Abortion Violates the Sanctity of life and Degrades Women
BY LEAH JOSLYN
In our post-modern society, traditional beliefs and values are quickly being eroded by a push for pluralism. There is a loss of objective truth and even intolerance for Christian principles. One such principle is the sanctity and personhood of all human life from the time of conception. Over the years supporters of abortion rights, including actress Scarlett Johansson1 and former Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton,2 have advanced the claim that unrestricted access to abortion is no longer just a women’s rights issue but a human rights issue.
Abortion is a topic that every Christian must be prepared to discuss because this practice denies God’s ideal about the basic dignity and value that each human being possesses. If Christians do not get involved in speaking out about abortion, the world will not only continue murdering the unborn, but soon the value of every helpless person’s life will be questioned. As a woman with a personal interest in this topic, I will show how the act of abortion violates the sanctity of life and degrades women.
Abortion & the Law
Traditionally, abortion has been defined as the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy. The Roe versus Wade decision by the US Supreme Court was overturned in in 2024, but the impact of the original decision on the minds of pro-choice advocates is summarized well by the Editors of Britannica Encyclopedia state:
Roe v. Wade, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled (7–2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy…The Supreme Court disagreed with Roe’s assertion of an absolute right to terminate pregnancy in any way and at any time and attempted to balance a woman’s right of privacy with a state’s interest in regulating abortion…. The court placed the point after which a state’s compelling interest in the pregnant woman’s health would allow it to regulate abortion “at approximately the end of the first trimester” of pregnancy… With regard to the fetus, the court located that point at “capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb,” or viability.3
In the State’s opinion, the baby could not survive on its own before the first trimester and so abortions could, therefore, be justified before that time. Consequently, life (or personhood) was defined by the court as something that emerges later in the pregnancy when certain properties of survivability are evidenced and not something inherent to the baby.
Nancy Pearcey, author of the book Love Thy Body, addresses the underlying values that promote abortion as a mother’s right. Initially, the argument for abortion stemmed from the French Philosopher Rene Descartes. Pearcey shows that Descartes placed the body in the “lower story” of experience which conceives of the human body as a machine while in the “upper story” Descartes placed the human mind: the realm of thinking, perception, consciousness, emotion and will.4 Descartes had originally intended his view to be used as a defense of the spiritual against the material. However, some people took Descartes’s philosophy and used it to justify human control over nature, including the body. Therefore, the logic of abortion follows the view that the body is just a machine to be used for whatever ends are most useful. Those who claim to be pro-choice falsely hide behind the veil of science, even though science has already discredited the belief that an unborn fetus is a non-human.
Abortion & Human Rights
Sadly, in today’s news we see that the personhood theory explained by Pearcey in her book is still evolving and expanding its boundaries. According to the 2019 article written by Caitlin O’Kane for CBS News,
“New York state has enacted strong new legal protections for abortion rights. The new law, signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, safeguards rights laid out in Roe v. Wade and other court rulings, including a provision permitting late-term abortions when a woman’s health is endangered”5
This law was signed on January 22, 2019. Abortion has now been removed from the penal code in the State Law a to health status. A doctor like Kermit Gosnel—acting on nothing more than a woman’s choice to abort her baby up until the moment of birth—is no longer viewed as a criminal but as a hero of women’s rights. Ironically, pro-choicers insist that women’s rights are human rights, but whose rights are they talking about? Are the unborn not human persons as well? And, how can one promote human rights while intentionally terminating a human life, especially the lives of these helpless and innocent babies?
Abortion & its Negative Consequences
Abortion violates the sanctity of life because it strips the unborn of their title as a human person. Pre-born human beings, argue abortion advocates, are humans but not persons. Being a part of the human species is not enough to guarantee a baby rights because the status of “person” must be earned. The Bible rejects this dualistic view that separates the body from personhood. Psalm 139:13–16 talks about God knowing a person before they were even born. From the time of conception, God sees each baby and records every day of their life in His book. Genesis 1:27–28 also says that God created mankind in His image and that they were to multiply: human persons can only produce human persons.
The argument that a fetus is not a human being has already been discredited by science so now it is argued that personhood only occurs when a certain level of cognizance is attained. Until that time the body is just a piece of matter that can be discarded or used for other purposes. However, there is no scientific evidence that proves that a human attains personhood at any certain point in their development. The personhood view has not only impacted abortion but even people with disabilities and the elderly. Abortion is not just about a woman having the freedom to do whatever she wills with her body, but about the legal consent to violate the sanctity of life. All humans, from the time of conception onward; young or old, disabled or disfigured, are persons with the right to live and be accepted into society.
Many authors have referred to the Nazis’ during Hitler’s reign who killed thousands of innocent Jews. This genocide was justified because the Nazis did not believe in the sanctity of life for all people but only for a chosen few. As J.R. Miller observes, the Nazis (inspired by Darwinian science) believed that there were certain lives that were not worthy of life. Most women who engage in abortion do not realize that this is the same argument for what they are doing. When a woman choses to kill her unborn child, they are saying that this child is not a person worthy of protection under the law and that the mother’s life is more important than that of her unborn child.
Abortion & the Degradation of Women
Even though people like to claim that Christianity is against women, the church has, from its very beginning, served as a counter-cultural Faith that recognized and valued the importance of women.
From the start, Christianity has rejected the claim that women are disposable objects. Christianity promoted women to roles of leadership, viewed them as equals in Christ, protected their rights to fertility and honored their rights in marriage.
The Apostle Paul encourages men to love their wives and to remain faithful to them (Eph 5:28–31). In the Roman culture, men were free agents, able to have sex with slaves, prostitutes, the poor and powerless. There were no laws to protect the sacredness of women or the sanctity of marriage. Many of these illicit relationships resulted in unwanted pregnancies, hence the need for abortions. Pearcey emphasizes the fact that it is the world, and not Christianity, that is against women.
Pearcey observes that abortion and infanticide are practiced in violation of the rights of baby girls. One example is sex-selection abortion which has created a surplus of men in several nations like China and India. The United Nations estimates that 200 million women are demographically missing.6 Abortion in many countries is sex-selective and the lives of girls do not carry the same value as those of boys. Outside of a Christian worldview, girls are treated as dispensable whereas men are treated as indispensable.
Another point is that society imposes on women a focus on career that keeps them from embracing motherhood as a genuine success. To achieve higher levels of education and professionalism, women are required to suppress their fertility with birth control—to effectively neuter themselves with toxic chemical during their peak childbearing years.7 Women now avoid marriage and turn instead to casual relationships to accommodate their lifestyle. However, by the time they arrive at the stage of wanting to settle down, women face biological problems and health complications.
Abortion is the world saying to women that their lives do not matter, it degrades the uniqueness of who they are, and treats their God given functions as life-givers as a sickness to be cured.
Meanwhile, men are encouraged to live their lives to their full potential without consideration for women and the sacrifices that they make to fulfill the desires of men. Abortion should not be accepted because it violates the sanctity of human life and lessens the value and respect that should be given to women.
Conclusion
It is unfortunate that in an effort to promote so-called women’s rights and liberty, women are degraded, forced to harm their bodies, and live lifestyles that suppress their biological design. Women need to be taught that abortion not only goes against God’s design but destroys their own humanity. A woman does not become valuable when scientists agree, or when society says she is useful, or when culture deems her convenient. Every woman is valuable from conception because God has imprinted His image onto each and every one of us. The dignity of all human beings must be protected from the moment they are conceived. Once we divest the human body from personhood, life loses its significance and we open the door to destroy life at all stages of development. Therefore, abortion should not be accepted as a good choice for anyone who wants to elevate and protect women.
Melanie Hunter, “Scarlett Johansson: ‘Abortion is a Human Rights Issue,” CNS News, October 18, 2016, quoted in Nancy. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2018), 1240. Kindle.
CBSN Live, “NY Gov. Coumo, Hilary Clinton discusses abortion rights,” CBS News, January 24, 2019.
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Roe v. Wade,” Encyclopedia Britannica, December 7, 2018.
Pearcey, Love Thy Body, 844.
Caitlin O’Kane, “New York passes law allowing abortions at any time if mother’s health is at risk,” CBS News, January 24, 2019.
Pearcey, Love Thy Body, 1240.
Ibid., 1316.
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