabas (late 1st/early 2nd cent): “Never do away with an unborn child, nor destroy it after its birth.”[ii]
Athenagoras (2nd cent): Athenagoras is writing to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and senator Lucius Aurelius Commodus. Here he is defending Christians against the charge that they are murderers.
“Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it . . .[iii]
Tertullian (2nd cent): “In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed.”[iv]
We could continue and quote Clement of Alexandria (2nd century), Mark Minicius Felix (late 2nd century), Hippolytus (early 3rd), Cyprian (3rd), and Basil, Ambrose, Jerome, John Chrysostom, and the Apostolic Constitution (all from the 4th). The early church was united in its strong opposition to abortion. And the church didn’t stop. Throughout history, Christian opposition continued through Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, John Piper, and a host of others.
If you respect the Bible, the unborn is a human being. If you respect the teaching of the early church fathers, abortion is a sin.
As a human being I oppose abortion because it kills human beings. As a Christian, I oppose abortion for the same reason, but as a Christian, I have extra reasons for doing so, namely Scripture and the historic church teachings.
[i] “The Didache.” http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html, chapter 2.
[ii] “The Epistle of Barnabas,” Early Christian Writings. New York: Penguin Books, 1981, p. 217.
[iii] Athenagoras. “A Plea For Christians.” https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/early-church-fathers/ante-nicene/vol-2-second-century/writings-of-athenagoras/a-plea-christians.html, chapter 35.
[iv] Tertullian. Apology. Ch 9. https://carm.org/tertullian/tertullian-the-apology-chapters-1-to-23/
