Should Abortion Be Outlawed?

There are biblical and scientific reasons why most Christians (including myself) condemn abortion as something tantamount to an act of murder. This answer page presents the case against abortion.

First, here is the biblical case. I believe every Christian has heard the sixth commandment: “Thou shalt not kill” (Exod. 20:13; Rom. 13:9 KJV). With that settled, let us look at the Scriptures that teach that God views the fetus as a person. In the New Testament, the Greek word brephos (for “child“) is used of children both outside the womb (Luke 2:12, 16; 18:15; Acts 7:19; 1 Pet. 2:2) and inside the womb (Luke 1:41, 44). In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word yeled (also for “child“) is used also of an unborn child (Exod. 21:22-25). The plural term yeladim is used of the children in Rebecca's womb (Gen. 25:22). The word geber (“man” or “male“) is used of both grown men (Job 3:11-16) and unborn men (v. 3).

God also relates to the unborn in a personal manner (Gen. 25:22-24; Job 10:8-12; 31:15; Pss. 78:5-6; Jer. 1:5). He calls some people to His service from the womb (Judg. 13:3-5; Isa. 49:1, 5; Rom. 9:11-12; Gal. 1:15-16). He actively creates and molds life in the womb (Pss. 119:73; 139:13-16; Isa. 43:1, 7, 21; 44:21; Eph. 2:10). The personhood of Jesus Christ was present from His conception (Luke 1:31, 35 cf. Isa. 49:1-7; Heb. 2:17; 10:5). Exodus 21:22-25 also makes it clear that an unborn child is a living person.

Apart from the Bible, here is what several well-reputed medical authorities say (with emphasis added) about the moment a human life begins:

• California Medicine (medical journal): “[There is a] curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows: that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death.”
• Keith L. Moore (Univ. of Toronto Anatomy Professor): “Human development is a continuous process that begins when an ovum from a female is fertilized by a sperm from a male.”
• Micheline Matthews-Roth (Harvard Med. School Professor): “In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism, reproducing by sexual reproduction, begins at conception.”
• Dr. Watson A. Bowes, Jr. (Univ. of Colorado Med. School): “The beginning of a single is, from a biological point of view, a simple and straightforward matter--the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals.”
• Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni (Univ. of Pennsylvania Med. School): “The standard medical texts have long taught that human life begins at conception . . .. I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty . . . is not a human being. This is human life at every stage, albeit incomplete, until late adolescence.”
• Geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune (Univ. of Descarte in Paris): “Each individual has a very unique beginning, the moment of its conception.” He also stated, “If a fertilized egg is not by itself a full human being, it could never become a man, because something would have to be added to it, and we know that does not happen.”
• Professor Hymie Gordon (Mayo Clinic's Chairman of Medical Genetics): “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”