Who Is the Child?
Christianity does not begin with: "Who has the right to control the pregnancy?" It begins with: "Who is the child?"
The Bible repeatedly portrays human life in the womb as known by God. David writes: "For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13).
Jeremiah records God saying: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee" (Jeremiah 1:5).
And Luke records something remarkably specific. When Mary visits Elizabeth, Elizabeth's unborn child reacts to Mary's arrival: "For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy" (Luke 1:44).
The biblical language does not portray the unborn as meaningless biological material. It portrays life in the womb as human life under God's knowledge and authority.
Who Deserves Protection?
This is where the abortion argument becomes uncomfortable. An unborn child is completely dependent upon another human being. So is a newborn. A severely disabled person may be profoundly dependent upon caregivers. An elderly person may require constant assistance.
Dependency cannot determine whether someone deserves protection. Otherwise, human rights become conditional upon usefulness. The question becomes: How independent must you be before someone is prohibited from killing you?
If the answer is "independent enough," then independence becomes the foundation of human worth. Christianity cannot accept that premise. The Christian doctrine is more demanding: The weak are not disposable because they are weak. In fact, Scripture repeatedly places responsibility upon the strong to protect the weak.
Two Bodies, Not One
"My body, my choice" sounds decisive until we recognize that pregnancy involves two bodies. The mother has a body. The child has a body. The mother has DNA. The child has DNA. The mother has a beating heart. The child's heart develops and beats independently of the mother's heart.
The mother and child are biologically connected, but they are not the same organism. Pregnancy is not a woman carrying a piece of herself that will eventually become another person. She is carrying another human being who is developing inside her.
That distinction does not eliminate the mother's legitimate interests, health, suffering, or circumstances. But it means the child's existence cannot simply be dismissed as though there were no second human life involved.
"It's a lie a woman must be free to do what she wants with her own body. It's not her body. It's another body."
— Dennis PragerThis Is My Body
For Christians, there is an even deeper issue. Jesus did not merely teach that human beings have value. He gave His life for sinners. At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread and said: "This is my body, which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19).
He gave His body willingly. He was not taking the body of another person and declaring ownership over it. He was giving His own body for others. That is the exact opposite moral movement from using another person's body as though that person's existence were subordinate to our desires.
The unborn child cannot consent. The unborn child cannot argue. The unborn child cannot leave. The unborn child cannot hire a lawyer. The unborn child cannot vote. The unborn child cannot tell his mother, "Please don't kill me." He is radically vulnerable. And the Christian Gospel repeatedly tells us that vulnerability is precisely where our responsibility becomes greatest.
The Altar Has Changed
The Bible repeatedly condemns child sacrifice. The Old Testament describes pagan peoples sacrificing children to false gods. God's condemnation is unequivocal. Jeremiah records: "They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal" (Jeremiah 19:5).
The biblical problem was not merely that the children were killed. It was that children were being sacrificed to satisfy the demands of adults and their gods. That should make Christians stop and think.
Modern abortion is not literally the ancient ritual of placing a child upon an altar to Molech. We should not pretend otherwise. But there is a disturbing conceptual parallel: Adults deciding that the life of a child must be surrendered because of the desires, circumstances, fears, ambitions, or perceived needs of the adults. The technology changed. The language changed. The altar changed. But the question remains: What do we believe the life of the child is worth?
Hard Cases and Honest Distinctions
There are pregnancies involving rape. There are pregnancies involving incest. There are pregnancies involving severe maternal illness. There are pregnancies involving catastrophic fetal abnormalities. There are situations in which doctors must make decisions under terrible circumstances.
Christians should not pretend these situations are easy. But difficulty does not change the identity of the child. The question remains whether intentionally killing an innocent human being is morally justified.
There are also important medical distinctions between direct abortion and medical treatment intended to save the mother's life that unfortunately results in the death of the unborn child. Treating a life-threatening condition may require delivery or removal of a pregnancy even when the child cannot survive. That is morally and medically different from intentionally killing the child as the objective of the procedure. Those distinctions matter. A Christian position should be medically informed rather than built upon ignorance of obstetrics.
The Man Cannot Escape This Conversation
Men sometimes talk about abortion as though it is exclusively a women's issue. It isn't. A man may not carry the pregnancy, but he may be the father. And fatherhood creates responsibility.
A man who pressures a woman into an abortion is not demonstrating strength. A man who abandons a woman because pregnancy became inconvenient is not demonstrating freedom. A man who says, "It's your problem," after participating in creating a child is avoiding responsibility. And a man who wants to call himself a protector while refusing to protect his own child should examine what exactly he means by the word protector.
Protection is not merely standing between your family and an external threat. Sometimes protection means accepting responsibility when doing so is difficult. Sometimes it means providing financially. Sometimes it means remaining present. Sometimes it means taking responsibility for a child you did not plan. And sometimes it means having the courage to tell another person: "We created a human life. We are responsible for what happens next."
We Should Not Need to Hate Women to Oppose Abortion
A woman who has had an abortion is not beyond redemption. A woman who regrets an abortion is not permanently defined by it. A woman who was pressured, coerced, frightened, abandoned, manipulated, or deceived deserves compassion. A woman who willingly chose abortion and later recognizes what she believes she did also deserves the possibility of repentance.
Christianity is not built upon the proposition that some sins are too large for Christ. The Gospel exists precisely because human beings are guilty and incapable of saving themselves. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).
That does not make abortion insignificant. It means forgiveness is possible even when the thing requiring forgiveness is enormous. There is a difference between saying: "What happened was not wrong" and saying: "What happened was wrong, but you are not beyond redemption." Christianity offers the second.
Truth Does Not Need Propaganda
If Christians want to defend unborn life, they should be willing to reject dishonest arguments. Do not invent abortion statistics. Do not claim thousands of healthy babies are routinely aborted at 40 weeks when the evidence does not establish that. Do not falsely attribute statements to Margaret Sanger. Do not manufacture quotations. Do not pretend every abortion is performed under identical circumstances.
And do not confuse compassion with moral surrender. The Christian argument is stronger when it is honest.
What Is the Unborn Child?
After all the politics, statistics, court cases, organizations, slogans, campaigns, marches, advertisements and arguments, the issue eventually becomes remarkably simple.
If the unborn child is not human, abortion is a matter of bodily autonomy. If the unborn child is human, then bodily autonomy has limits. Every society recognizes that individual liberty ends where another innocent person's fundamental rights begin.
You cannot exercise your freedom by killing your neighbor. You cannot exercise your freedom by killing your infant. You cannot exercise your freedom by killing your elderly parent. The abortion debate exists because society has historically drawn a boundary around the womb and asked whether the child inside it belongs inside the circle of legal protection.
Christianity answers: Yes. Not because the child is useful. Not because the child is wanted. Not because the child is healthy. Not because the child will become successful. Not because the pregnancy was planned. Not because the parents are married. Not because the child can survive independently. But because the child is human.
The Choice Before Us
A civilization is judged by how it treats people who possess little power. The unborn have almost none. They cannot defend themselves. They depend entirely upon others. They cannot demand their rights. They cannot organize. They cannot protest. They cannot threaten politicians. They cannot contribute money. They cannot speak. They simply exist.
And that makes the question brutally clear: Will we protect human beings because they possess inherent value, or only when they possess enough power to demand protection?
Christianity chooses the first. The Gospel begins with a God who entered human history as an infant. Jesus Christ Himself entered the world through pregnancy. The One Christians believe created humanity allowed Himself to become vulnerable. He was carried. He was born. He was dependent. He was fed. He was protected. And eventually He willingly gave His life on the cross.
The Christian story therefore begins and ends with an astonishing truth: God did not consider human vulnerability beneath Him. He entered it.
Someone Must Speak
The child in the womb cannot speak. So someone must speak for him. The child cannot defend himself. So someone must defend him. The child cannot demand justice. So someone must demand it on his behalf.
And if Christianity means anything at all when it commands us to defend the weak, then the Christian cannot look away. The child is not disposable because he is small. The child is not disposable because he is dependent. The child is not disposable because he is unwanted. The child is not disposable because his existence is inconvenient.
He is human. And human life is not ours to treat as disposable.