ANALYSIS: Does Scripture address abortion?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sanctity of Human Life Sunday (Jan. 18) commemorates 42 years of legal abortion in the United States.

NASHVILLE (BP) -- The claim of some pro-choice groups that Scripture does not address abortion would have surprised both Jews and Christians living in the first century. That's because they were virtually unanimous that the Bible implicitly -- though clearly -- prohibited the killing of unborn children.

Abortion advocates today tend either to deny this fact or remain gladly ignorant of it. For example, Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortion provider, issued a "pastoral letter to patients" last spring stating, "Many people wrongly assume that all religious leaders disapprove of abortion. The truth is that abortion is not even mentioned in the Scriptures -- Jewish or Christian -- and there are clergy and people of faith from all denominations who support women making this complex decision."

Of course, the Bible does not contain the direct commandment, "Thou shalt not have an abortion." But based on passages like Psalm 139:14-16, Jeremiah 1:4-5, Amos 1:13 and others, ancient Jews and Christians believed it was clear that God cared for the unborn and regarded abortion as a sin.

Some may be surprised to learn that abortion existed more than 2,000 years ago, with surgical and chemical abortions performed in pagan cultures hundreds of years before Christ's birth. The Greeks were among the first Ancient Near Eastern people to permit abortion, with Plato arguing in "The Republic" that pregnant women over 40 should be required to have abortions.

In contrast to pagan cultures, Judaism emphasized the value of unborn and pre-born life dating back at least to the time of Moses, when God's people protected infant males from being slaughtered at birth as Pharaoh ordered (Exodus 1:15-21). In fact, some scholars believe Pharaoh's command to kill Hebrew boys "on the birthstool" (Exodus 1:16) was actually a command to commit partial birth abortion, with "birth stool" functioning as a Hebrew euphemism for "birth canal."

Either way, the Jewish culture of life was evident, and the Jews of Jesus' time expressed their anti-abortion convictions. The Jewish work Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, written between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50, taught that "a woman should not destroy the unborn in her belly." First Enoch, which was written in the first or second century B.C., said it was evil to "smash the embryo in the womb."

Josephus, a Jewish historian born in A.D. 37, summarized, "The Law orders all offspring to be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus."

Early Christians agreed. The Didache, a first-century document that some church fathers argued should have been included in the New Testament, taught, "Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born." Another Christian writing considered for inclusion in the New Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas, said, "You shall not abort a child nor, again, commit infanticide." Both of these documents were read aloud in some churches.

When Spanish bishops convened a council in approximately 305 in the city of Elvira, they voted unanimously to decree eternal excommunication for women who had abortions -- a decision that reflected their just condemnation of the practice though it failed to reflect the biblical promise of forgiveness to post-abortive women who confess their sin and trust Christ as their Lord and Savior.

"If a woman conceives in adultery and then has an abortion, she may not commune again ... because she has sinned twice," the council decreed.

Among other early church leaders whose writings condemned abortion explicitly were Tertullian (c. 150-c. 229), Clement of Alexandria (c. 153-c. 215), Basil of Caesarea (c. 329-379), Jerome (c. 347-419) and John Chrysostom (c. 349-407).

Perhaps one reason the New Testament writers did not address abortion was that they did not need to. For the first 500 years of Christianity, there was a strong and practically unanimous consensus among believers that terminating a pregnancy violated Scripture's doctrine of the sanctity of human life.

A thousand years later, John Calvin demonstrated that the Christian tradition of opposing abortion was still alive and well. Commenting on Exodus 21:22-23, Calvin wrote, "The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is almost a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light."

In the strictest sense, abortion advocates are correct: the Bible does not speak explicitly to abortion. But that should not leave believers in a state of moral confusion any more than the Bible's failure to explicitly address money laundering or Internet pornography. For more than 2,000 years, the Lord's followers have extrapolated from biblical principles that some behaviors are obviously sinful. The united witness of Jews and Christians regarding abortion is a case in point.

Basil, Jerome, Chrysostom, Calvin and a host of other believers from every nation, tribe, people and tongue would scoff at the claim that Scripture is silent and that God's people historically have been divided regarding abortion.

David Roach is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention's news service.

The following describes John the Baptist, who is still in his mother's womb, leaping for joy at the presence of Jesus, who is still in his mother's womb.

Luke 1:39-45
And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.

Exodus 21:22-24
22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 And if any mischief follow, then you shall give life for life, 24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot

Apparently there is some value in the unborn, and a penalty if a person causes the death of an unborn child. Need the death be intentional?

While some people consider the eye for an eye passage an indication of limits of punishment, others see it as exacting revenge. In any event, there is indication that deliberately causing the death of an unborn child would be greater than an accidental death due to a fight.

Furthermore, the loss of one offspring equals not only one death, but the cutting off of several generations. Utterly destroying a line of people was a form of judgement such as occurred with the deaths of Hamman’s sons in the book of Esther. Destroying generations of people wasn’t something taken lightly, at all.

I believe there are other passages which address women having pity, or not having pity on the child in her womb, but it’s late and I’m way too tired to look it up.

There are many situations where we’ve invented words to describe those situations such as ‘rapture’ or ‘trinity’, where those particular words aren’t included in the text. The word abortion seems to be one of them.

The fact that we’ve made an issue of the ‘life’ of a baby easily “sacrificed” within the “shelter” and “safety” God designed for that child, should tell us foremost just how depraved and backward we’ve become.

Giving a baby that’s growing in the womb of it’s mother the name “fetus” does not change the natural progression of what began as a sexual act....which is where a woman’s choice is made. From that point on , if she becomes pregnant, it’s simply a matter of how to rid herself of the results of her choices already made.

In other words the baby/fetus is ‘the evidence’ of the sexual union.

....”the loss of one offspring equals not only one death, but the cutting off of several generations. Utterly destroying a line of people”.....

and may I say also that some have asked if man has the answers for the world’s problems, of which another firmly stated........”Not when we’re killing off the babies God intended to have those answers.”

Isn't it amazing how the Creator allows his light to shine through the darkness?

In America, all our constitutional protections rest on the Founders' premise that all human beings are "endowed by their Creator" with rights to both life and the liberty to "pursue happiness." That is the sole reason those rights are deemed unalienable--because they are derived, not from another human being, not from a government, not even from the mother, but from God.

"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." - Thomas Jefferson

That understanding underlies every other consideration embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It is the very basis of our rights to life, liberty, and laws to protect them.

Since the 1970's, technological advances have enabled us to observe God's tiniest creations in the womb. We no longer have an excuse for imagining that these are blobs of tissue labeled "fetuses." They are living babies who will have life and liberty if we do not "destroy" them.

At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on February 3, 1994, Mother Teresa stated: “And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"

Indeed, if we cannot protect the life and liberty of these smallest versions of ourselves, even with their so-called "imperfections," then Mother Teresa's words take on significant meaning.

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