Biblical view on Abortion
Psalm 127:4
Figures in United Kingdom. 2019- 223,102 2018- 218,642 2017- 209,985 2016- 202,524. Among the residents of England and Wales, unmarried women accounted for 84% of all 2019 abortions. Women in their 20s accounted for the majority of abortions in 2019; women aged 20-24 had the highest abortion rate.
Total annual abortions in England and Wales have increased 282% since 1969, the first full year that abortion was legal. The total number of annual abortions more than doubled between 1969 and 1971. The 209,519 abortions reported in 2019 is the highest total on record.
Figures in United States of America.
2017- 826,320 2014- 926,240 2011- 1,060,000 2008- 1,210,000. Women in their 20s accounted for the majority of abortions in 2018 and had the highest abortion rates (CDC). 40% of minors having an abortion report that neither of their parents knew about the abortion (AGI).
Between 2014 and 2017, the number of hospitals performing abortions declined by 19%, from 638 to 518 (AGI). Worldwide: (WHO) 73 million abortions take place every year worldwide. Nearly 1 out of 2 abortions are unsafe. 200,000 abortions take place in a day.
8,400 abortions in an hour 2 Abortions takes place every second. Greatest threat to the human society. Eastern Europe has more than 43 per 1,000 Caribbean has more than 39 per 1,000 Western Europe and Australia has the lowest.
1. Every Person Is Created by God!
God’s Word is clear that conception is never an accident. God personally creates every life. Conception is an act of God. Conception yields a new person. Life begins at conception. Personhood begins at conception.
Psalm 127:4, Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward. God creates personally every life. Scripture makes that fact clear. Looking at it negatively, Genesis 20 says this, “For the Lord had completely closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech.”
They couldn’t have any babies because God didn’t allow it. God closed the womb.
Genesis 16:2, So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.
1 Samuel 1:5-6, But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the Lord had closed her womb. 6 And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the Lord had closed her womb. Positive side.
Genesis 17:16, And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.”
Genesis 21:2, For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.
Genesis 25:21, Now Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
God enabled her to have a child.
1 Samuel 1:19-20, Then they rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord, and returned and came to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her. 20 So it came to pass in the process of time that Hannah conceived and bore a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, “Because I have asked for him from the Lord.”
Ruth 4:13, So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife; and when he went in to her, the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son. No conception occurs ever anywhere on the face of the earth through all human history that is not a result of God’s creative purpose.
Judges 13:3, And the Angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Indeed now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. That son was Samson, God has not allowed you to have a child, but He will.
Now these passages simply illustrate to us that God is the power behind barrenness and God is the power behind conception. Wherever there is conception, God has made it happen. So, you are tampering with that which God has done.
Job is musing over the fact that everything’s gone wrong in his life and he’s querying God as he often does about why.
Job 10:8-12, ‘Your hands have made me and fashioned me, An intricate unity; Yet You would destroy me. 9 Remember, I
pray, that You have made me like clay. And will You turn me into dust again? 10 Did You not pour me out like milk, And curdle me like cheese, 11 Clothe me with skin and flesh, And knit me together with bones and sinews? 12 You have granted me life and favour, And Your care has preserved my spirit.
God, you granted me life. You made me!
Job 12:9-10, Who among all these does not know That the hand of the Lord has done this, 10 In whose hand is the [c]life of every living thing, And the breath of all mankind?
God is the source of all life.
Job 31:15, Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One fashion us in the womb? Creative process began in the womb at conception.
Job 33:4, The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
The oldest book in the Bible, Job, probably penned before the Pentateuch even, that they understood that they were made by God. David, in a similar situation to Job, trying to figure out his problems, goes back to the fact that he knows God made him.
Psalm 22:9-10, But You are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts. 10 I was cast upon You from birth. From My mother’s womb You have been My God. From the time I was in the womb You made me, and You were my God.
Psalm 100:3, Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. You were the human instrumentation through which God made a baby. You can transmit the physical features, but you cannot make a soul. You cannot through sexual relationships create an immortal, eternal soul. At the time of conception, when the physical factors come together, God must impart a soul.
Psalm 104:30, You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the earth.
Jeremiah 1:5, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”
Galatians 1:15, But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, Paul knew, Jeremiah knew, any Christian knows that God had His hand on us from the time of conception, and that our eternal destiny was set, and the purpose and plan for our service to God was set.
The New Testament emphasizes this in a majestic way. Look at Matthew chapter 1, the birth of Christ.
Matthew 1:18-19, Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. 19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.
Now this is very embarrassing to Joseph, because here he believed in his heart that this young girl was a spiritually committed girl, a righteous and holy girl, that she was a virgin and pure. Now suddenly, she is pregnant, and he was a good man and a righteous man and didn’t want to disgrace her and shame her publicly. He could have stoned her publicly. So, he desired to
just divorce her secretly. He was embarrassed and couldn’t understand how this could happen.
Matthew 1:20, But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.
God is involved in the very act of conception. Not only in the case of Jesus Christ, but of any life born in the womb. It is no less true of me, or you, or anyone else born into this world that God was involved in our conception. The difference is we didn’t have a virgin birth. Jesus had no earthly father.
But we are nonetheless the product of God’s creative hand through the Holy Spirit, who breathes life into everything. Furthermore, the life in the womb of Mary was no impersonal blob. It was no foetal material. It was the Son of God. That life began at conception. Christ came into the world at conception.
Luke 1:41-44, And it happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 But why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.
Of course, John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb also, as per Luke 1:15. So, the Holy Spirit was already involved in the life of John the Baptist, as the Holy Spirit is involved in any life, because He is the one who breathes life.
But in a unique way the Holy Spirit was somehow involved in the life of John the Baptist, even in the womb, as in the life of Jesus Christ in the womb. “the baby leaped in her womb.” It must mean that somehow that child responded to what was occurring on the outside.
The Holy Spirit moved that little life into some movement. That’s a wonderful thing to contemplate, even though it’s mysterious to comprehend. Notice the word “baby.” The word “baby” is brephos, “the baby leaped.” Would you please notice, this word is used in 2:12, 2:16, 18:15, 1 Peter 2:2 and other places for a living baby that has been born. Here it is used for a baby that hasn’t been born.
The same word used for unborn or born babies. They didn’t have a different word. They didn’t call it a foetus. It was a baby unborn. It was a baby born. No separate word was needed. Once the infant is created it is the baby if it’s unborn or born.
The actual moment of birth doesn’t determine the viability or the life. The life is at conception, and thus the babe is the babe in the womb, the babe out of the womb, no different terminology. This is not a mere collection of cells but a baby.
Conception, then, is the act of God whereby a person is created by God’s sovereign will, a soul is breathed into the living tissue by the Holy Spirit. That soul’s destiny is already known to God and determined by Him before the foundation of the world. Abortion then becomes a violent anti-God act. It is not only a murder of the individual, but also an affront to the Creator.
What about the deformed people that are born?
Is God the Creator of those?
Exodus 4:11, So the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? I make them that way. It’s for His purposes sometimes to make men dumb, and deaf, and seeing, and blind.
John chapter 9 the man born blind, and the disciple asked Him the question.
John 9:2-3, And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. Any biblical discussion is that conception is an act of God. 23 chromosomes from a father and 23 chromosomes come together in a strip of DNA that makes a life. At the moment of that physical coming together, God then, by the agency of His Holy Spirit, breathes a soul, an immortal, eternal soul that transcends the body, for it will live forever though the body will die. To kill that life is to play God. As serious an affront as it is against the life itself, it is a more serious one against the God who is the Creator.
It is the ultimate evidence of the wretchedness of our culture. It is the ultimate proof of how deep our atheism runs that we kill life that God creates.
We have usurped the sovereign throne and we are now God. We will determine who lives and who dies.
Acts 17:24-28, God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one [j]blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’
Psalms 139:13-16, For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvellous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skilfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.
2. Every Person Is Created in the Image of God
James 3:9, With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God.
Genesis 1:26, Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
We are not mere mortals. We are not merely flesh. We are immortal. The shell of skin, and bones, and muscle is only a vessel, it’s only a repository in which something of the very image of God resides. This sets humanity apart from the rest of creation. In the process, God imbued man with several of His own attributes.
The so-called communicable attributes include things like personhood and the ability to have relationships. Like God, we have the capacity to love and hate, to understand, to think, act, choose and feel. The point is that after God initiates conception, we are not just the product of a biological sequence or a collection of cells.
We are not simply a lump of expanding human tissue.
Our skin, bones, and muscles do not make up the sum of our existence—they are merely a vessel that contains the image of God. Everything we need for thinking, acting, feeling, knowing, trusting and hoping—everything fundamental to being a person—is there, present in the womb.
The result of being image-bearers is that each person has an innate value in creation. That’s why God’s Word condemns murderers and advocates the strictest possible punishment for their crime. Capital punishment is a key facet of God’s law, going all the way back to His covenant with Noah.
Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.
3. Every Person Is the Object of God’s Loving
Care
Throughout Scripture we see that God has made special provision for the poor, weak, and helpless. Repeatedly, His people are called to look after those who cannot look after themselves.
Psalms 82:3-4, Defend the poor and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and needy. 4 Deliver the poor and needy; Free them from the hand of the wicked. Is there anyone more weak, more helpless, or more defenceless than an unborn child?
There is not adequate space here to go over all the incredible medical phenomena that illustrate how the Lord designed the womb to be the perfect protector for those little unborn lives. It’s staggering how God insulates children inside their mothers, nourishing and preserving them in warmth, health, and safety.
It makes it all the more tragic that so many mothers choose to invade the protection of the womb and terminate the life God has created within. Innocent, defenceless people have a special protector in God, who wants to bring them to birth no matter what the circumstances might be that brought about their conception, or what difficulty there might be in the life to come. God has His purposes.
In His covenant with Israel, the Lord built in a provision for any harm that might come to a child while it was still in its mother’s womb.
Exodus 21:22-25, “If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. Two men are fighting. The woman probably steps in, she gets hit in the process, and consequently the trauma causes a premature birth. If all that happens is that the child comes out and there’s no further injury, then there should be a fine for the discomfort, for the problems that might come to take care of the child, and to take care of the woman because of whatever trauma she suffered. If there’s any debate about it, then the judges can discern what that should be. If you are responsible for killing an unborn child, you pay with your life. It is constituted as murder. If the child is born and there’s no injury, fine. Settle whatever would be the medical costs if there are any. But if there is more than that, if there is injury to the child, if there is injury to the mother, tit for tat takes place. If the child suffered in
one area, the penalty is the same. If the child dies, then the penalty is life. If the child comes out and his eye is injured, you lose your eye. If he comes out and his hand is injured, you lose your hand. If his foot, his foot.
Wound for wound, that’s justice. But if the child dies, you pay with your life!
Conclusion
The Good News God’s redeeming grace is available, and able to overrule the sin of abortion. The Lord can use even the most heinous acts of sin to display and dispense His grace. Taking the most heinous sin of all was Jesus’ crucifixion—as the supreme example, Judas, Pilate, and all the Romans and Jews who conspired against Jesus were guilty of murdering the only truly innocent person in history.
But the Lord worked through those sins to accomplish His will and manifest His grace. The same is true with abortion. It’s a horrific tragedy, but God’s redeeming grace is still available to all its participants without exception.
I am convinced that God redeems murdered infants, that His grace reaches out and takes those little ones to be with Him. Two important passages make that point clear.
Psalm 22:9-10, But You are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts. 10 I was cast upon You from birth. From My mother’s womb You have been My God. David was convinced that he belonged to God, even when he was still inside His mother’s womb. That confidence is the reason David could react to the death of his own child.
2 Samuel 12:23, But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”
There is forgiveness for mothers who have had an abortion. While they may face daily reminders of their sin, they can be washed of its guilt and spared it’s just punishment through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Likewise, the abortion doctors who are responsible for taking these precious lives can be rescued from the punishment of their sins and forgiven through repentance and faith.
It doesn’t stop there. God is exceedingly gracious. His forgiveness is able to extend to everyone who has even a minor role in this horrible genocide—to abortion clinic nurses and counsellors who facilitate infant murder on a daily basis.
All the husbands and boyfriends who don’t fight to protect the lives of their children. As horrible and unthinkable as abortion is, in His mercy God is willing to forgive the penitent sinner. God’s grace is far greater than our sin.