- Why War is Incompatible with Christian Ethics
- Why Capital Punishment is Incompatible with Christian Ethics
- Why Killing in Self-Defense is Incompatible with Christian Ethics
- Why Abortion is Incompatible with Christian Ethics
Abortion is the deliberate killing of a preborn human being. From earliest times, and with remarkable consistency, the Church has condemned abortion as unjust and immoral. According to the Christian Tradition, abortion is murder.
Recently, however, some modern Western Christians have departed from the consensus of the Christian Tradition on this issue and have condoned abortion. As long as a woman has a good reason for terminating her pregnancy, they argue, we should not judge her for getting an abortion. The moral status of abortion has thus become a controversial issue in the modern Western church, and it is important to carefully examine what Christian Scripture and theology have to say about this issue.
Christian Theology and Abortion
Scripture never explicitly addresses the issue of abortion. Some see Exodus 21: 22-25 as being relevant. This law states, “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and her child goes out, but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life. . .” (vv. 22-23). However, this passage is very ambiguous. Is it talking about “serious injury” to the child or to the mother? If the former, then the meaning is that a man who causes a woman to have a miscarriage should suffer the death penalty. If the latter, then the meaning is that a man who causes a woman to have a miscarriage merely has to pay a fine. And even if the latter interpretation is correct, this still does not answer the question of whether deliberately causing a woman to have an abortion would have a more severe penalty.
However, just because Scripture never explicitly addresses the issue of abortion, this does not mean that it has nothing to say about this issue. If we follow the theological trajectories out from what Scripture does have to say about how we should treat our fellow human beings, we will see that Scripture does make it clear that abortion is incompatible with the demands of Christian discipleship.
From the moment of conception, a new human life, a new member of the human species, comes into existence. This is not a theological doctrine or a debatable opinion. It is an objective biological fact. How does anyone justify killing preborn human beings?
The typical justification for condoning abortion is that a preborn human being is not a “person.” “Person” here is defined in terms of possessing conscious, rational thought. Since a preborn human being does not possess conscious, rational thought, some argue, they are not a person; this means that they have the moral status of an animal. It may be morally wrong to deliberately kill innocent people simply because they are inconvenient, but deliberately killing animals who are inconvenient is morally acceptable. Therefore, some argue, abortion is not murder.
One can certainly critique this argument on its own terms. If personhood is defined in terms of conscious, rational thought, then babies are not people. Therefore, the implication of this argument is that deliberately killing babies is morally acceptable, something which most (though not all) proponents of abortion are unwilling to advocate. In fact, on this definition of personhood, it is highly questionable whether human beings with severe mental disabilities count as people, which would imply that deliberately killing mentally retarded human beings is not murder. Again, this is something which most proponents of abortion are unwilling to advocate. Even if we accept this definition of personhood, it is not at all clear that deliberately killing preborn human beings is morally justifiable. They may not be people yet, but they certainly will develop into people within a few short years. Thus, killing them would arguably be morally equivalent to killing someone in a coma whom one knows with certainty will wake up a few years from now. Currently, they lack conscious, rational thought, and so are not a “person,” but they certainly will be one in a few years. Most people would agree that deliberately killing a coma patient who will one day wake up is murder, since you are deliberately killing a potential person. In the same way, deliberately killing a preborn human being, a potential person, should be considered murder.
However, for Christians, the issue of whether a preborn human being counts as a “person” or not is completely irrelevant to the morality of abortion. For Christians, murder is wrong because all human beings are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-17; 9:5-6). Though some Christians have tried to define “image of God” according to some quality (such as conscious, rational thought) that most human beings have, biblical scholars tell us that “image of God” should instead be understood functionally. Being the “image” of God (the same term used to refer to the idols of pagan gods) means that we are God’s representatives in His creation, tasked with reflecting His rule here. All of humanity intrinsically has the status or office of being in the image of God, regardless of what qualities they happen to possess. Human beings are not more or less human, they are not more or less valuable, depending on the degree to which they possess some quality such as rationality. Rather, all human life is intrinsically sacred and valuable by virtue of being members of the human race which is created in the image of God. For Christians, abortion is murder not because it involves killing a “person”; it is wrong because it involves killing someone created in the image of God, which is effectively an assault on God Himself.
Christian Hospitality
Christian love demands that we live lives of radical generosity. Christian love demands that we be willing to give up our possessions, our time, our comfort, and even our security in order to show love to others. Christian love demands that we be willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of the other, especially the marginalized, the stranger, the unloved, and the unwanted.
In short, the Gospel calls Christians, as individuals and as communities, to live lives of radical hospitality. It calls us to break out of the enclosed circle of selfishness and to open ourselves up to others. God has shown radical hospitality to us by inviting us into His household, even though we were undeserving. In response, we must be willing to show that same radical hospitality to others. If we want to call ourselves Christians, we must be willing to make room in our lives and our communities for unwanted, unloved, inconvenient human beings. The Church must be willing to include them, surround them, support them, and love them.
All of this is highly relevant to the issue of abortion. If a member of the Church has an unwanted or unexpected pregnancy, it is unthinkable that any member of the community of Jesus’s disciples would respond by using violence to eliminate this “inconvenience” to the comfort of their lives. Instead, the members of the Church must be willing to show hospitality to this new human being. They must surround this child and their mother and show them unconditional love. They must support them and provide for them, even if it is “inconvenient” to have to do so. The Church is a community, a body, a family in which no one should consider their possessions their own, but instead should share whatever they have with those in need.
“But what if,” someone might object, “a pregnant woman has no idea how she is going to take care of her child, and she lacks support from a local church community? What should she do then?” The answer is, she must choose to show love to her child and she must refuse to use violence, even though it might mean deep uncertainty and suffering for her. The basic essence of Christian discipleship is to follow Jesus on the way of the cross. This means that we must be willing to show love to all human beings, including our enemies, even if it means we might have to suffer and die. If we must be willing to suffer and die in order to show love to our enemies, how much more must we be willing to suffer in order to show love to an innocent child.
“But what if,” someone might object, “a woman is impregnated by a rapist? You can’t possibly expect her to give birth to his child, can you?” The answer is, the horrifically evil circumstances surrounding this child’s conception do not in any way change the fact that we have a responsibility to show love to this innocent child. On the cross, Jesus, though He was perfectly innocent, took upon Himself the consequences of the sins of others, and suffered and died in order to give life and hope to others. In the same way, Christians must be willing to take upon themselves the consequences of the sins of others, even if it means they will suffer deeply, in order to give life and hope to others.
In rare cases, there are serious complications in a pregnancy, such that the only way to save the mother’s life is to have an abortion. This is a very tragic circumstance. Arguably, an abortion could be justified in this case as a necessary evil. However, this would be the exception that proves the rule that abortion is incompatible with Christian ethics.
Conclusion
The Gospel demands a “consistently pro-life ethic” that forbids the use of violence, including the violence of war, capital punishment, self-defense, and abortion. We cannot, of course, expect that people outside the Church will accept the idea that these forms of violence are murder. However, there are secular people who are opposed to war and capital punishment. There are even secular pro-life activists. Christians can and should make common cause with these people and attempt to influence our society to move in a less violent direction. However, the primary task of Christians is not to try to get people outside the Church to be less violent. Our primary task is, as the Church, to visibly embody a nonviolent lifestyle, to show love even to our enemies, and to practice radical hospitality. By doing this, we can show the world what God’s Kingdom truly looks like.