One of the most charged political issues today is abortion. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, states get to decide their own abortion laws. Unfortunately, the issue at the heart of the case—whether or not an unborn child has life—is rarely considered.
Even though the Bible never uses the word “abortion,” there are many passages from which a believer can infer God’s attitude. God considers an unborn child at any stage of gestation a living, viable human being.
Psalm 139:13-16 makes a plain statement regarding life in the womb. David praises God, saying, “You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Job 10:10-12 is very similar, in which Job imagines his development in poetic terms, “Did you not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese; clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews?” God is responsible for and intimately involved in the formation of life in the womb.
In Exo. 21:21-24, God pronounces judgment upon those who interrupt life in the womb. The NASB seems a bit misleading, so I will use the NIV: “If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” Bible commentators broadly agree that there is no ambiguity here. The Law declared that if the woman went into early labor, but mother and child turned out okay, only a fine would be levied. But if damage or death came to either mother or child, the offender could be subject to capital punishment.
Modern science has proven that an unborn child has signs of life all stages of gestation, including movement, fingerprints, brain waves, and a heartbeat. Furthermore, the child is a genetically unique individual. Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School said, “I am no more prepared to say that these early stages of a child’s development represent an incomplete human being any more than I would to say that a child before puberty is incomplete.”
Several Bible passages declare what all pregnant mothers know—that babies have identity, personality, and activity while in the womb. When Rebekah’s twins struggle within her in Genesis 25:22-23, the Lord says, “two nations are in your womb.” God declares to Jeremiah, “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5). Similarly, in Galatians 1:15, Paul claimed that God “set me apart even from my mother’s womb.” In Luke 1:15, the angel declares of John the Baptist, “he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb.” In Luke 1:41, Elizabeth knows that Mary is carrying the Messiah because she says that her unborn son John “leapt in my womb for joy.”
To be specific, the point at which life begins in the Bible is conception. A quick glance at a concordance will show the numerous references to the word “conceive” when God’s inspired word talks about a baby. In Genesis 29:32-35, a litany of conceptions follow: “Leah conceived and bore a son . . . then she conceived again and bore a son. . .” and so on. The same is said in the New Testament of Jesus, when the angel announced to Mary, “you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus” (Luke 1:31). If Mary had aborted Jesus, would God have shrugged His shoulders, and declared it a meaningless blob?
The Bible does not use different words for prenatal and postnatal children. Yeled is the Hebrew term for child, and in Genesis 25:22, yeladim struggle inside Rebekah’s womb. Brephos is the Greek word for child. In Luke 1:41, 44, this term is used to describe John while unborn. The ancient inspired writers did not redefine the child as a “fetus,” “embryo,” or a “tissue mass.”
—John Guzzetta