Abortion

Gen 1:24-31; Psalm 139:1-18; Rom 12:1-8; Matt 18:1-9

We are continuing our Epiphany sermon series based on questions that have come from our congregation. Today’s question is, 

“Are we a pro-life church?”

This question opens a number of different pathways that we can explore. This question touches both on abortion and on assisted suicide (or what is more commonly known as M.A.I.D.). And the question also asks about the church’s position, which might mean the Anglican Church of Canada or our particular church (St. Leonard’s).

For the sake of time I’m going to focus on abortion (which is more connected to the phrase “pro-life”), though, there will be implications for how to think about assisted suicide. … I’m also going to focus on what I think the best Christian response is to this, rather than try to show where the Anglican Church of Canada stands.

I am also not going to deal with pregnancy due to rape or incest which (combined) is about 1% of abortions. And I’m also not going to deal with abortion due to health concerns for the mother which is about 3% of abortions.[1] Those are unusual situations that need a more particular response. … To give you a sense of the numbers, in 2011 Canada reported nearly 109,000 abortions. In 2020 there were just over 74,000 abortions.[2]

Interestingly, there isn’t any Scripture passages that speak about abortion directly. We don’t see anyone trying to end an unwanted pregnancy. Even when King David gets Bathsheba pregnant, he develops a conspiracy to get Uriah (Bathsheba’s husband), who is away fighting battles with the army, to sleep with his wife so he will think the child is his. And when that doesn’t work David causes Uriah to die in war by ordering him into the most dangerous part of the battle. It’s interesting that abortion never enters as a possibility when the thing that is going to get him found out is Bathsheba’s pregnancy. …

All through the Bible, pregnancy is considered a blessing from God, and the inability to have children was considered a tragedy. The silence of the Bible on the topic of abortion might imply that it was unthinkable for the Biblical world. (We do have to recognize that the economic and social realities were different from ours in many ways.)

Though, when the early church encounters the Gentile world where abortion and infanticide were regularly practiced they voiced their united and uniform opposition against it. It was one of the things that set them apart from the pagan world. For example, the Didache (written as a manual of Christian teaching in the late 1st century or early 2nd century) says, 

“you shall not murder a child by abortion, nor shall you kill one who has been born” (Didache 2:2).

 And the Epistle of Barnabas (from around the same time period) reflects this as well, 

“Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor again shalt thou kill it when it is born” (19:5).

 The New Testament scholar Richard Hays says, 

“The entire Christian tradition has rejected the practice of abortion- while always being open to considering special cases, such as the tragic instances where abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother”.[3]

So, since the Bible doesn’t speak directly to the topic, we have to think about texts that might speak more indirectly, or texts that help us consider the issue in the context of the symbolic world of the Bible.

For example, Psalm 139 speaks poetically about the formation of the human being in the womb.

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
…

16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed. (Ps 139:13-16)

This could be read as affirming of the life in the womb, which is shaped by God, and which has a future planned for him/her. It's also important to recognize the genre, which isn’t Law, it’s poetry.

We can also look at Genesis 1 where we read, 

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’” (Gen 1:26).

 This has often been read as speaking to the value of human beings as creatures made in the image of God. So, this can help give us a general reason to treat humans well. They are 'pictures of God' and our respect for God should be reflected in our care for those who bear God’s image.

These two passages reflect a broader basic belief that life comes from God, and life is good. Life ultimately belongs to God. … To end life is to walk into dangerous territory. Even an animal’s blood was believed to belong to God, and was to be treated with care. … Abel’s blood cried out to God from the ground after his brother Cain spilled it. … Many who have seriously read the Bible come away with the believe that we should not presume we have the authority to dispose of life that doesn’t ultimately belong to us. … This does get complicated when looking at war or capital punishment in the Bible. Nonetheless, at the very least, a general reading of the Bible would direct us to say that taking a human life should not be done lightly.

The New Testament Scholar Richard Hays suggests we consider a passage that we read last week, the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37).[4] Here, a lawyer wants to test Jesus and so he asks him, 

“who is my neighbour?”

 The lawyer knows he has an obligation to love his neighbour, and he seems to want to define the word “neighbour” so that he can limit his responsibility. But through the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus widens the definition of neighbour to include those we meet who are in need of care. The lawyer wanted to limit his responsibility by limiting the definition of “neighbour”.

Similarly, in the issue of abortion, the main question seems to revolve around when the foetus becomes a "person". 

“When is it a person?”

 can be a question like “who is my neighbour?” If I can not define it as a “person”, then I can treat it as a clump of cells. Through the parable, Jesus teaches us that we are to go beyond the general conceptions of duty to provide help to those we might not have thought of as worthy of our compassion. … The usual expectation was that Samaritans and Jews were enemies. For the Samaritan to go out of his way to help the Jewish man who is dying in the ditch goes beyond the usual sense of duty between these historic enemies. Through the parable, Jesus refuses to allow the lawyer to define “neighbour” in such a way that he is allowed to not care for those outside his narrow definition. Asking “When is it a person?” is similarly attempting to narrow our obligation for care.

We are always on dangerous territory when we are trying to define which types of human life are valuable or worthy of life. … We are asking lots of questions about this right now in our society. Regarding assisted suicide, we are asking it about ourselves- when is my life no longer worth living? Is a life where we struggle with depression, a life worth living? … What if a child is thought to have Down’s Syndrome in the womb? Is that life less valuable than other human lives? … What if a couple finds out that the child in the womb is a girl, and your culture doesn’t value girls as much? Is that life of less value? … Does the value of that life outweigh the inconvenience he or she places on the mother and father? It gets very scary when we start defining what kinds of human life are valuable.

Richard Hays also suggests we look at the exemplar community of disciples in Jerusalem that we read about in Acts 4:32-35.[5] 

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”

You might be wondering what this passage has to do with our topic. But i think it relates to the question, "Why do women feel the need to get abortions?"  

We are in a society where sex is constantly being pushed in young peoples’ faces. They are made to feel like there is something wrong with them if they aren’t regularly having sex. The option of waiting until marriage to have sex is considered absurd- It is mocked. In the media, sex is often treated as casually as playing tennis with someone.

In spite of there being numerous options for birth control, as well as options for types of sexual intimacy where pregnancy wouldn’t be possible, pregnancies still happen. Even though we all took biology, or spent time on the farm, we seem to be surprised when sex has pregnancy as a result. Our society often treats sex as a game, and it often treats pregnancy as a disease.

Our society also seems to be getting worse at developing intimate communities and families. So, when a young woman becomes pregnant the father sometimes is not willing to be of any practical support, and the woman does not always have a community to support her and her child in practical everyday ways- to babysit while she goes to school, or to help her with groceries, or to watch the baby while she gets some sleep. But this isn’t just about treating her merely as an object of charity, but as a member of the community where the child is celebrated as inherently valuable. (I heard about a Jewish tradition where each child is celebrated because they might be the expected Messiah. Imagine if we celebrated children with this kind of hope and expectation.) …

In our society, pregnancy is often not thought of as a blessing from God, rather it is treated as a curse that forces the young woman into isolation and poverty as she tries to raise a child on her own, faced with many sleepless nights with little to no practical help from a community, and unsure of how she will support herself and raise a child.

If we consider abortion a sin, then it is a sin that we share as a society. It weighs on everyone who hasn’t helped a young single mother with groceries, or babysat so she could get some sleep, or so she could go to school. … Our society owns this sin both for pushing sex without consequences, and for not developing supportive intimate communities to help raise children along with the parents.

I think it is also a sin we share as a church. Instead of shaming young pregnant women for getting pregnant out of wedlock, we could be a shining light on a hill where young mothers feel cared for and supported, and their children are cared for in practical ways. If we had these kinds of intimate and self-sacrificially loving churches, it might be that while abortion is legal, young mothers wouldn’t want it. AMEN

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[1] https://love4life.ca/facts/why-women-choose-abortion/

[2] https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/canadian_abortion_statistics/

An additional statistic that some may be interested to know: Since 1990, the annual number of deaths per year among women due to induced abortion in the U.S. has ranged from two to 12, according to the CDC. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/01/11/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/

The death rate for women receiving abortions between 2013-2019 was 0.43 per 100,000 abortions. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/ss/ss7110a1.htm#T15_down

[3] Richard Hays, “The Moral Vision of the New Testament” p.453.

See also Michael Gorman’s “Abortion and the Early Church”

[4] Richard Hays, “The Moral Vision of the New Testament” in the chapter on abortion.  

[5] See Hays