What the Bible Says About Abortion

This page makes the case from Scripture that the child in the womb is a person made in God’s image. But some readers need another part first. If you are pregnant and afraid, read the part for you now. If you have had an abortion, or pushed for one, paid for one, or performed one, read the part for you. There is mercy in Christ for you, and it is not a smaller mercy than anyone else gets.

What God Says About the Unborn

Every human being bears the image of God, and that is why taking an innocent life is so great a wrong.

Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

Genesis 9:6 (KJV)

The only question, then, is whether the child in the womb is a man in that sense, a human being. Scripture speaks of him that way again and again.

For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

Psalm 139:13-14 (KJV)

Psalm 139 is poetry. Covered pictures God knitting a body together, and the reins are the inward parts. But the person in the picture is real. David does not say God made some tissue that later became David. He says God covered me. The one praising God in the psalm is the same one who was in the womb.

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Jeremiah 1:5 (KJV)

God set Jeremiah apart for his work before he was born. Sanctified here means set apart. God deals with the unborn as persons with names and callings.

When Mary came to her cousin Elisabeth, the babe leaped in Elisabeth’s womb for joy (Luke 1:41, 44). Luke uses the same Greek word for that unborn John that he uses for the newborn Jesus lying in the manger (Luke 2:12) and for the infants brought to Jesus (Luke 18:15). To the Holy Spirit, a baby is a baby, inside the womb or out.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Psalm 51:5 (KJV)

David traces his own sin back to his conception. Only a person can be a sinner. So Scripture counts a human being as one of Adam’s fallen race from the very start.

The law of Moses guarded the unborn too. If men fought and struck a woman with child, so that her fruit departed, and no harm followed, the man paid a fine. But if harm followed, then thou shalt give life for life (Exodus 21:22-23). The words for her fruit departing are the plain Hebrew words for children going out, which is how the Bible speaks of birth. Many Reformed teachers read it as a child born early. If mother and child were unharmed, a fine was paid. If either one was harmed or killed, the same justice applied as for any other person. Some read the passage another way, but no reading of it makes the child nothing.

The Son of God in the Womb

The strongest word on this is the incarnation itself. The eternal Son of God did not come into the world as a grown man. He was conceived.

And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.

Luke 1:31 (KJV)

The Shorter Catechism says Christ became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary (WSC 22). From that moment he was God and man in one person. He passed through every stage of life that we pass through, from the womb on, so that he could redeem people at every stage of it. Christ has been a child in the womb. Every unborn child is that small and that hidden, and none of them is beneath his notice.

What People Say

1. It is only a clump of cells. So are you, and so am I. From conception the child is a living human being with his own body and his own genetic code, distinct from his mother. He is growing as fast as he ever will. Size, development, and where he lives do not decide whether he is human. A newborn is smaller and weaker than a toddler, and no one thinks he matters less.
2. It is my body. The child lives in his mother’s body but is not part of it. He often has a different blood type, and half of what he is came from his father. And Scripture says something deeper. Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). No one owns his body in a way that gives him the right to end someone else’s life.
3. The child cannot live outside the womb yet. Needing someone to survive does not make anyone less of a person. A newborn cannot live a day without care. Neither can a man on a ventilator. God puts the weak in our care so that we will protect them, not so that we may decide whether they live.
4. It would be cruel to bring a child into poverty or a hard home. A hard life is still a life, and the answer to a hard situation is help, not death. That is where the church is meant to stand (James 1:27). Many children born into hard places have grown up to know Christ.
5. The child will be disabled. And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord? (Exodus 4:11). A child with a disability bears God’s image as fully as any other. Jesus said of a man born blind that his blindness was so the works of God should be made manifest in him (John 9:3).
6. Christians should not push their morality on others. Every law pushes someone’s morality on someone. The only question is whose. God gave rulers the sword to punish evil and protect the innocent (Romans 13:3-4). Protecting the weakest people in a land is one of the plainest things a ruler is for.

The Hardest Cases

These are real, and the people in them deserve patience, not slogans.

When a child is conceived by rape. Rape is a monstrous evil, and the woman bears no guilt for it. Under the law of Moses, a man who forced a betrothed woman was put to death, and the woman was counted innocent (Deuteronomy 22:25-26). But the child did not commit that crime. The law says every man shall be put to death for his own sin, and not children for their fathers (Deuteronomy 24:16). Ending the child’s life does not undo the first wrong. It adds a second victim. A woman in this place needs her church to surround her, to carry her and her child, and to see that justice is sought against the man. If she cannot raise the child, adoption is a good and loving choice.

When the mother’s life is in danger. Sometimes, as in an ectopic pregnancy, a child grows where he cannot survive, and if nothing is done both mother and child will die. Treating the mother to save the one life that can be saved is not the same as abortion. The aim is to save life, and the child’s death is grieved, not sought. Such cases are rare, and modern medicine can often save both. When you face one, take it to your elders and to a doctor who honors life, and decide it before God with care.

When the baby has already died. A doctor’s care to remove a baby who has already died is not an abortion. It is care for the mother after a death. If that is your sorrow, read If your baby died before birth.

If You Are Pregnant and Afraid

Maybe you did not plan this. Maybe you are young, or alone, or out of money, or someone is telling you that this child will ruin everything. The fear is real, and God sees it.

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

Psalm 127:3 (KJV)

However this child came, God calls him a gift, and he does not give gifts and then walk away from the one who receives them. You do not have to see the whole road tonight. You only have to keep from the one step that cannot be taken back.

1. Tell someone who will help. Call your pastor or a Christian friend today. If you have no church, the people at Option Line, 1-800-712-4357, answer at any hour and can put you in touch with a free pregnancy help center near you. Many of those centers give free ultrasounds, baby supplies, and help with housing and work.
2. Do not let anyone rush you. If someone is pressuring you, threatening you, or hurting you, get safe first. No one has the right to force this choice on you.
3. Remember adoption. If you cannot raise this child, there are families waiting and praying for one. Giving your child life and a home is an act of love, not of failure.
4. Pray. Tell God plainly that you are afraid. Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you (1 Peter 5:7).

If You Have Had an Abortion

Maybe it was years ago, and you have never told anyone. Maybe you were the father who drove her there, or the parent who insisted, or the one who paid for it. Maybe you worked in a clinic. The guilt you feel is not your imagination, and this page will not tell you it was nothing. A child died, and that is why you need a Savior and not just a reassurance.

But hear this as clearly as you have ever heard anything. Your sin is not beyond the blood of Christ.

As there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation, so there is no sin so great that it can bring damnation upon those who truly repent.

Westminster Confession of Faith 15.4

King David took a man’s wife and then had the man killed. When the prophet showed him his sin, he did not excuse it, and God did not destroy him. Psalm 51 is the prayer he prayed afterward.

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

Psalm 51:14 (KJV)

Bloodguiltiness is the guilt of having blood on your hands. That is the prayer for you. The apostle Paul once voted for Christians to be put to death (Acts 26:10), and he later wrote that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom he counted himself the chief (1 Timothy 1:15). If Christ saved the chief, he can save you.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Isaiah 1:18 (KJV)

Christ bore the wrath of God for every sin of everyone who trusts in him, this one included. He rose from the dead, and he says, Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out (John 6:37). Come to him as you are. Confess the sin by name, and do not dress it up. Then believe what he says, that he is faithful and just to forgive (1 John 1:9).

If you are already in Christ and this was before you knew him, or even after, it is not hanging over you. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). You may still grieve your child, and you should. Forgiven grief is different from guilty grief. It weeps, but it does not hide from God.

Tell your pastor. Many churches have women and men who have walked this same road and found mercy. You were never meant to carry this in secret. If the old guilt keeps coming back after you have confessed it, read What I did is too great to forgive.

What Christians Should Do

The Larger Catechism says the sixth commandment requires all lawful efforts to preserve the life of ourselves and others, and to protect and defend the innocent (WLC 135). Opposing abortion is not a hobby for a few believers. It is part of keeping the law of God.

Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction.

Proverbs 31:8 (KJV)

1. Pray. Pray for mothers in fear, for fathers who have walked away, for the unborn, for those who work in abortion clinics, and for rulers. Pray that God would turn hearts.
2. Speak the truth. Say plainly that the unborn child is a person and that abortion takes his life. Say it with tears, not with contempt, and never without the gospel.
3. Help mothers. Give money, time, diapers, meals, a spare room. Support a pregnancy help center. A church that says no to abortion must say yes to the mother and her child.
4. Consider adoption and foster care. God set the solitary in families (Psalm 68:6). Christians have been taking in unwanted children since the earliest days of the church.
5. Vote and call on rulers to protect life. Laws do not change hearts, but they do restrain evil and protect the weak, which is what God gave them for.
6. Welcome the guilty. There are people in your church who have had abortions. Let them hear from your mouth that Christ forgives, so that they never have to wonder whether there is room for them at his table.