Abortion
Back in 1994, I had been gently pushing my wife (Diane) to start a family for a year since returning to the U.S. after living abroad. We had been married for eight years, were in our mid-thirties, and had just moved into a new house, so I thought it was a great time to have a baby.
While she wasn’t hostile to the idea, she wasn’t fired up either. At one point, she agreed not to use birth control one time and then we promptly went back to it. We soon found out that was all it took.
I’ll never forget the moment when Diane saw the positive result on a pregnancy test. The instant she knew she was pregnant, her attitude changed dramatically. She went from resistant and unsure to filled with wonder and joy. (I also had a dramatic reaction, quickly going from let’s do this! to what have I done!?!) After experiencing her pushback for over a year, I was shocked. It made me ask, what is it that can elicit such a powerful response the very moment a woman discovers she is pregnant?
Thinking about Diane’s reaction reminded me of a story I read about a woman who, the day after discovering she was pregnant, became sick and was told that her baby would likely miscarry. Her husband described her reaction when he told her that a friend, who was a medical doctor, said that a miscarriage would probably spare them a great deal of suffering and expense. Here’s what he wrote:
Even though her eyes were almost swollen shut (from crying), anger flashed out of them like lightening. She said, “I don't care what you say. There is no way I can believe that losing this little baby would be a blessing. I love this baby with all my heart. The worst thing in the world that could happen to me would be to lose this child. I don't care how defective this child is or how this child is born. I will spend the rest of my life caring for this baby if God will just let me have him.”
I was dumbfounded… I could not enter into or even understand my wife's feelings for this little baby.
How could she feel this way about that unborn child? She had only known she was pregnant for a little over 24 hours. In the space of that 24 hours, all this child had done for her was to make her sick and to threaten her life. And now she says that for her the worst thing in the world would be to lose the child? Where did she get that kind of love? Where did that kind of compassion come from?[1]
When I reflect on this story and my wife’s reaction to her pregnancy, I wonder how tens of millions of women around the globe can abort their babies every year.[2] The answer, of course, is not nearly as straightforward as many of us would like.
So, spurred on by the recent Roe v. Wade (Roe) decision, I decided to take a deeper look at abortion. What follows is not intended to be exhaustive. It’s simply a collection of information and viewpoints I considered that I hope will help the reader see the topic from new perspectives.
Statistics and Observations
Before continuing, it’s useful to cite some statistics and observations that will be helpful in our discussion.
“Around 73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year.”[3] If this number is accurate, it’s a staggering figure.
“It is estimated that as many as 26% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.”[4] A miscarriage is the spontaneous abortion of a fetus, i.e., one not caused by human intervention.
An estimated 3,664,292 births occurred in the U.S. in 2020.[4A] This would mean nearly 1.3 million pregnancies ended in miscarriage.
Worldwide, “Six out of 10 (61%) of all unintended pregnancies, and 3 out of 10 (29%) of all pregnancies, end in induced abortion.”[5]
“Nearly one in four women in the United States (23.7%) will have an abortion by age 45.”[6]
49% of U.S. women in 2014 who had abortions were below the poverty line ($15,730), up from 30% in 1987.[7]
75% of U.S. abortion patients in 2014 were either below the poverty line or low-income.[8] (Low income = 100%-to-199% of $15,730.)
“In 2016, [U.S.] women with one or more previous live births accounted for 59.0% of abortions.”[9]
46% of U.S. women who get abortions are single.[10]
“In 2014, about half (51%) of abortion patients in the United States reported that they had used a contraceptive method in the month they became pregnant.”[11]
“Around 45% of all abortions are unsafe, of which 97% take place in developing countries.”[12]
“61% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal all or most of the time, while 37% say it should be illegal all or most of the time.”[13]
The number of U.S. legal abortions per year fell over 41% from 1990 to 2020. [14]
The 2020 U.S. abortion rate was below the 1973 rate, the year Roe was enacted.[15]
In 2020, medication abortions were estimated to account for 54% of all abortions in the United States.[16]
“The vast majority of abortions occur during the first trimester of a pregnancy. In 2020, 93% of abortions occurred during the first trimester – that is, at or before 13 weeks of gestation, according to the CDC. An additional 6% occurred between 14 and 20 weeks of pregnancy, and 1% were performed at 21 weeks or more of gestation. These CDC figures include data from 40 states and New York City (but not the rest of New York).”[16A] There is no such thing as abortion after birth.
As of January 1, 2024, in the 14 states where a total abortion ban was put in place following the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a total of 64,565 women are estimated to have become pregnant from rape while the abortion ban was in effect across those states.[16B]
“Seventeen percent of [U.S.] abortion patients in 2014 identified themselves as mainline Protestant, 13% as evangelical Protestant and 24% as Catholic, while 38% reported no religious affiliation and the remaining 8% reported some other affiliation.”[17]
By the 2010s, only 5 percent of new brides in America were virgins.[18] The vast majority of people in America are having sex prior to marriage.
Many point to the 1500 BC Egyptian Ebers Papyrus as the first recorded evidence of induced abortion.[19] One organization claims that the Royal Archives Center in China contains evidence of abortion techniques as far back as 3,000 BC, but I was unable to verify this. They write: “Abortion has always existed… Pregnancy has always been accompanied by the seeking and sharing of methods for ending pregnancy.”[20]
From the data we can conclude that abortion is a global, exceedingly commonplace occurrence that has been around for a long time. It is disproportionately sought out by the poor and is a dangerous proposition in developing countries. Nearly two thirds of U.S. women who get abortions profess Christian faith, and the vast majority of women – religious or not – are having sex outside of marriage. The majority of U.S. women who have abortions have already given birth to a child and nearly half of the women who have abortions are single. About half the women who get an abortion used some form of birth control in the month they became pregnant.
According to a 2004 survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute,[21] the reasons women gave for having an abortion were as follows along with the percentage of women surveyed who gave them:
74% – Having a baby would dramatically change my life.
73% – Can’t afford a baby now.
48% – Don’t want to be a single mother or having relationship problems.
38% – Have completed my childbearing.
32% – Not ready for a(nother) child.
25% – Don’t want people to know I had sex or got pregnant.
22% – Don’t feel mature enough to raise a(nother) child.
14% – Husband or partner wants me to have an abortion.
13% – Possible problems affecting the health of the fetus.
12% – Physical problem with my health.
6% – Parents want me to have an abortion.
1% – Was a victim of rape.
< 0.5% – Became pregnant as a result of incest.
Once again, income is a major issue for about three-quarters of the women considering abortion. A significant portion of the women cited health concerns for them and/or their baby. In 20% of cases, the women were being pressured into having an abortion. And, sadly, factors like rape and incest were also cited.
What Does the Bible Say?
While the Bible does not specifically address the issue of abortion – including Jesus never mentioning it – most Christians believe God is “clearly” against the practice and that, “simply put, abortion is murder.”[22] They arrive at this by combining scriptures that show that God knows and loves us long before we are born, He is actively involved in forming us in the womb, we are commanded not to commit murder, and we are commanded to defend the helpless.[23] Before taking a deeper look at this position, let’s first look at two Bible passages that many believe have the most direct connection with abortion.
In the book of Exodus, among the many laws and instructions God passed on to the Israelites, is the following law of retribution:
Now suppose two men are fighting, and in the process they accidentally strike a pregnant woman so she gives birth prematurely. If no further injury results, the man who struck the woman must pay the amount of compensation the woman’s husband demands and the judges approve. But if there is further injury, the punishment must match the injury: a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise.[24]
Some translations say so she has a miscarriage in place of so she gives birth prematurely. This leads me to wonder what the most accurate English translation is and if these verses are talking about premature birth, miscarriage, or both. Furthermore, it’s unclear to me if no further injury applies to the mother, fetus, or both. Answering these questions is critical to interpreting the verses.
The Christian Website gotquestions.org views these verses as follows:
This law relates to abortion in that it gives the example of a pregnancy ending prematurely. Basic to the statute is the assumption that the baby delivered prematurely has the same rights and protections under the law as an adult human being. That is, the fetus is a person.
Under the law in Exodus, causing the death of an unborn child was a serious crime, and the punishment for it was “a life for a life.”
Note that, if the only consequence of the men’s fighting was that the woman gave birth prematurely, but she and the baby were ultimately unharmed, then the worst that would happen was that the offender would pay a fine determined by the husband and approved by the judges. The law did not address every loss or consequence, but it did ensure that permanent consequences were justly compensated.
If the mother or baby or both were injured, the husband of the baby’s mother, along with the judges, would decide a fair punishment. If a life was lost, however, the law specified that the offender would also lose his life.[25]
Here's a different Christian interpretation:
The word "abortion" is not mentioned in the Bible, but much in the Bible speaks to the issue. The most obvious passage is from Exodus 21:22-25. This part of the Covenant Code legislates the case of a pregnant woman who becomes involved in a brawl between 2 men and has a miscarriage. A distinction is then made between the penalty that is to be exacted for the loss of the fetus and injury to the woman. For the fetus, a fine is paid as determined by the husband and the judges. However, if the woman is injured or dies, "lex talionis" is applied -- life for life, eye for eye, etc. The story has somewhat limited application to the current abortion debate since it deals with accidental and not willful pregnancy termination. Even so, the distinction made between the woman and the fetus is important. The woman is valued as a person under the covenant; the fetus is valued as property. Its status is certainly inferior to that of the woman. This passage gives no support to the parity argument that gives equal religious and moral worth to woman and fetus.
The biblical portrait of a person does not begin with an explanation of conception but with a portrayal of the creation of Adam and Eve. Thus, the biblical portrait of a person is that of a complex, many-sided creature with the god-like ability and responsibility to make choices. The fetus does not meet those criteria. When considering the issue of abortion, the one who unquestionably fits this portrait of personhood is the pregnant woman.[26]
Here we have two Christian interpretations that reach very different conclusions about the same verses. This highlights a challenge we face when trying to understand the Bible’s position on any topic, i.e., the difficulty/uncertainty involved in interpreting certain Bible passages.
Next, consider God’s instructions in the book of Numbers for testing the faithfulness of a wife suspected of infidelity.[27] These instructions direct the wife to drink a “bitter” mixture of water and dust which will adversely affect her womb if she has been unfaithful and leave her unaffected if she has not.
There are proponents of abortion rights who point to these verses as proof of God condoning, even practicing, abortion. This is because the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible – and as far as I can tell, only the NIV translation – states that the drink will result in a miscarriage.[28] Many Biblical scholars consider this translation incorrect, especially since pregnancy isn’t mentioned anywhere in verses 11 through 31. But this doesn’t stop some people from cherry picking the NIV version to support their position.
The Bible is a book filled with seeming contradictions – including with respect to the value God places on children and the unborn. God commands us not to murder and expresses his extreme displeasure with child sacrifice numerous times in the Old Testament,[29] but He’s also credited with killing everyone on earth in a flood (which must have included pregnant women), slowly killing a newborn baby because of the sins of its father, and allowing invading armies to rip pregnant Israeli women open with swords as punishment for their parents’ rebellion.[30]
I have written about God’s violence elsewhere where I presented evidence that violent depictions of God reflect human/cultural influences on biblical authors rather than the true nature of God, so I won’t rehash the topic here. The point I want to make now is that without thoughtful/diligent study of the Bible, history, and the cultures in which Bible accounts were written, scripture can easily be misunderstood; and even with diligent study, many questions remain.
So, let’s revisit some of the assertions many Christians make that I cited at the beginning of this subsection. There are several scriptures that indicate that God “knew”/loved certain Biblical figures long before they were conceived. For example, God told the prophet Jeremiah that he knew him before He formed him in his mother’s womb, and the apostle Paul told the Christians in the early church at Ephesus that God loved and chose them before He made the world.[31]
Christians also point to scriptures they believe indicate that God is intimately involved with our development in the womb. King David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Job used words like knit together, formed, and created to indicate God’s involvement in their formation in their mother’s womb.[32]
God’s foreknowledge of these people and activity in their mother’s wombs are used as proof that life begins at conception. I admit that I struggle with this connection. I wonder, do these scriptures even make that connection; how much of the wording in these versus is poetic rather than literal; did God actively create these people in the womb or were they the result of the gestation process He designed that kicks off at the moment of conception; and can these verses be extended to all people?
With respect to the last point, Christians often take scriptures out of their original context and apply them to their lives. Consider Jeremiah 29:11 for a good example.
Also, God clearly had special plans for people like Jeremiah, but what about the 26% of all fetuses that miscarry (over one million in the U.S. alone each year)? Did God foreknow every one of them in some special way, why did he allow them to miscarry, and where are they now?
Other Christians claim that life begins with breath. They point to Genesis 2:7 which says, “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” (The Hebrew word for person is nephesh, which is translated as soul in the King James Version of the Bible.)
Every living creature has a spirit that was given to it by God. This spirit gives life, and when God removes it, a living being dies.[33] Man’s spirit was formed by God, and it returns to God when we die. It’s the “breath of life” referenced in Genesis 2:7. In this context, the spirit combines with our body to create a soul—a living creature.
At this point, you might be wondering what the Bible says happens to babies that die and fetuses that are aborted. Once again, it’s not very clear. There are scriptures that reveal that we are all born with a sinful nature and therefore subject to God’s judgement at any age.[34] There are other scriptures that indicate that some babies have gone to heaven, that a person can be filled with God’s Spirit in the womb, and that we can have a relationship with God as an infant.[35]
In the face of these confusing verses, I find solace in the following words of John Piper:
Jesus says in John 9:41 to those who were offended at his teaching and asked if he thought they were blind, “If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty, but you remain guilty because you claim you can see.”
In other words, if a person lacks the natural capacity to see the revelation of God's will or God's glory then that person's sin would not remain. God would not bring the person into final judgment for not believing what he had no natural capacity to see.
God only executes judgment on those who have the natural capacity to see his glory and understand his will and refuse to embrace it as their treasure.
Infants, I believe, do not yet have that capacity; and therefore, in God's inscrutable way, he brings them under the forgiving blood of his Son.[36]
I also take solace in what God reveals about Himself in the Bible and the life of Jesus Christ. God repeatedly describes Himself as good, lavishly loving, faithful, compassionate, merciful, forgiving, and just in the scriptures, and the life of Jesus bears this out. Whenever I feel uncertain about an issue I fall back on these descriptions and trust God to work things out in a fair and compassionate way.
Abortion as Healthcare
I often hear pro-choice advocates refer to abortion as healthcare. I recently wondered what Hippocrates – considered the father of modern medicine – would think about that. So, I looked up his famous Hippocratic Oath and here’s part of what it says:
I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.[37] (Emphasis mine)
As one organization puts it, “The Hippocratic Oath was revolutionary for its unyielding devotion to the preservation of individual human life. It stood in marked contrast to the more primitive medical traditions that blurred the lines between killing and curing.”[38] This devotion to preserving life extended to the womb.
In 1947, the World Medical Association (WMA) was formed as a confederation of medical associations representing physicians worldwide. Consider the following from their website:
During the post-World War 2 period and immediately after its foundation, the WMA showed concern over the state of medical ethics in general and all around the world. The WMA took on the responsibility for establishing ethical guidelines for the world physicians. It noted that in those years the custom of medical schools to administer an oath to its doctors upon graduation or receiving a license to practice medicine had fallen into disuse or become a mere formality. The WMA was of the opinion that the establishment of a suitable oath or pledge to be administered as a part of the graduation or licensing ceremony would help to impress on newly qualified doctors the fundamental ethics of medicine and would assist in raising the standard of professional conduct.
These facts moved the WMA to appoint a study committee to prepare a “Charter of Medicine” which could be adopted as an oath or promise that every doctor in the world would make upon receiving his medical degree or diploma.[39]
In 1948, the WMA developed a statement that modernized the ancient Hippocratic oath and was dubbed the Declaration of Geneva. “Member associations were invited to recommend the use of this vow to the medical schools and faculties of their countries.”[40]
Part of the Declaration stated that, “I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life, from the time of conception…”[41] (Emphasis mine) The Declaration adopted the same stance on abortion that its predecessor, the Hippocratic Oath, had done 2,400 years earlier. It did not seem to consider abortion to be good healthcare.
The Declaration has been modified several times since 1948 with the second (1983) amendment changing the aforementioned sentence to read, “I WILL MAINTIAN the utmost respect for human life from its beginning…” (Emphasis mine) The current (2017) version simply states, “I WILL MAINTIAN the utmost respect for human life.”[42]
While I have not been able to verify this, I imagine these changes were the result of the increasing acceptance of abortion over the past 70 years as evidenced by things like the original Roe decision.
Are there good healthcare reasons for aborting a pregnancy? I have read a number of stories that touch on this. There are, for example, situations where a pregnant woman is battling cancer and the treatments pose a serious threat to the mother and her fetus. One story involved a 36-year-old woman with two children and an aggressive form of breast cancer. A New York Times article reports:
She had always said she would never have an abortion. But the choices she faced were wrenching. If she had the chemotherapy that she needed to prevent the spread of her cancer, she could harm her baby. If she didn’t have it, the cancer could spread and kill her. She had two children, ages 2 and 11, who could lose their mother.
With enormous sadness, [she] made [her] decision — she would have a medication abortion.
“I don’t take that little life lightly,” Ms. Brown said.
After she terminated her pregnancy, Ms. Brown was able to start treatment with trastuzumab, along with a cocktail of chemotherapy drugs and radiation. She had a mastectomy, and there was no evidence of cancer at the time of her surgery.
“I feel like it has taken a lot of courage to do what I did. As a mother your first instinct is to protect the baby.”
But having gone through that grueling treatment, she also wondered how she could ever have handled having a newborn baby and her two other children to care for.
“My bones ached. I couldn’t walk more than a few steps without being out of breath. It was hard to get nutrients because of the nausea and vomiting,” she said.
The Supreme Court decision hit her hard.
“I felt like the reason I did what I did didn’t matter,” she said. “My life didn’t matter, and my children’s lives didn’t matter.”
“It didn’t matter if I lost my life because I was being forced to be pregnant,” she said.[43]
The article also talks about the dilemma doctors now face because of the toxic effects of chemotherapy to a fetus. The treatment of a woman’s cancer opens them up to criminal prosecution if something happens to the fetus during treatment.
Another more insidious impact on health is imposed by poverty. As we’ve already seen, abortions are disproportionately sought out by poor and low-income people, almost certainly because raising a child poses far greater financial and other burdens on them than on other people. Poor people struggle to pay for the basics of life, like rent, fuel, and transportation; are less likely to be able to take off work when their kids are sick; are less likely to receive maternity leave; and typically have less comprehensive healthcare coverage, if any coverage at all.
Despite these things, there is a surprising lack of reliable data available on the outsized economic and health impact on the poor of having unwanted children. One investigation that is often cited by pro-choice advocates is the Turnaway Study which interviewed women who came to abortion centers for an abortion and compared the responses for women who had the abortion and those who were turned away.
Among other things, the study concluded that the women who were denied abortions were more likely to end up living in poverty; less financially stable; more likely to be with abusive partners; and more likely to be a single parent. The study also claimed that the women who went through with the abortions were more comfortable with their decision than pro-life advocates assert.[44]
Of course, there are people who take exception to the methods and conclusions of the study. One major point of contention concerns the sample size of the survey, the way participants were chosen, and the number and types of participants who dropped out before the survey was completed.[45]
I also discovered a discrepancy that I found a bit troubling. The Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, which includes folks who were intimately involved in the Turnaway Study, states that, “Women denied an abortion had almost 4 times greater odds of a household income below the federal poverty level and 3 times greater odds of being unemployed.”[46] (Emphasis mine)
This is a significant claim. The only problem is, I can’t find it repeated in other summaries of the study. For example, the data sheet published by ANSIHR, which conducted the study, states, “Women who were turned away and went on to give birth experienced an increase in household poverty lasting at least four years relative to those who received an abortion.”[47] (Emphasis mine) This is quite different than Bixby’s claim, and again both organizations were intimately involved with the study.
So, what are we to conclude? Well, I have no doubt that, on average, people forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term and who keep their children will experience more financial, health, and other difficulties than those who have abortions. How much so is uncertain to me because, as with any highly charged issue, it’s difficult to wade through the arguments and separate fact from spin.
Un-Christlike Behavior
I recently watched a video of someone asking four women sitting under a “Choose Adoption” banner at a March for Life rally how many children each of them had adopted. The answer was none for each of them, and most of the women required some prodding to admit it.[48] They seemed visibly uncomfortable with the question and the reality of their inaction, responding with nervous laughter and comments like, “I already have two children.”
The video was a reminder of the many examples of un-Christlike, hypocritical, and generally bad behavior I have seen from Christians fighting against abortion. Let’s consider some.
First, Christians fight like mad to stop abortions but are nowhere near as interested in what happens to at-risk moms and their kids once they are born. In the words of Randall Balmer, “opposition to abortion – aligning oneself with a fetus – is not a terribly painful political position to take. A fetus doesn't demand education. A fetus doesn't demand healthcare. A fetus doesn't demand basic human needs.”[49]
Speaking about the sanctity of life after birth, Frank Shaeffer – who along with his father, Francis, is credited with birthing the modern anti-abortion movement – puts it more bluntly:
Evangelicals do not believe [in the sanctity of life after birth] because, if they did, they would be fighting for paid parental leave so fathers and mothers could go home and be with their children instead of women going back to work three low-paid jobs with a terrible minimum wage while they're still bleeding from a caesarean section. Evangelicals don't care about that.
They would not have fought as the Republicans did against the child tax credit that for a brief shining moment lifted millions of American children out of poverty. But they're not going to spend that money. They want to get rid of it. They call it socialism.
If this group of people was pro-life and actually were consistent in their pro-life position you could have some admiration for them while disagreeing on the matter of choice, but they are an anti-family group of people who put the welfare of billionaires in this country ahead of children, ahead of women, ahead of poor people, ahead of families.
They're not for the child tax credit. They have never raised the minimum wage. They believe in people working two or three jobs on the margin of poverty, and tough luck, you're on your own. So, the minute that child is born they are anti-life, they're not just anti-choice. And so, this is a hypocritical movement.[50]
Rob Schenck, a former rock star in the anti-abortion movement says the following:
You can believe passionately that the best choice is for a woman to bring a pregnancy to term, give birth to that child, raise that child. But in order to get to that place, we have to ask what are we doing to assist in that? What policies? You know, during my time in the pro-life anti-abortion movement I raised tens of millions of dollars to end Roe v. Wade. Will those same donors give those same amounts of money, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars – billions, actually, over the course of the national movement in all of its quarters. Will they give that same amount of money to assist women with healthcare, with housing, with childcare, with job training? Will they use the same force in their voting privileges to vote for candidates who support public policy that provides those things for women in crisis pregnancy and their children all the way through their lifetime? Right now, the answer to that is, on-the-whole, no. They will not.[51]
I have thought about this issue a lot. Wouldn’t it be cool if Christians would stop primarily defending the fetus and begin expressing the radical love of Jesus Christ to at-risk moms and their children in a way that takes people’s breath away.
It’s estimated that there are approximately 300,000 Christian congregations in America.[52] Estimates for the number of abortions in the U.S. each year range from 630,000 to 930,000.[53] Wouldn’t it be awesome if every one of these congregations committed to adopting, in a sense, two or three of the moms considering abortion and helped them with childcare, job training, and other important things – at least for the first few years of the child’s life.
I have looked for programs like this in the Christian community and found only a small number of modest ones. One is Borromeo Housing in Arlington, VA, which runs a two-year education, housing, and life skills development program for homeless young mothers (ages 16 to 22) and their babies. They offer moms and their babies a quality place to live, a disciplined career training program for the mothers, and other forms of support that help them become independent members of the community. It’s a wonderful program, but unfortunately such programs are few and far between. I would love to see the same level of resources that were dedicated to overturning Roe directed at a national program like Borromeo Housing.
Another unfortunate point is Christian’s acceptance/embrace of ungodly, ugly behavior. There are so many examples of this I don’t know where to begin. But let’s focus on politics and the words of a religious studies expert:
In the span of a single election cycle, white evangelicals [went] from being the group in America that is most likely to say that a politician’s morality matters to the group that is now least likely to say that. Atheists in America think that a politician’s morality matters more than white evangelicals in America do – white evangelicals, who continue to refer to themselves as value voters. This is a phenomenon that can't be explained by just looking at the prosperity gospel or looking at racial matters. What you're seeing is a gigantic group of Americans who are fundamentally overturning their core theological beliefs that public morality matters. And the only explanation that I have for it is that Donald Trump has turned a large swath of white evangelical Christianity into a cult.”[54]
Donald Trump couldn’t be much more un-Christlike, yet 81% and 75% of white evangelicals cast their votes for him in 2016 and 2020, respectively. This was in large part in exchange for Supreme Court nominees who were against Roe.[55] Many Christians vote on this single issue alone.
This is astonishing. When I think of former president Trump, I think of something the prophet Ezekiel wrote:
Again and again, you remind me of your sin and your guilt. You don’t even try to hide it! In everything you do, your sins are obvious for all to see.[56]
This is the perfect description of Donald Trump. His sins are so numerous and open, it’s shocking, and yet many evangelicals I know will defend him to the bitter end. This reminds me of the following words of Jesus:
And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is![57]
Many years ago, when my wife of 22 years told me she wanted a divorce, I came to realize how incredibly self-righteous, judgmental, and abusive I was. I’ve become somewhat of an unintended expert on the topic. And I feel like I’m seeing this same behavior in excess among Trump supporting evangelicals. Their deep conviction in the righteousness of their abortion position has led, unfortunately, to self-righteousness, judgment, and blindness to their lack of compassion. Consider the words of Rob Schenck again:
When we shifted away from a moral argument based on human dignity and justice, and became politicized – we were co-opted by the Republican Party – we shifted our attention away from women in crisis with unwelcomed pregnancies and the children we hoped they would give birth to, and shifted to political power and influence, I think we lost our soul as a movement. We lost our moral force. We became just another influence group.
Eventually political power is very seductive, and if you don't guard your heart and your mind and your motives it's very easy to simply go to a game of domination and triumph, and we became very triumphalistic.
By the time I ended my association with the movement in the mid-2000s, I thought very little about the actual individuals and their personal experience in all of this and more about the political landscape and whether we were going to be victorious or not. And, of course, we were both on the political and judicial levels.
Meanwhile, of course, the movement did in fact turn violent. There was not just destruction of property and ultimately murder but our language, our tone, our contempt for our opponents also turned into a form of rhetorical violence and that demoralized the movement so that today for me it's barely recognizable as the movement I joined 30 years ago.
The victory that has been achieved was achieved because the very people who got us here are the people who don't simply dismiss the women and the born children at the center of this crisis, but they actually have contempt for them. They hold an attitude that says you pick yourself up by your own bootstraps, we're not responsible for you, it's not our burden to take care of you, you take care of yourself.
So, they not only are uncaring they are actually contemptuous of the people we said were at the focus of our movement. The result will be that states that now ban abortion will also not simply ignore the women and children placed at great risk as a result of this but will actually act in ways that further injure them. This is a complete inversion of the movement's original objectives, tenants, and motivations. It's even contrary to the Christian core of the movement’s motivations.[58]
When I consider the laws that so many state legislatures are passing – laws that outlaw abortions even in cases of rape, incest, and sexual abuse of minors; laws that punish people for traveling across state borders; laws that discourage doctors from providing life-saving treatments; laws that encourage people to report others to authorities – I realize how accurate Rob Schenck’s words are.
Final Thoughts
As I went about my research for this blog post I came across an opinion piece in Politico by a clinical ethicist, chaplain, and expert on moral injury named Michele Demarco. Consider what she wrote.
In a perfect world, or at least as I imagine one, there would never be a need for another abortion. Life, in all its various forms, including a potential, unborn life, is to my mind meaningful, and therefore worthy of consideration. For myself, and for many people I’ve spoken to, worked with, and counseled over the years who have terminated a pregnancy, the experience can also be deeply emotional, often painful, profoundly intimate, and sometimes morally injurious, even for those who don’t regret their decision. I’ll be honest, I fear for a society that doesn’t respect the sanctity of life and where swaths of the population find it a badge of honor to tout the number of abortions they’ve had or lob comment-bombs at anyone on social media who expresses a driblet of gravity or sadness over the experience.
But I’m enough of a realist to know that utopias don’t and will never exist — not in this world or lifetime. Human bodies, minds and hearts are inherently flawed and vulnerable to all manner of influence. Sometimes things happen that we don’t desire; sometimes they happen despite our best intentions or efforts; sometimes they have nothing to do with our active involvement.
And so, I admit I also fear for a society where the government would be allowed to play God, quite literally, by determining the conditions, particularly the physical conditions, under which it may be necessary to preserve my (or others’) life. Despite the government’s wont to be omniscient, it is anything but. This is also particularly concerning given the changing nature of medical science and the tsunami of partisan politics.[59]
Michele faced her own abortion choice several years ago. At the age of 34, despite every effort to prevent it, she became pregnant while also suffering from spontaneous coronary arterial dissection (SCAD) – a condition that previously resulted in two heart attacks and doctors warned would likely result in her death if she carried her baby to term. She chose to have an abortion. Again, she writes:
Deciding to have an abortion was truly the hardest, most anguishing decision I’ve ever made, and, perhaps surreally, also the most obvious — two lives were at stake and the abortion saved one of them, and, to my eternal grief, the only one it could. I don’t regret the decision to terminate my pregnancy — only that I had to make it. The existential reconciling these decisions beget is a domain for faith and spirituality that ought to reside with the pregnant person; it is not a domain for the law or the government.[60]
The conception of a baby and its development in the womb is a miraculous and wondrous thing, and it makes me question how any mom can make the decision to assault their very own child growing inside of them. I also realize that humans are deeply and inherently flawed. Our sinful behavior and imperfect world present us with all sorts of difficult challenges – like the one Michele faced.
There are women and men who have casual sex and abortions without care. There are women and underage girls who find themselves pregnant because of rape and incest. There are married and unmarried couples who get pregnant despite using contraceptives. And there are impoverished young women who are abandoned by their “boyfriends” the moment they find out they are pregnant.
There have got to be better solutions to these challenges than the ones we are seeing at the extremes – solutions that honor and protect the life of the unborn, provide access to abortion in life-threatening and other serious situations, and provide meaningful and sustained services/care for the living. And Christians have got to do a way better job addressing the latter.
Please ask God to give you the humility and wisdom to see if you are viewing this issue without the compassion He desires, and if so, to give you the willingness, courage, and ability to step up and respond in a Christlike manner.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Holy Spirit, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1993, pages 118-119.
[2] See Abortion (who.int) at the World Health Organization website for statistics.
[3] Source: World Health Organization. See Abortion (who.int).
[4] Carla Dugas, Valori H. Slane, “Miscarriage,” NIH National Library of Medicine, StatPearls [Internet], June 27, 2022. See: Miscarriage - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf (nih.gov).
[4A] FastStats - Births and Natality (cdc.gov)
[5] Carla Dugas, Valori H. Slane, “Miscarriage,” NIH National Library of Medicine, StatPearls [Internet], June 27, 2022. See: Miscarriage - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf (nih.gov).
[6] Rachel K. Jones, Jenna Jerman, “Population Group Abortion Rates and Lifetime Incidence of Abortion: United States, 2008–2014”, American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 12 (December 1, 2017): pp. 1904-1909. See Population Group Abortion Rates and Lifetime Incidence of Abortion: United States, 2008–2014 | AJPH | Vol. 107 Issue 12 (aphapublications.org).
[7] See Abortion rates by income | Guttmacher Institute.
[8] Jerman J, Jones RK and Onda T, Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008, New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2016. See https://www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014.
[9] Jatlaoui TC, Eckhaus L, Mandel MG, et al. Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2016. MMWR Surveillance Summary 2019; 68 (No. SS-11): 1–41. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.ss6811a1external icon.
[10] See Who Gets Abortions in America? Statistics About the Typical Patient - The New York Times (nytimes.com).
[11] See About Half of U.S. Abortion Patients Report Using Contraception in the Month They Became Pregnant | Guttmacher Institute.
[12] See Abortion (who.int).
[13] Jeff Diament, Besheer Mohamed, “What the Data Says About Abortion in the U.S.”, Pew Research Center, June 24, 2022. See: Abortion in the U.S.: What the data says | Pew Research Center.
[14] Ibid.
[15] See Induced Abortion in the United States | Guttmacher Institute.
[16] Based on preliminary data from the Guttmacher Institute. See 1:20 mark at As Medication Abortions Become More Common, Republicans Focus Opposition - YouTube.
[16A] Abortion in the U.S.: What the data says | Pew Research Center
[16B] Rape-Related Pregnancies in the 14 US States With Total Abortion Bans | Emergency Medicine | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network
[17] Jerman J, Jones RK and Onda T, Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008, New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2016. See https://www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014.
[18] Counterintuitive Trends in the Link Between Premarital Sex and Marital Stability | Institute for Family Studies (ifstudies.org), June 6, 2016.
[19] See History of abortion - Wikipedia and History of Contraception | GLOWM.
[20] Abortion Is as Old as Pregnancy: 4,000 Years of Reproductive Rights History (truthout.org).
[21] Lawrence B. Finer et.al., “Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2005, 37(3):110–118. See 3711005.pdf (guttmacher.org).
[22] See What does the Bible say about abortion? | GotQuestions.org and What Does the Bible Say about Abortion? (christianity.com) for examples.
[23] See Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13-16, Exodus 20:13, and Psalm 82:3-4 for examples.
[24] Exodus 21:22-25 (NLT).
[25] How does Exodus 21:22–23 relate to the issue of abortion? | GotQuestions.org.
[26] Biblical views on abortion: an Episcopal perspective - PubMed (nih.gov). Also, see The Bible Tells Us When A Fetus Becomes A Living Being - The Christian Left Blog.
[27] See Numbers 5:11-31.
[28] Numbers 5:21-22 and 27 (NIV, 2011).
[29] See Exodus 20:13, Leviticus 18:3,5,21,24-26; Leviticus 20:1-2,23; Deuteronomy 12:31; and Deuteronomy 18:9-10,12.
[30] Genesis 7, 2 Samuel 12, and Hosea 13:16.
[31] Jeremiah 1:4-5, Ephesians 1:4. Also, see Galatians 1:5.
[32] Psalm 139:13, Isaiah 49:5, Jeremiah 1:5, and Job 31:15.
[33] Psalm 104:24-30, James 2:26, John 6:63, Job 32:8,18; Job 33:4; Zechariah 12:1, Ezekiel 37:5-6; Ecclesiastes 12:7, Acts 7:59.
[34] Psalm 51:5, Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10.
[35] 2 Samuel 12:23, Luke 1:15, Psalm 22:9-10.
[36] Matt Perman quoting John Piper, “What Happens to Infants Who Die?”, Desiring God blog, January 23, 2006. See: What Happens to Infants Who Die? | Desiring God.
[37] Hippocratic Oath - Wikipedia.
[38] See The Case Against Abortion: Abortion and the Hippocratic Oath (abort73.com).
[39] See History – WMA – The World Medical Association.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Declaration of Geneva. Adopted by the Third General Assembly of the World Medical Association, Sep 1948. See https://www.wma.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Decl-of-Geneva-v1948-1.pdf.
[42] See The Revised Declaration of Geneva: A Modern-Day Physician’s Pledge | Ethics | JAMA | JAMA Network.
[43] Gina Kolata, “After Roe, Pregnant Women with Cancer Diagnoses May Face Wrenching Choices,” New York Times, July 25, 2022. See: After Roe, Pregnant Women With Cancer Diagnoses May Face Wrenching Choices (msn.com).
[44] See turnaway_study_brief_web.pdf (ansirh.org). Also, see: Annie Lowrey, “The Most important Study in the Abortion Debate,” The Atlantic, June 11, 2022. See The Most Important Study in the Abortion Debate - The Atlantic.
[45] See The_Turnaway_Study_A_Case_of_Self-Correction_in_Sc.pdf.
[46] See turnaway_study_brief_web.pdf (ansirh.org).
[47] See the_harms_of_denying_a_woman_a_wanted_abortion_4-16-2020.pdf (ansirh.org).
[48] See “Choose Adoption” sign at the March for Life - YouTube.
[49] See Holy Post Episode 480: The Myth of the Religious Right with Randall Balmer - YouTube, 1:30:20 mark.
[50] See Why this former anti-abortion activist regrets the movement he helped build (cnn.com), 14:06 mark.
[51] See Fmr. Pro-Life Leader on Abortion Ruling: Our Movement Has Lost its Soul | Amanpour and Company - YouTube.
[52] See Fast Facts about American Religion (hartsem.edu).
[53] See Abortion in the U.S.: What the data says | Pew Research Center.
[54] See Is the Trump presidency a religious cult? | Reza Aslan | Big Think - YouTube, 4:11 mark.
[55] White evangelical Christians stick by Trump again, exit polls show | US elections 2020 | The Guardian.
[56] Ezekiel 21:24, NLT.
[57] Matthew 6:23, NLT.
[58] See Fmr. Pro-Life Leader on Abortion Ruling: Our Movement Has Lost its Soul | Amanpour and Company - YouTube, 1:15 and 4:50 marks.
[59] Michele Demarco, “The New Abortion Restriction No One Is Talking About,” Politico Magazine | Opinion, April 28, 2022. See: Opinion | The New Abortion Restriction No One is Talking About - POLITICO.
[60] Ibid.