Recently I looked back and reflected on my own journey towards a pro-life position. I realized that when I was most persuaded, it was when someone was honest and fair in acknowledging the hard edges of the abortion debate, no matter what side those hard edges fell on. When someone can acknowledge these hard edges and then articulate balanced premises that thoughtfully and skillfully apply God’s truth to the reality of a woman faced with this decision, it can be very powerful. This is a meager and humble attempt to do a little bit of that here. I will briefly share some considerations that I believe are well-worth acknowledging in any conversation about abortion. Many of us are either afraid or feel that we do not know enough to talk about this issue. My purpose here is to help people in the church think and talk about abortion in today’s climate.
1. Abortion is an incredibly personal and heavy issue. When you are discussing this issue, if it is a woman you are speaking to there is a one in four chance that she has had an abortion (Guttmacher Institute), and a much higher chance that someone very close to her has. As you discuss, keep in mind that you are not merely trying to prove a point, but you are talking with a person who has a complex, unique history. Ask questions about their life and approach this conversation understanding that the person in front of you has very likely been touched by abortion in some way. There may be an enormous amount of shame, anger, and a variety of deep, tangled emotions involved. This does not mean that we shy away from the truth; it also does not mean that we see the goal of these conversations as winning an argument. That is not the goal. For the Christian, the goal is simply to help people see that life is worth defending, and that God is rich in mercy (Psalm 139:13-15, Ephesians 2:4-5).
2. The fantastical uniqueness of the female body. Only the female body expresses the feminine genius and gestates new life. This uniqueness is so confounding it is hard even to put into words. When the mother is pregnant, the baby is clearly in and a part of her body, it is not yet “separate” from the mother’s body. However, after fertilization the baby is also clearly a new, completely unique, unrepeatable human being. In other words, when a woman is pregnant, her body is no longer completely her own, and the baby’s body is not completely his or her own. Sometimes it appears that the left can oversell the mother’s autonomy, and the right can oversell the separateness of the baby. The truth is something exceptionally else. The pregnancy transcends both the mother’s autonomy and the baby’s separateness, the only way to describe this mysterious state of being is what Mary Harrington calls a sense of “continuity” or “interpersonal merging” between the mother and baby. In a pregnancy, the mother and baby are uniquely two and uniquely one at the same time. I think Harrington describes this well “When she arrived, it wasn’t that I saw her as a separate entity, who needed caring for in some abstract way. It was more basic than that: like having grown an extra limb, and finding that limb suddenly, unnervingly, separated from my own body and needing constant watching and tending to ensure it was still ok.” Christians should build a worldview that sees a continuity and dependency between the baby and the mother which leads to responsibility, bonding, and flourishing, instead of a worldview centered on autonomy that leads to an antagonistic relationship between the mother and the baby. It does not help anyone to minimize or downplay this. It seems on both sides of this debate that people can overlook or downplay the distinctiveness of the female body. On the right, I have heard words like “uncomfortable” and “inconvenient” to describe pregnancy and childbirth, which can seem to minimize the unthinkable pain and suffering that mothers alone experience. And the left often flattens sex differences, I recently saw a friend share a meme that said something like “my husband went for a vasectomy and there were no pickets, no one shouting, no one trying to change his mind” etc. as if getting a vasectomy on a male body could be fairly compared to ending a new, growing, unique human life with an abortion in a female body. Acknowledge the profound uniqueness of the female body up front. Do not accept the implicit myth that a female body can or should be viewed essentially the same as a male body, kindly reject the premise, full stop. Men and women are equal, but we are not the same. There is an inherent reproductive asymmetry between men and women; a female body can grow a new human life inside of it, and a male body cannot. This demands serious consideration of the responsibilities of both the men and women involved; both have natural obligations to one another and to the child because of these sexed differences. (Side note on sex differences and technology, it seems in our culture this distinctiveness of the female body is rarely celebrated as good, and the capacity for pregnancy in female bodies is broadly discussed as simply a problem for technology to solve. The idea that sex is not always consent to at least the possibility of pregnancy is an assertion that only makes sense in a world that has been fundamentally reshaped by a technological revolution (contraception, abortion etc.). A Christian worldview expresses a countercultural vision of dependency and embodiment that can bring a sense of healing and integration into these conversations).
3. The extraordinary pain and suffering that happens in childbirth. Also, after the birth with breastfeeding, caring for the newborn day and night and raising little children in general; parents everywhere know that this all can be an extraordinary and spectacular undertaking. It is understandable that a woman facing this situation alone-with little or no support- would see this as seemingly impossible and terrifying. Although men will never understand this pain and suffering firsthand, it does not exempt or disqualify men from speaking out against the routine, systematic, intentional killing of innocent human lives through abortion. Someone’s identity does not disqualify them from speaking out against evil. We would not accept this premise in a conversation about any other major social problem (slavery, unjust war, genocide etc.) and we should not accept this premise with abortion either.
4. That men can and do have sex with women and then abandon the women they impregnate. This is a stain on our culture and a moral evil of the highest order (1 Timothy 5:8). Abortion is a women’s issue, but it is also clearly a men’s issue. In a truly pro-life, pro-family culture, men who abandon women they have impregnated should be legally and morally held to full account by both the church (if members) and the state for their behavior. Abortion makes it easier for men to believe the myth of “consequence-free” sex and to abandon vulnerable women and children; there is no such thing as inconsequential sex. Further, “Abortion has made it easier for men to leave women and harder for women to say no to abortion, even when they would prefer to choose life” (Anderson, Desanctis). But to be clear, these men are ultimately responsible for this evil act of abandonment and should be held to full account and punished in the strongest ways when necessary. (This is another issue where the left seems to not understand truly pro-life people, you will hear things like “well, if women can’t get abortions, then are you ok with forcing men to pay child support from the moment of conception?” A true pro-life response to this question is always “Yes, absolutely and amen.”
5. Related to the previous consideration, “Some women choose abortion based on a selfish ideology of autonomy. But some women obtain an abortion under significant duress from their partner, whether literal force or coercion, including financial pressure, or threats to leave the relationship.” (Anderson, Desanctis). One study from Norway reported that one in four women seeking abortions cited “pressure from male partner” as a reason for their abortion. (Anne Nordal Broen pubmed.) In the US, a majority of women cite a lack of support from the male partner as a reason for the abortion (Anderson, Desanctis). The pressure to abort can come from the male partner but also from parents or other family members. Women need support from their friends, family, church and state. And Christian’s must understand this reality that pregnant women face and pursue supportive and creative pro-life and pro-family solutions for them at every level, private and public.
6. It can be unfair and unhelpful at times when both sides, left and right, take marginal edge cases and use them to invoke emotion and argue for their side’s broader case. On the right it isn’t fair to talk mostly about D&E and late term abortions that make up a small minority of abortions and present them as if they make up the majority (.9% of abortions happen > 21 weeks, CDC.gov). On the left, it isn’t fair to talk mostly about rape and incest cases as if they represent the majority, using them to argue for broad pro-abortion policy, when they comprise roughly 2% of abortions (Hochman, National Review). Though these edge cases are very important and affect tens of thousands of women every year, it is not fair to pretend that these marginal cases represent the vast majority. This can be done with the use of stories as well, for example the right will use the story of Tonya Reaves in Cook County Illinois who died from a botched abortion due to an unregulated and dirty abortion facility, and the left will use stories like that of Dana Pierce who found out at 8 months that her baby had skeletal dysplasia and had to cross state lines to obtain an abortion, which Maine’s Governor Mills then used to enact sweeping, statewide pro-abortion policy. I am not advocating that we never tell stories like these. I am arguing that we need to be able to move away from only visceral reactions to very emotional edge case stories and cultivate a deeper understanding of abortion and what happens in the vast majority of cases and give more airtime to these broader issues (early medical abortions, lack of support for mothers etc.).
7. All that being said, it is always wrong to directly and intentionally kill innocent human life. Abortion always directly and intentionally kills innocent human life. Therefore, abortion is always wrong. Christians must hold the line on what is patently and observably true. There now exists a broad scientific consensus that life begins at fertilization. In one study out of the University of Chicago, 96% of doctors (5,337 out of 5,577 in the study) regardless of their political views, affirmed the view that life begins at fertilization (Steven Andrew Jacobs, pubmed). Complex medical conditions such as ectopic pregnancies or uterine cancer where the life of the mother is in danger and she must be treated in a way that could harm the baby is not the same as the direct and intentional killing of an innocent human life. The death of the baby may be an unintentional result of said treatments, but that is different from an abortion. In other words, women do not go to abortion clinics to treat ectopic pregnancies. The purpose of an abortion is to end the life of the baby. That is why they call a “successful” abortion one that ends with a dead baby, and a “failed” abortion one where the baby survives the procedure intended to end its life. The purpose and intent of an abortion is always to end the life of the baby in the womb and is not the same as other complex medical cases like those mentioned above.
8. The love of God covers a multitude of sin. For the women who have had abortions, for the men who have pressured or abandoned those women, for the abortion doctors who have routinely performed abortions and ended human life at scale. There is grace for all who have sinned, and anyone can be forgiven if they repent and turn to God. (1 John 1:9, Romans 8:38-39) Our hope is built on nothing less.
9. Abortion is by far the number one human rights issue of our time and demands a response from Christians everywhere. An estimated 73 million human lives are taken each year globally through abortion. In the US alone since the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973, roughly 64 million human lives have been taken through abortion. In China since 1980 an estimated 400 million babies have been killed through abortion, and in India roughly 100 million in the same time frame. The right to life is a prerequisite for all other rights, without that right you can have no other rights. That is why it is listed first in the Declaration of Independence “…among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. Christians and moral people everywhere should educate themselves on abortion and strongly and publicly oppose it in whatever way they can.