info@personhoodtn.org 931.729.8460

Five Biblical Truths: What the Scriptures Say About Abortion

Those who seek abortion in a concordance are unlikely to find it, and as a result…suggest that Scripture is silent and therefore, we may do as we please. This conclusion depends on some serious misunderstandings, both of the historic context and the sanctity of life ethic woven throughout the Bible.

Personhood Alliance - biblical personhood
The intentional taking of life before birth is not new. Though adoption of “abortion rights” as a progressive political cause in Western societies is rather recent, abortion has been practiced in every culture since ancient times. Indeed, one of the signal achievements of the spread of the Gospel in the Greco-Roman world was to push this practice and its close sibling, infanticide, to the margins of society. In classical paganism, while it was sometimes controversial, abortion (like euthanasia) was common and widely approved. The ancient physicians who took the Hippocratic Oath, whose medical vision was powered by saving life and not taking it, were swimming upstream. It was the Church that swept through the later Roman world as the great pro-life movement, setting standards in medicine, culture, and public policy that still condition the thinking of fractured Christianity in the 21st century. Yet a single argument remains: That the Bible doesn’t specifically condemn abortion, and God gives us free will, so He must be “pro-choice.”
Those who seek abortion in a concordance are unlikely to find it, and as a result, some believers (and most non-believers) suggest that Scripture is silent. Therefore, we may do as we please. This conclusion depends on some serious misunderstandings, both of the historic context mentioned above and the sanctity of life ethic woven throughout the Bible.
This ethic can be organized into five main points, supported by Scripture.
Personhood Alliance - God is pro-life

God has supremacy over life

He is the creator, author, owner, sustainer, and finisher. The deepest evil of abortion is that it defies God’s supremacy in the most sacred place—the mother’s womb.
Genesis 1:27, 25:21; Exodus 23:25-26; Job 10:8-12; 31:15; Psalm 100:3, 119:73, 127:3-5; Ecclesiastes 11:5; Isaiah 44:2, 44:24; Matthew 1:20; Acts 17:24-25; Revelation 4:11
Personhood Alliance - abortion is child sacrifice

God prohibits child sacrifice

Beyond His very clear command, “You shall not murder,” child sacrifice in particular was an abomination to God. He warned the Israelites about participating in this “detestable practice” of the pagans. Today, abortion is our culture’s child sacrifice, only the god isn’t Molech, it’s Self.
Genesis 9:6; Exodus 20:13; 2 Kings 17:17-18; Psalm 106:35, 37-38; Proverbs 6: 16-19; Isaiah 13:18; Jeremiah 7: 28-31; Ezekiel 23:36-39; 1 John 3:11-12

Personhood Alliance - God and the unborn child

God has a relationship with the unborn child

He knits and forms every single human being in the womb and knows all of their days ahead.
Psalm 22:10-11, 139:13-16; Isaiah 49:1; Jeremiah 1:5; Matthew 10:30; Luke 1:41, 44

Personhood Alliance - pro-life generation

God commands us to stand up for the weak

We must speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. God warns us that we cannot sit idle while injustice happens. Understanding equals responsibility.
Deuteronomy 27:19; Psalm 10:17-18, 41:1, 72:12-14; Proverbs 31:8-9; Isaiah 1:13-17; Amos 5:24; Matthew 25:35-36,40; Luke 6:36; Ephesians 6: 10-13; 1 John 3:17

God claims victory over sin and death

The good news is that Jesus has already conquered death, hell, and the grave. The Father sets before us life and death and wants us to choose life, which means to follow His law and His ways and live in alignment with His design for life, marriage, family, sexuality, and gender.
Genesis 1: 26-28; Deuteronomy 30:19-20; Isaiah 25:8; John 10:10; 1 Corinthians 15:54-58; Revelation 21:3-4