I was recently reading an essay by Beverly Wildung Harrison, titled “Theology and the Morality of Procreative Choice,” where, from a “Christian” perspective, Harrison defends abortion. In another article for the POINT, I noted that our advocacy team is often questioned about our engagement on certain issues. Harrison’s argument brought to mind many of the concerns we receive from other Christians who are critical of our engagement on the issue of abortion. So, I thought I would respond to Harrison’s argument here.

Although she claims to be a Christian, Harrison also explicitly separates herself from her own protestant tradition, from tradition broadly, and ultimately from Scripture, making clear early on that she is “no biblicist,” in order to justify abortion. While there is much to critique in her essay, Harrison’s main argument is that the principle of respect for human life, while it “is one we should all honor,” “often comes into conflict with other valid moral principles in the process of making real, lived-world decisions.” She asserts, “we live in a time when the principle of justice for women, aimed at transforming the social relations that damage women’s lives, is historically urgent.” And so, from her perspective, “this principle [justice for women] has greater moral urgency than the extension of the principle of respect for human life.” It seems she is making the claim that the value of prenatal life is tertiary to the significance of the historical treatment of women and the assumed lack of control of their bodies, as well as the ostensibly less than ideal circumstances they find themselves in. Therefore, abortion properly framed can be good. Ultimately, it seems, a woman’s exercise of unfettered autonomy in our current dispensation is what is morally upright and holy, it is a recognition of justice, which if necessary, includes abortion.

Harrison believes that “an adequate historical perspective on abortion recognizes the long struggle women have waged for some degree of control over fertility and their efforts to regain control of procreative power from patriarchal and state-imperial culture and institutions.” From her perspective, whatever the moral status of a fetus is said to be, it does not deserve “greater moral standing in analysis than does the position of the pregnant woman.” Justice then, or what is owed, includes killing of innocents.

But what if we don’t unhitch ourselves from Scripture? What does a proper biblical-theological perspective have to say in response to her arguments? She is not entirely wrong in her piece. While she dismisses traditional Christian appeals to proscribe abortion, we should appreciate that she wants and is appealing for better treatment of women, especially those who have been subjected to discrimination under a perversion of Scripture. Christians seeking to imitate Christ are concerned with justice and the plight of vulnerable women. Being prolife absolutely extends to life outside the womb and includes material assistance to expectant and struggling mothers. However, Harrison’s appeals and ultimately her understanding of the sanctity of life are disordered. Her inordinate understanding and promotion of autonomy—women free from the slavish subordination by men through the propagation of the patriarchy—misses the mark and fails to appreciate the properly ordered loves of Christian virtue.

As important as autonomy is—indeed, properly understood, it is a gift from God and therefore something to be protected by a righteous government—to suggest that it is primary and trumps the life of the most vulnerable and innocent image bearers is disordered. It is distorted, self-rationalization, it is not justice. The biblical-theological understanding of abortion is that it is murder. Plain and simple. It is the unjust taking of innocent life. The preborn cannot be anything other than innocent. And the biblical-theological understanding of autonomy is summed up by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians when he writes that “all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.” (1 Corinthians 10:23-24) This is far from a self-involved rationalization.  Scott Rae and Paul Cox suggest that “for the Christian, autonomy is at best a constrained pursuit, to be limited by concern for the community and the common good, and ultimately limited by the sovereignty of God.” Paul did not avail himself of his rights so as not to put “an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.” For the sake of the gospel, he made himself a servant of all. If our purpose here on earth is to bring glory and honor to God, to share and not be an obstacle to the Gospel, we should be very clear about the limits of our self-rule.

Harrison appeals to the natural law—notably so that she can justify as a self-proclaimed protestant Christian untethering her life and whims from the eternal truths communicated to us in God’s Word—but autonomy naturally ordered recognizes that without life there is no autonomy. Life therefore (at least innocent life) must be placed above unlimited self-rule or power. Rae and Cox suggest that when it comes to abortion, “there is no precedent for giving autonomy that high a priority, particularly when it costs a person in the womb his or her life.” They write, “the believer is not free to do whatever he or she pleases, but rather, is free to do what is right.” But this is the importance of rootedness in Scripture, Christians are those who seek to do right in God’s eyes, not their own.

While not a biblical reference, the majority opinion from the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision might otherwise sync with the natural law. Those justices, critiquing the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision which reaffirmed the core holding of Roe v. Wade, wrote that, “While individuals are certainly free to think and to say what they wish about ‘existence,’ ‘meaning,’ ‘the universe,’ and ‘the mystery of human life,’ they are not always free to act in accordance with those thoughts.” They went further to say, “Ordered liberty sets limits and defines the boundary between competing interests.” Harrison believes that the woman’s claim outweighs those of the preborn’s, this is contingent on the idea that one should be able to act on their intuition, which the Supreme Court has fortunately come around to reject. The Christian, under the authority of Scripture and the natural law, accepts limits and, like Paul said, puts neighbor before self to promote flourishing.

Joy Riley acknowledges that “autonomy, in part a reaction to the flagrant paternalism of the past, is important.” But “it is not, and cannot be, the trump card of life.” She goes further to suggest that abortion is not self-rule but “other-rule.” If, “autonomy for one person means, in the case of abortion, servitude, acquiescence, or destruction for others,” how can we justify remediating the historic servitude and acquiescence of women by doing the same to an even more vulnerable class of people? What logic—that brings glory to God—rights one wrong with another? How can we read Galatians (as Christians do) and think freedom to perpetrate violence against the vulnerable innocent syncs at all with what the Gospel means for us in terms of freedom? It may very well be a contemporary American problem that confuses freedom to and for, but Christian freedom, secured by the ultimate sacrifice, is freedom for—for others. If we want to be virtuous at all, if we want to be and do good which are those things oriented toward God, it begins with making Him Lord then thinking of others at our expense. Taking innocent life, even if one has historically been mistreated or is in an insurmountable bind today, is not good nor is it justified, properly understood. Justification of taking innocent life is evil.

The example of the early church going after and protecting exposed babies should serve as a model for us. Those early Christians, believing in the sanctity of life, sacrificed their own wellbeing and status for the that of the other. They sacrificed for all indigent and vulnerable, as Christ was their example. In terms of autonomy, Rae and Cox write that “the early church voluntarily accepted limits on personal freedom in order to benefit the early Christian community.” This is what we are called to do. It was radical then and unfortunately seems so still today. But this is the way to accomplish what is good and what the Lord requires of us; “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God.” (Micah 6:8, ESV) Justice is not discerned in our own eyes. Terminating innocent life is not kind. Humbly walking with God is submitting, not self-rule. It is freedom for His purposes, not do as we self-righteously desire. Paul reiterates that we are to “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3, ESV) You may have the power to extinguish preborn life and conceal it, but how does this sync with Christian morality and virtue? We are called to more.

We may, as Harrison asserts, “live in a time when the principle of justice for women, aimed at transforming the social relations that damage women’s lives, is” indeed, “historically urgent.” But there’s no way this has “greater moral urgency than the extension of the principle of respect for human life.” This is not just, kind, or humble. But even so, when we take a step back to reflect, is whatever might be gained from this appeal to autonomy worth the cost? What does it profit the pregnant mother at the expense of her soul? Is it ever good that the vulnerable innocent should die? Can it all be said to be virtuous? To be Christ-like? We are, if we are living virtuously and imitating Christ with properly ordered loves, to use the autonomy we have to sacrifice what may otherwise be desirable for our neighbor. This is what enriches our lives. This is how we profit on this earth. It is our bodies that are to be living sacrifices. We aren’t to sacrifice the other living for the sake of our bodies.

If Jesus proclaims that “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13, ESV) what should respect for human life look like in this context? If it is His command that we love one another as He has loved us, it is clear to the Christian, to those who have put their faith in Christ and made Him Lord, what Christ-like love and sacrifice looks like. Even in the most precarious situations, the way of the Christian puts the life of the innocent vulnerable preborn image bearer ahead of our own wellbeing. This is the example we have in Christ.

Recognizing that history has not always been kind and that women today can still be in great need does not justify abortion. If anything, perpetual injustice in this world should prompt us to consider what is eternally good. We should undoubtedly, as Christ followers, be going and seeking to meet the needs of women and their families in time of need, but we cannot confuse the good of autonomy for equality with license to kill. Living according to God’s Word means doing difficult things. We understand through various examples in Scripture that we will suffer in this life, but also that it is for God’s glory and for our ultimate good and for the good of those around us.

If we claim to be Christians and want to follow Jesus, we must heed His words – we must deny ourselves (in seeking sexual pleasure or its potential repercussions) and take up our cross.  We must be last of all and servant of all. Our posture towards the preborn is our posture towards Christ and God who sent Him. If God has given us autonomy, this is what it is for. Women as victims of a corrupted patriarchy would do well, as we all would, to live not with our own interests in mind, but with a heart to serve the most vulnerable among us. We would do well to imitate Christ. This is the example of the early church. The corrupted social relations of Rome were transformed by the selfless acts of Christians. Justifying abortion because of past and present wrongs creates another class of victims in the preborn. It perpetuates the barbarism of Rome.

To call oneself a Christian is to take on, to humbly accept a life of hardship and the pursuit of difficult things, it is to live counter culturally. There is no justification for killing an innocent child. The hurdles imposed by childbirth and rearing can and should be overcome in Christian community; we should all seek to meet the needs of others, starting with those incapable of doing so for themselves.

For reflection on the purpose of these lives, in all their precarious circumstances, gifted to us by a sovereign and righteous Heavenly Father and redeemed at the cost of Christ’s giving of Himself for us, it will be helpful to conclude with Titus 2:11-14 and its call to live upright and godly lives in the present age:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (ESV)