What does the Bible say about abortion?
Question 12062
Abortion is among the most contested moral questions in contemporary Western society, and it is one on which Scripture speaks with more clarity than is often acknowledged. The Bible does not use the word abortion, but it addresses the foundations on which any Christian answer must be built, and those foundations lead in a consistent direction.
The Foundation: The Status of the Unborn
Any biblically responsible discussion of abortion must begin with the question of what the unborn child actually is. If life in the womb is human life bearing the image of God, then ending it deliberately is a matter of moral gravity that cannot be reduced to questions of personal autonomy or reproductive freedom. If it is something less than that, the ethical calculation changes. Scripture is consistent in its answer: the life in the womb is a human person (see Question 5007 on when human life begins).
The implications are immediate. Psalm 51:5 — “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” — uses the first-person language of personal identity reaching back to the moment of conception. This is David, speaking about David, from the very beginning of his existence. Personhood is attributed, not withheld pending some biological threshold. That is the starting point from which the rest of the discussion follows.
Exodus 21 and the Unborn
Exodus 21:22-25 is the most direct Old Testament text addressing harm to the unborn. The passage deals with a situation in which two men are fighting and a pregnant woman is struck, resulting in harm. Two outcomes are described: one in which there is no further harm, and one in which harm follows. The precise nature of both outcomes in the Hebrew has been debated, but the most natural reading of the passage is that both the woman and the child are in view, and that harm done to either is treated with legal seriousness under the lex talionis framework.
The broader principle operating throughout the Mosaic law is that the taking of human life requires satisfaction precisely because human beings bear the image of God (Genesis 9:6). That principle is not suspended for those who are as yet unborn. The most vulnerable members of the human community are not excluded from its protection.
The Sixth Commandment and Innocent Blood
The sixth commandment — “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) — states a fundamental principle rooted in the imago Dei. This is not a prohibition against all killing; the law itself permitted capital punishment and did not prohibit all forms of warfare. It is a prohibition against the deliberate, unjust taking of human life. If the unborn child is a human person — and the scriptural evidence points consistently in that direction — then the deliberate ending of that life falls within the scope of what this commandment prohibits.
Proverbs 6:17 lists “hands that shed innocent blood” among the things the LORD hates. There is no blood more innocent than that of the unborn child who has done nothing to forfeit the protection owed to them as image-bearers of God.
Difficult and Pastoral Cases
Pastoral honesty requires acknowledging the cases that create genuine anguish: pregnancy resulting from rape, foetal abnormality incompatible with life outside the womb, and situations where the pregnancy poses a direct and serious threat to the mother’s life. These are not hypothetical abstractions; they are situations that real people face in genuine distress, and they demand careful rather than dismissive engagement.
Where pregnancy results from rape, the evil was done to the mother by the perpetrator. The child did not commit the crime, and ending its life does not undo the harm already done or remove the trauma already sustained. This does not make carrying such a pregnancy anything other than an extraordinary burden, and it does not reduce the pastoral need for compassion, sustained practical support, and genuine presence from the church community. Both things are true simultaneously.
Where a diagnosis indicates that a child will not survive to or beyond birth, the reality that death is approaching does not change the child’s status as a person bearing the image of God for as long as they are alive. Many families who have carried pregnancies with very poor prognoses to term have testified to the significance of the time they had, however brief, and to the long-term weight of having honoured the life entrusted to them.
The situation where continuing a pregnancy poses a direct, lethal threat to the mother’s life — the clearest example being an ectopic pregnancy — is different in kind from elective abortion. Medical treatment that aims to preserve the mother’s life in a situation where the pregnancy cannot be sustained is not morally equivalent to the deliberate ending of a life that poses no comparable threat to anyone.
The Church’s Calling
The church cannot speak credibly on abortion while remaining indifferent to the circumstances in which women find themselves when facing unwanted or deeply difficult pregnancies. The biblical witness to the value of human life is paired throughout Scripture with a calling to care for the vulnerable, the distressed, and those without a natural advocate. Churches that teach the sanctity of unborn life must be willing to demonstrate in practice that they are prepared to support, resource, and walk with women and families in crisis. The prophetic word and the pastoral act are inseparable.
The gospel also speaks to those who carry the weight of past decisions. There is forgiveness at the cross for every human failure, and the church must be as clear about that as it is about the ethical question itself. No one who comes in genuine repentance and faith is beyond the reach of what Christ accomplished.
So, now what?
The Christian position on abortion flows directly from the biblical understanding of what a human being is and what the image of God means. Where Scripture teaches that the life in the womb is a human person from conception, the deliberate ending of that life requires a justification it can rarely sustain. The same God who calls the church to speak on this question is the God who calls it to love and serve those who find themselves facing it.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” Psalm 139:13
Bibliography
- Alcorn, Randy. ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments. Multnomah, 2000.
- Feinberg, John S., and Paul D. Feinberg. Ethics for a Brave New World. 2nd ed. Crossway, 2010.
- Wyatt, John. Matters of Life and Death: Human Dilemmas in the Light of the Christian Faith. 2nd ed. IVP, 2009.