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WWJD: Who Would Jesus Abort? (Jesus and the Unborn)

What Is It?

Sadly, far more heat than light is usually generated in public discussions of abortion. And while a number of issues are involved, the fundamental pro-choice argument is a woman's right to choose, and the fundamental pro-life argument is that abortion is the intentional taking of an innocent human person's life.

Honestly, I think the right choice is fairly obvious when it comes to this issue — perhaps one of the most obvious of any of the issues we will discuss in this series. I do realize that there are a lot of deep emotions and sincere opinions involved when it comes to the subject of abortion. However, I would like to show you why I believe that abortion is just not something Jesus would support.

Note carefully that there is no such thing as a moral right to choose. Why? Because all choices must be choices of doing something or another, a fact conveniently left out of pro-choice discourse. One can't just choose in the abstract. And the right to choose X depends on the nature of X. If X is "buy a Ford instead of a Chevy" then there is such a right. If X is "blow up my neighbor's house" then there is no such right. Thus, whether or not there is a right to choose X depends on the prior issue of the nature of X.

Applied to abortion, the fundamental issue is not choice in the abstract, but the nature of an act of abortion. It is this latter issue that is the fundamental one. Viewed from a different angle, if, while washing the dishes, a child come up to its mother from behind and asks, "May I kill it?," what is the correct answer?

That depends on what "it" is — if it's a dangerous spider, then "yes;" if it's one's pet dog or baby sister, then "no." In sum, clearly the fundamental issue is "what is an act of abortion?" Is it the taking of an innocent human person's life or the removal of a woman's body part or something else completely?

From a Dog to a Dog

Space forbids a detailed discussion of this question, but if we step outside the abortion controversy for a moment, a fairly obvious fact becomes evident. A fertilized dog egg, a dog fetus, or a puppy is not a potential mammalian dog. Each is a mammalian dog with potential. In general, when something grows, it does not become the kind of thing it is; rather, it becomes a more and more mature example of the kind of thing it already is.

As a puppy grows, it does not become a mammalian dog; it becomes a more mature dog. In fact, it is because a fertilized mammalian-dog egg is already a mammalian dog that it will grow in a certain way and not another (say, by developing the features of a goldfish). Indeed, all a fertilized mammalian-dog egg needs is food, oxygen and water. The same is true of a fertilized human-person egg. It is not a potential human-person; it is a human person with potential. Thus, abortion is the intentional taking of an innocent human person's life.

These are pretty obvious and commonsensical. Only those with an ideological axe to grind will dispute them. With these preliminary observations in place, we now approach the topic of Jesus' view of abortion. There are at least six aspects to this topic. Space forbids adequate treatment of them, but it is very important to include all of them in our investigation.

Innocent Life and Right to Choose

First, I have already shown that I believe Jesus accepted the taking of life in war and, as most believe, in capital punishment cases for capital offenses. So I think it is wrong to say that Jesus was against all cases of taking human life in all circumstances. For many today, this observation is sufficient to justify claiming that Jesus was not pro-life on the grounds that a pro-life advocate must be against all taking of human life from war to the death penalty to abortion. But this judgment is superficial and simply false. The pro-life view is "it is wrong intentionally to take innocent human life." Arguably, killing soldiers in combat and exercising the death penalty do not violate this dictum while abortion clearly does.

Second, Jesus would not discuss the topic in terms of rights — the right to life vs. the right to choose abortion. While rights are very important in certain circumstances, Jesus repeatedly taught that we should learn to voluntarily give up our rights for the good of others. Instead, Jesus would approach the topic of abortion within the framework of virtue and duty.

From what we can glean from Jesus' teachings, His lead question would not be "When considering abortion, what are a woman's rights?" Rather, it would be "When considering abortion, what would a virtuous woman of character who cares about others and her duty to their well-being do?" The answer to the second question is pretty obvious: You don't kill them.

Third, Jesus repeatedly taught and demonstrated God's special care to outcasts and others who were needy and vulnerable with respect to the powerful. He also taught us to follow His example in this area. For Jesus, such demonstration was grounded in the love, compassion and care for those made in God's image. Violation of this teaching was a breach of justice. And in every single instance of His reference to and actions toward children, He treated them as prime examples of those who needed protection, care, and attention in light of those more powerful in the social order. The unborn are clear cases of those who are vulnerable in this way.

Human Personhood, Even in the Womb

Fourth, Scripture repeatedly ascribes to the unborn human person the same morally relevant characteristics (e.g., being a human person) as it does to adults (Job 3:3, Jeremiah 1:5, Isaiah 49:1, Psalm 51:5, Psalm 139:13-16, Luke 1:41-44, 2:16). These passages use the personal pronoun "I" or something similar for the unborn baby, demonstrating an identity between the unborn and the adult (e.g., Psalm 51:5 proclaims that it was the psalmist himself who was conceived and it was he himself that was sinful from the time of conception). Remember, in Jesus' inaugural address to His followers and the general public (the Sermon on the Mount), His very first assertion was His full commitment to the divine authority of the Old Testament (Matt 5:17-19).

On the surface, a small handful of passages seem to run contrary to the full human-person status of the unborn in the majority of biblical texts. The major example is Exodus 21:22-25. The text provides a specific law to regulate a very specific case: If two fighting men accidentally hit a pregnant woman who "gives birth prematurely," if there is no injury to the mother, a mere fine is required. However, if the mother is, in fact, injured, then proportionate justice (eye for an eye, life for a life) is required. Thus, it is argued that the mother's life is worth more than the life of the unborn. Since the fetus does not warrant the same protection as the mother, it must be less than a full human person.

But this interpretation is not what the passage is teaching. The ordinary Hebrew term for miscarriage in which the child is born dead (shakal) is not used here. Rather, the term is yasa, and it is normally used in association with a live birth. Thus, the envisioned circumstance is not the killing of the unborn child, but the act of causing a premature, live birth.

Fifth, setting aside our relationship to Adam's sin, it is clear that in all other cases, we shall be rewarded or punished for our own and only our own actions. I should not be judged for the choices, beliefs or deeds of another. We can see this in the Old Testament law. Applied to abortion, while rape is a grotesque evil, two wrongs do not make a right. It is wrong to kill the innocent unborn child for something he or she did not do. Indeed, doing the right thing in a sacrificial pregnancy in such cases can be an essential part of the emotional and spiritual healing from such a traumatic evil. And Jesus' teaching about the second greatest commandment of loving others as ourselves also applies to the innocent unborn child.

Finally, embracing death to save others and martyrdom should not be morally required of people. Rather, they should be chosen (if at all) voluntarily. Thus, Jesus repeatedly said that His sacrificial death was something He did voluntarily. So if a mother's life is genuinely in danger due to her pregnancy, she may voluntarily risk, even lose her life for her child, but she should not be required to do so.

Final Thoughts

A while ago a pro-choice friend of ours expressed her approval of the showing of Schindler's List at our local public high school on the grounds that students should have to see the brutality of the Holocaust as a reminder of how horrible it was. Yet she was upset a month ago with a teacher at the school who wanted to run a video showing acts of abortion in detail because it was, well, too brutal.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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Do you think Jesus is pro-life or pro-choice?

Join the discussion!

Regardless of what you think about showing such a video, as ultra-sound pictures of the child in the womb are increasingly available at earlier and earlier stages of life, it will make increasingly obvious to people just exactly what abortion really is: the taking of an innocent human person's life. But one should not have to see such a visual picture to know that abortion is wrong, especially if one is a follower of Jesus. For as I have tried to argue, Jesus was and is pro-life.