Abortion and the concerns of its ethical implications may seem like a recent development since the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, but individuals have been taking unborn life for nearly all of recorded human history. However, the church has never submitted to the cultural norms and permitted the practice to continue unopposed.
Abortion’s Earliest Origins
The earliest recorded reference to abortion comes from an Egyptian medical text called the “Ebers Papyrus.” The authors of this papyrus gave instructions for how women could use a combination of plant-based materials to terminate a pregnancy. Determining an exact date-of-writing proves difficult, but most historians agree that the papyrus was written c. 1550 BC, according to the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
A few other early works with reference to abortion exist. For example, the Code of Assura, an Assyrian law code dated around 1075 BC, and Greek playwright Aristophanes’ work titled Lysistrata allude to the custom. Based on recorded history, it seems the practice never received vehement opposition until after Christ’s lifetime.
Historically, the church has always opposed abortion under any circumstances. The Didache, one of the earliest collections of teaching, outlines what is believed to be the apostles’ stances on issues that were commonplace in the first century A.D. Among these instructions is a prohibition against abortion that says, “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten.”
Widespread abortion was not exclusive to Greco-Roman society either. In his book How Christianity Changed the World, Alvin J Schmidt said the procedure abounded around the world. Japan, China, India, Brazil, the Eskimos, and some pagan African groups maintained these traditions for centuries. Even in North America, many Native Americans committed infanticide until European settlers arrived and outlawed the practice because of their Christian values.
The Dawn of Abortion Legislation in the United States
Legislative prohibitions against abortion continued over thousands of years. One of the earliest “modern” laws against abortion was passed in 1821. This law was part of the Connecticut Legislature’s Crimes and Punishment Act and said that “[a] person who shall willfully and maliciously … cause or procure the miscarriage of any woman … shall suffer imprisonment” (Title 20, Sect. 14). By the end of 1841, 10 other states passed similar laws.
The state of reproductive health remained fairly stagnant until the FDA’s approval of oral contraceptives in 1960. Hunter Baker, provost of North Greenville University in Tigerville, S.C., and author of the newly-released book Postliberal Protestants: Baptists Between Obergefell and Christian Nationalism, cites “the pill’s” widespread manufacture was the precursor of several social developments concerning sexuality in the United States.
In a private interview, Baker said that “prior to the birth control pill, heterosexual sex [led to] reproduction … and [the birth control pill] cuts that necessary connection between sex and reproduction.” Hence, when heterosexual sex no longer resulted in reproduction, sex lost its strong association with marriage. Now individuals feel freedom to have intercourse without conceiving or — if they do conceive — without carrying a pregnancy to term.
Ten years later, the state of New York legalized abortion. With New York clinics now legally performing abortions, Americans often travelled across states to have abortions performed legally. Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington repealed their abortion bans within the next three years, and on Jan. 22, 1973, the landmark Roe v. Wade decision established a woman’s constitutional “right to an abortion” based on personal liberty and property protections granted by the 14th amendment. The issue remained at the center of political discussion for decades, and discussions about abortion legislation seemed inescapable.
Where Are We Now?
In 1993, just two days after his inauguration, President Bill Clinton signed executive orders to advance abortion rights and medical research. Clinton said that his goal was to ensure that that abortion was “safe and legal, but rare,” according to a public broadcast.
Within the past 30 years, Americans — and especially the Democratic party — shifted their stance to be more lenient concerning this issue. Some party members no longer believe abortion should be rare, and any restriction, whether through legislation or mere public opinion, is viewed as a criticism against “reproductive freedom” and a “pregnant person’s ‘constitutional right’ to choose” (note the gender-inclusive classification).
One example of this dramatic shift comes from negative feedback that former Vice President Kamala Harris received for statements she made during a presidential debate against President Donald Trump. In response to Trump’s claims, Harris scoffed that “nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion.”
Harris made this assertion stating that women were entitled to the protections of Roe v. Wade, but she received pushback because her words seem to imply that if women chose abortion later in pregnancy, they would be making an irresponsible decision.
Harris received pushback because if a woman supports the “pro-choice” position, she can never condemn an abortion for any reason. Reproductive freedom means that in cases where there is no threat to the mother’s life, no instances of incest or rape, no possibility of congenital defects, and no protective measures employed to prevent conception, voicing support for the right to choose means that even pregnancies terminated at the moment of birth are permissible if the mother wishes.
What Is the Church’s Current Stance?
Surprisingly, abortion is a topic on which Christians across all denominations largely agree. One might imagine that this coherence resulted from a combination of the fervor exhibited by the early church figures mentioned earlier and the biblical authors’ clear attitudes toward the practice. Below are a handful of excerpts from different Christian assemblies which exemplify the unity on this subject.
- In a statement titled Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Abortion, the Presbyterian Church of America affirmed “the continuity of personhood before and after birth.” In the statement’s conclusion, the authors remained adamant that “God in His Word speaks of the unborn child as a person and treats him as such, and so must we.”
- Furthermore, the second edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church powerfully demands that “from the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person.”
- And again, in the Baptist Faith and Message, the official statement of faith for Southern Baptists, the authors of the most recent revision said that “we should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death.”
Pay close attention to the use of verbs in these statements. In each of these cases, these church bodies insisted that the advancement of the abortion issue requires not only our attention but also our action. A response is imperative.
Simply put, even Christian institutions that fail to align on their stances of baptism, worship, church government, sexuality, and other theological disputes cannot help but uphold the personhood of the unborn and the importance of protecting human life.
This harmony should leave believers feeling convinced of the weightiness of the issue and encouraged to act to advance the Christian position in an increasingly secular world.
How Should We Continue to Fight?
To cite Albert Mohler’s The Briefing, “[The urgency of the abortion issue] doesn’t wax and wane.” Human life is valuable to the Lord — after all, He is the creator and sustainer of all life, human or otherwise (Heb. 1:3). As God’s children, we must share that characteristic.
It was the Church’s zeal that led Emperor Valentinian to ban abortion and infanticide in A.D. 374, and it is the Church’s zeal that has the aptitude to give unborn children the protections God demands in the 21st century as well.
The 21st-century church is not unlike the first-century church — the believers Peter described as “living as exiles dispersed abroad” (1 Pet. 1:1). Correspondingly, we believers should allow Peter’s words to comfort and encourage us as we confront the secular world and its stance on abortion.
Not only should we “conduct [ourselves] honorable among the Gentiles,” but we must remain “ready at any time to give a defense to anyone” (1 Pet. 1:12; 3:15).
And when we stand firm on God’s Word, we rest assured that “the God of all grace, who called [us] to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, strengthen, and support” us when we defend those created in his image.
“But Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven’” (Matt. 19:14).
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— Chandler McCraw is a senior Christian studies major at North Greenville University. He serves as a ministry assistant at Christ Fellowship Cherrydale, Greenville.