The Bible and Abortion
by Dr. Phil Stringer (Florida)
"It is he that hath made us and not we
ourselves" (Psalm 100:3)
* * *
Professor L.R. Agnew of the UCLA School of Medicine relates the story
of when he posed this question to his students:
Here is the family history. The father has syphilis. The mother has
tuberculosis. They have already had four children. The first one is
blind, the second one died. The third child is deaf. The fourth also
has tuberculosis.
The mother is pregnant with her fifth child. The parents are
willing to have an abortion if you decide they should. What do you
think?
Most of the students decided on abortion.
"Congratulations! You have just murdered Beethoven."
It is a common claim that the Bible does not say anything about abortion.
While the word abortion is never used, the Bible teaches many truths
that make God’s view of abortion very clear.
The Scriptures are clear that God is the giver of life. In
Deuteronomy 32:18, the children of Israel were rebuked for forgetting
the God that formed them. Jacob declared unto Rachel that it was God who
had refused to use her womb to bring about new life (Genesis 30:2).
Later the Scripture says that God remembered her and "opened"
her womb. It was the Lord who shut Hannah’s womb and the Lord who
opened it. In I Samuel 1, David declared that God had given him life in
his mother’s womb. In Psalms 127:7, the Psalmist wrote, "Lo
children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the
womb is his reward".
The Scripture also clearly teaches that men receive the gift of life
from the action of God. "The spirit of God hath made me, and the
breath of the Almighty hath given me life" (Job 33:4). This is more
than just a natural process.
Human life began when God shaped Adam in His own image and breathed
into him the breath of life. "And the LORD God formed man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7).
This life is transmitted from generation to generation in an unbroken
chain that links Adam and Eve with every child conceived in the
mother’s womb. When the father’s sperm and the mother’s ovum
unite, another human being is formed. This developing baby, still
sheltered in the mother’s womb, is a human life as surely as a fully
developed adult.
THE SANCTITY OF LIFE
Being created in the image of God gives life its sanctity -- its
sacredness. This reflection of the image of God (and the image of the
parents) begins when life starts in the womb. To arbitrarily destroy
life at any point is to kill that which God has made in His own image.
The Bible is clear that God considers the unborn baby to be a human
being. Under the God-given civil law of Old Testament Israel, if men
took the life of an unborn baby, they were to pay for that life with
their own. Exodus 21:22-25:
If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit
depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely
punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he
shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief
follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for
tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for
wound, stripe for strip.
The principles are clear. If physical violence causes a pregnant
woman to deliver her baby prematurely, the baby was to be examined. If
no physical harm was done to the child, the person responsible would pay
a financial settlement for the problem he caused. If physical damage had
been done to the baby, the culprit was to pay for the shedding of
innocent blood. This passage makes it clear that the life of the unborn
baby was equal in importance to the life of the adult.
The Bible makes this truth clear in other ways. Isaiah 49:1,
"Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The
LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he
made mention of my name."
THE HUMANITY OF THE UNBORN
Webster’s Dictionary defines being human as having human form or
attributes. Can anyone suggest that the developing baby does not have
human form or attributes? Certainly the body exists in human form. It s
not a rock, vegetable, or an animal. The developing baby in the
mother’s womb is a human being with all the potential of any other
human being at any stage of development.
It is also clear in the Scriptures that God deals with the unborn
baby as a person. Jeremiah 1:5, "Before I formed thee in the belly
I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified
thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."
Galatians 1:15 (speaking about Paul), "But when it pleased God, who
separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his
grace."
In Psalms 139:13-16 the holy Spirit, through David, clearly declares
David’s personhood while he was in his mother’s womb and the
activity of God in forming his physical body:
13 For thou has possessed my reins: thou has covered me in my
mother’s womb.
14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and
wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my
soul knoweth right well.
15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in
secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in
thy book all my members were written, which in
continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none
of them
It is clear that Jeremiah, Paul, and David were "precious"
while in the womb. The same is true of John the Baptist. The Scriptures
declare that as Mary shared the good news of the coming of the Messiah
with her cousin, Elisabeth, Elisabeth’s unborn babe, John,
"leaped in her womb" (Luke 1:41-44). The Bible also declared
that John was filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb
(Luke 1:15).
It is interesting to note that brephos, the Greek word
translated baby (referring to an unborn baby in Luke 1), is also used to
describe Jesus in the manger (Luke 2:16) and Timothy as a child learning
the Scriptures (II Timothy 3:15). The Scripture makes no distinction
between an unborn baby, a recently born baby, or an infant in the first
learning stages.
ISSUES OF "PERSONHOOD"
Tragically, men sometimes make the mistake that personhood can be
granted or taken away by human government. The Nazi position on the
Jews, the United States Supreme Court decision about blacks (the Dred
Scott case concerning slavery), and the modern Roe v. Wade
case about abortion are three primary examples. Nevertheless, personhood
is clearly granted by God and men must recognize it -- not presume to
determine it.
The importance of the personhood of the baby is clear from the terms
people use in reference to pregnancy. When the termination of the life
of an unborn baby is planned, the child is referred to as a
"fetus" or "embryo." By contrast, when parents plan
to keep the child the unborn is "my baby" or "my
child." Did you ever hear anyone say, "I am going to have a
little fetus," or "I am going to remove the little baby"?
Our respect for human life may be affected by circumstances, but our
attitude does not determine human life.
In God’s sight, the unborn baby is a jewel in His creation. A
12-week-old unborn baby is only about 1-2 inches long, yet every organ
of the human body and every attribute of a human being is already in
place. How tragic that every 20 seconds in this country we tear from the
mother’s womb and discard a baby. Every day 4,300 unborn babies are
put to death, 25% of all American pregnancies, over on million a year.
The Scriptures are very clear that God condemns the shedding of
innocent blood. Exodus 23:7, ". . . and the innocent and righteous
slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked, that innocent blood be
not shed in thy land." While God condemns the shedding of innocent
blood, He allows the shedding of guilty blood in such cases as murder
(Exodus 21:12), rape (Deuteronomy 22:25), and incest (Leviticus 18:6,
29). Every time an abortion takes place the blood of a living human
being is shed. What crime has this unborn baby committed that justifies
shedding its blood? The answer, clearly, is none. Every abortion sheds
innocent blood.
The Scripture makes it clear that believers should do all that is in
their power to protest the shedding of innocent blood and to rescue
those who are "delivered to death." Proverbs 24:11-12 says:
If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death,
and those that are ready to be slain; If thou sayest, Behold,
we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and
he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall
not he render to every man according to his works?
The Bible commands Christians to be the light of the world (Matthew
5:14).
Abortion on demand is simply the sacrifice of an unborn child to the
whims of a selfish, irresponsible, and perverted parent. Ezekiel 16:20
declares that we bear our children unto the Lord. Luke 17:2 warns,
"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his
neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these
little ones."
America is already under the judgment of God for violating the
sanctity of human life (a principle that this nation was founded upon).
As Jack Kemp said:
Every single year, there is the tragic silence of a million newborn
cries that will never be developed; Potential we will never see; Books
never authored; Inventions never made . . . the right to life is a
gift of God, not a gift of the state.
Those who teach that the Bible approves of abortion plainly distort
the Bible. Those who teach that the Bible has nothing to say on the
subject ignore what is clearly taught.
The Bible is clear in teaching that an unborn baby is a living human
being. The Bible does not distinguish between a baby still in the womb
and a newborn baby. The Bible is clear that conception is not solely a
natural process, but it is a divine act of God. This is why every act of
intercourse does not produce a baby. God treats babies in the womb as
persons. Babies in the womb can experience emotions (the example of John
the Baptist proves this). The Bible teaches that God is working in our
lives both preparing us physically and for life while we are still in
the womb. God absolutely prohibits shedding innocent blood, and He hates
hands that shed innocent blood (Proverbs 6:16-17).
Abortion cannot be reconciled with Christianity. The most serious
advocates of abortion recognize that they are campaigning against basic
Christian teaching. Malcom Potts wrote in a 1970 issue of California
Medicine Magazine:
It will become necessary and acceptable to place relative rather
than absolute values on such things as human lives . . . This is quite
distinctly at variance with the Judeo-Christian ethic and carries
serious philosophical, social, economic, and political implications
for Western society and perhaps for world society. The process of
eroding the old ethic and substituting the new has already begun. It
may be seen more clearly in changing attitudes toward human abortion.
In defiance of the long held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal
values of every human life, regardless of its stage, condition, or
status, abortion is becoming accepted by society as moral, right and
even necessary. It is worth noting that this shift in public attitude
has affected the churches, the laws, and the public policy rather than
the reverse.
In no area is the Culture War between America’s historic Christian
culture and the new paganism seen more clearly than in the debate over
abortion.
Dr. Phil Stringer is Executive Vice President of
Landmark Baptist College, Haines City, Florida.
