by Rev. Wes Bergen
Most people assume that the natural Christian position is to be anti-abortion and that this position comes from the Bible. Neither of these things are true. There are many Christians on various sides of the issue, and the Bible itself is mostly silent. Often, Christians who choose to protest abortion find themselves at odds with other Christians who are pro-choice or have had abortions and are not ashamed.
Historically, evangelical Christians were generally pro-choice or noncommital until the 1970s, with abortion considered a concern of the Catholic church. I will let my Catholic friends speak for themselves (and I know they don’t all agree), but I remember a time when Protestant Christians were mystified as to why this might be an issue in the church.
Biblically, the question is also not clear. The Bible says nothing directly about abortion. There are no stories directly about the practice, although it is likely that it happened in ancient Israel and in the early church. Generally, of course, most people in the Bible welcomed a new birth, just like people today. In those days, children represented both survival and security. People did not have retirement savings; they had children.
The one law that may be relevant is Exodus 21:22-25, where a pregnant woman is injured in a fight between men, and her child is either born prematurely (some translations) or miscarries (other translations). The translation difficulties make it unclear whether the unborn is considered a person whose death must be treated as a human death or whether the injuries are to the woman and the death of the unborn merely requires the payment of a fine.
Otherwise, prenatal concerns were probably thought of as “women’s issues” and the men who wrote the Bible were content to keep silent (perhaps a lesson our lawmakers could learn today). Otherwise, the clearest understanding in the Bible is that human life begins with breath. In both Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament) and Greek (the language of the New Testament), the word for soul/spirit is the same as the word for breath or wind. Thus in Hebrew, ruach means soul, breath and wind, and similarly in Greek, pneuma also means soul, breath and wind. The soul enters and leaves the body with breath. So we become human when we start breathing, and the unborn child is not fully human.
Similarly in the creation story, the first human becomes human when God breathes on the body and it becomes a nephesh (living being, a word also associated with the throat). Prior to the breath, the being is merely a lump of dirt (see Genesis 2:7).
In the New Testament, Jesus says nothing about abortion, although as a friend of prostitutes and sinners, he was possibly aware of this practice. The rest of the New Testament is also silent.
There are many reason that people have for opposing abortion rights, and often they connect this to their faith. Other people of faith recognize that the Bible is not clear on this question, and prefer to side with the rights of women over their own bodies.
One possible point of agreement is that our society should do more to support women in their role as mothers. We should be introducing legislation that provides funding for all prenatal and postnatal care, as well as covering out-of-pocket costs for birth and early childhood health care. And why have we stopped providing child support payments? Perhaps if we shifted our focus from telling women what they can’t do, to supporting women in what they are already doing, we could encourage healthy families and healthy children.
