CHRISTIAN ETHICS - ABORTION

Activists on both sides of the public debate over abortion rarely use the word abortion in their primary arguments. Most often, abortion opponents use language like "right to life," "legal protection for the pre-born." Abortion rights advocates use "pro-choice," and "right to privacy." The use of such language is not for public relations purposes, but accurately reflects the underlying arguments of both sides.

In the process of ethical decision making, one of the most helpful principles in mapping out a course of action is that of: "Do no harm, and where possible, do good." This principle is based on the normative belief that we have obligations t help and protect each other and to relieve suffering. We are to choose our actions by the amount of pain they will relieve or happiness they will provide.

Using this process with the example of a bridge; a) no matter how much fun it would be to blow up the bridge, we do not. We do no harm. b) If the bridge is near collapse, we shore up the bridge and keep people off it until it is fixed. We prevent harm. c) If the bridge has collapsed, we pull people out of the water. We remedy harm where possible. And, d) We build better bridges. We do good. Most of the time this simple principle will effectively guide us to ethical decisions. However, there are issues where it seems all the choices do harm and it is not possible to do good. Abortion is one such issue.

Activists on both sides of the public debate over abortion rarely use the word abortion in their primary arguments. Most often, abortion opponents use language like "right to life," "legal protection for the pre-born." Abortion rights advocates use "pro-choice," and "right to privacy." The use of such language is not for public relations purposes, but accurately reflects the underlying arguments of both sides.

Both sides of the abortion debate are founded upon some of our most deeply held and valued normative beliefs. The belief in a right to privacy free from governmental intrusion was at the heart of the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, which gave women total autonomy over pregnancy during the first trimester. The Court based its decision on the 14th Amendment statement, "No State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Because our Constitution is a fluid document the Constitution will not provide a solution to the abortion debate. The Constitution is not our source of normative values and beliefs. Instead, it reflects them. But does a society have the moral right to say that free choice is more valuable than a right to life? Pro-choice advocates say no. Pro-life advocates say yes. To better understand how they reach these different conclusions, let us look at some of the primary arguments.

Pro-lifers contend that human life is a continuum and cannot be divided by arbitrary lines like trimesters and birth. From conception to death, life is life. The core of the argument is that the child in the womb is the same person as the born child, as well as the same person at six, sixteen, or sixty. Life in the womb is as much part of life as life outside the womb.


Of course, there are significant developmental changes, but developmental changes occur at all stages of life they believe. The stages - zygote, embryo, fetus, newborn baby, toddler, adolescent, teenager - all cease to be, but the person going through these stages continues to be. Being a fetus is merely one stage in the life of a person. It is not something that is pre-life. If a person is a person is a person, then choosing an abortion, regardless of size or viability, is killing.

The fundamental duty of the state is to protect the rights of its people. Legalized abortion is the abandoning of the most basic civil right, the right to live. Further, abortion is a form of slavery because the essence of slavery is that a person is treated as an object, something to be owned, like a house or car. The person is a non-being. In the case of abortion, the child belongs to the woman. Not in the noble sense of caring for the child, but in the ignoble sense of being an object that can be disposed of at will.


For pro-lifers, choice is not an issue. While choice sounds like a reasonable and laudable ideal, a woman does not have the right to choose to kill her child. To kill or let live are the only two choices available.

Pro-choice advocate, Judith Jarvis Thomson, responds to such arguments by pointing out that not everyone agrees the fetus has a right to life from the moment of conception. Many reasonable doctors, theologians, and ethicists disagree with the foundational argument of pro-lifers. Thus, it is not acceptable for one group to tell another group that their belief doesn't matter. She compares this to the statement of the French absolutist Bossuet, who declared, "I have the right to persecute you because I am right and you are wrong." Thomson sees a greater wrong in taking away the right of women to control their own bodies. This too becomes a form of slavery. Slavery to the biological reproductive system of a particular gender. Slavery from which half of humanity is immune.

As with many bio-ethical issues, the Bible provides little definitive guidance on abortion. Both sides will cite various passages in support of their positions, but there is not a clear cut "Thou shall not" commandment from Moses, nor a teaching by Jesus. Some have claimed this is because abortion was not an issue for the ancient Jews.

However, archeological studies have shown this assumption to be false. Abortion was widely practiced in ancient times. In Assyria, abortion was illegal, and any woman who practiced it would be impaled upon a stake. The Assyrians wanted population growth to maintain their empire. Abortion worked against that goal.

Pro-life advocates point to Psalm 139 as proof of their assertion that life begins at conception. The Psalmist writes, "For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 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."

While certainly a beautiful Psalm that correctly identifies God as the source of life, we must remember two things. Psalms were not written by God. They were written by people to praise and glorify God. Therefore, they are extremely limited in their authority.

In actuality, using a proof text approach to biblically argue the abortion issue, would favor a woman's right to choose. The Bible clearly values the life of a woman over that of a fetus. Exodus 21:22 contains this law, "When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life." In this case, the fetus has value as property. A fine will make amends. However, if the woman dies, the penalty is life for life.

Number 5:11-31 contains a process of inducing a miscarriage when a husband believes his wife has been unfaithful and is carrying another man's child. This process is not only allowable, it is actually carried out by the priests. Thus, the punishment of infidelity takes precedence over the fetus' right to life.

These are the only two passages in scripture dealing directly with the rights of fetuses. But it would be a misuse of scripture to justify abortion by them. Despite the assertions of some fundamentalist groups, the Bible does not have authority over Christians. The consistent and dominant belief of Christianity has been that Christ has authority over the Bible.

Part of the problem in using the Bible to resolve the debate over abortion is that the Old Testament clearly understood life to begin at birth. The very word for life, nephesh, is also the word for breathing. In Genesis 2:7, God breathed into the nostrils of the first human and the human became a living being. This connection between breath and life is consistent throughout the Old Testament. It is inappropriate to use the Bible as the source of the claim that life begins with conception, and it is inappropriate to use the Bible to argue that it doesn't. What we can conclude from scripture, however, it that we are not the author of life. Thus, we cannot fully understand the mysteries of life. As the Apostle Paul wrote, "We see into the mirror dimly."

How does another religious tradition view abortion? David Feldman is a Jewish medical ethicist highly respected by Conservative and Reform Jews. He writes, "From the moment of birth, the life of the infant is as inviolate as that of the mother. Its right to life is then absolute. Before birth, however, right to life is not the applicable concept; it is "right to be born." The right to be born is not absolute, but relative to the welfare of the mother. There is no right to be born any more than a right to be conceived. Use of the "right to life" slogan by anti-abortion people is therefore essentially misleading."

The welfare of the mother is so important in Jewish tradition that if giving birth threatens the mother's life, abortion becomes a requirement. In fact, an ancient teaching in the Mishna puts it this way, "If a woman has [life-threatening] difficulty in childbirth, the embryo within her must be dismembered limb by limb [if necessary], because her life takes precedence over its life. Once its head (or its greater part) has emerged, it may not be touched, for we may not set aside one life [nephesh] for another."

In non-life-threatening situations, abortions are strongly discouraged in Jewish tradition. However, it is not a capital offense if practiced. In other words, it is not considered murder. More importantly, most rabbis support the right of a woman to choose, meaning individual liberty, as the fundamental right involved with the issue.

Feldman proposes an interesting theory about the difference between the Jewish view and the Christian view on abortion. Although some Christian scholars reject his characterization, Feldman puts forth a theologically and historically sound argument. "In the effort to resolve the abortion debate, a common Christian move is to argue that human life (as equivalent to moral personhood) begins with "ensoulment," with God's placing an immortal soul in the material body of the fetus.

Diverse Christian views claim that ensoulment occurs at conception, at the end of the first trimester, or at birth: the latter two views, of course, would allow for abortion, while the first view (ensoulment occurring at conception) would (largely) forbid abortion as the moral equivalent of murder. But the debate over when ensoulment occurs is essentially a Christian debate.

From the Jewish standpoint, this [debate] must be declared irrelevant. It's not when does the soul enter, it's what kind of a soul enters? Judaism and the forms of Christianity shaped by Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin give two very different answers to this question ? again resulting in two divergent views on abortion. The Augustinian doctrine argues that all human beings are born with a soul diseased and distorted by the sin of their primordial parents in the Garden: this further means that a tainted soul enters the fetus which must be cleansed by baptism to save him or her from eternal perdition.

In line with the doctrine of original sin, each individual soul inherits the taint of its primordial ancestors. When St. Fulgentius of the sixth century was asked when that stain attaches to the person, he replied that it begins with conception. Hence the concern with allowing the fetus to be brought to term so that it can be baptized; otherwise it is condemned to death in both worlds, making abortion clearly worse than murder.

It should be noted that Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin represents a dramatic turn from earlier Christian and Jewish understandings of the second Genesis creation story, and corresponding conceptions of sin and the human soul. In any case, given the acceptance of the Augustinian doctrine in much of (western) Protestant Christianities, the strict prohibition against abortion is perfectly consistent.

As with the debate over ensoulment, the debate over original sin remains a debate within Christian communities. Judaism preserves the earlier Jewish and pre-Augustinian understanding of the Garden story as a story about individual sinfulness - sinfulness which can be atoned for and overcome by individuals. Judaism thereby squarely rejects the Augustinian teaching - that the soul emplaced in the fetus is already diseased with a sinful nature inherited by all human beings. Accordingly, the especially Christian sense of urgency regarding the baptism of the fetus otherwise condemned is a concern that the Jewish community cannot share.

Having no such concept of original sin, we recite daily in our prayers something that comes directly from the Talmud: "My God, the soul with which thou hast endowed me is pure." We inherit a pure soul, which becomes contaminated only by our own misdeeds. By that token, early abortion would send a fetus to heaven in a state of pristine purity! Moreover, Judaism finds the debate over the time of ensoulment to be as irresolvable as it appears to be in Christian circles - but responds to the debate differently.

While the Talmud does discuss the time of ensoulment - is it when the child is conceived, or at the first trimester, at birth or, as one opinion has it, when the child first answers Amen? ? it then dismisses the question as both unanswerable and irrelevant to the abortion question.

The pro-life position holds that life and personhood begins with conception, thus abortion at any part of the process is murder. A society does not have the moral right to take away the right to life of persons. The pro-choice position is that it cannot be proven that life and personhood begins with conception, thus to take away the free choice of a woman in reproductive issues is to deny equality and enslave her because of gender.

Both sides of the debate have strong arguments in favor of their cause. As I said at the beginning of this paper, abortion is an issue that defies the "do no harm" principle. Clearly, believed by some the intentional killing of a pre-born person can never be called good. And just as clearly, telling a woman that she is a slave to her reproductive process, particularly in cases of rape and incest, can never be called good. There is no morally superior position on abortion. Thus, a Christian ethical approach must be based on a balance between respect for life and respect for individual dignity, tempered by compassion. It is certainly an issue that shows the limits of human knowledge and morality.

Alan L. Joplin