A Question.

Growing up I never thought much about this. Christians were pro-life. Wicked people were pro-choice.

The end.

In a post-Trump era, it has become increasingly obvious that the pro-life stance has been used by the Republican party to manipulate and monopolize the Christian vote in the United States.

An all too frequent conversation I had with my Evangelical friends in 2016-2020 went something like this, “I know Trump is basically a bad guy but I’m going to vote for whoever is against killing babies…” It was actually a rare occurrence for me to encounter someone who defended Trump on the merits of his character or competence.

So why are Evangelicals willing to turn a blind eye on their political candidate’s flaws as long as they pay lip service to the sanctity of life?

Let me offer two justifications for the radical pro-life stance that I’ve heard from those who adhere to it. I want to tread lightly here and make sure I’m not just setting up a straw man. These might not even be the best justifications for a Christian to have a pro-life stance but they are certainly the ones I’ve heard the most frequently. The basic logic goes like this:

1. The Bible is the inspired word of God and should be interpreted literally.
2. The Bible teaches that life begins at conception.
3. Humans are created in the image of God.
4. Because of 3. humans are endowed with dignity, honor, and divine rights.
5. Therefore it is wrong to kill an unborn human.

My current thought on the matter is that if you accept premise 1 as true then the remainder of the syllogism is rendered incoherent.

Here are the two passages that I most commonly hear quoted as justification for a strong pro-life stance.

1: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”(Psalms 139:13)

2: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).

3. “In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb.” (Luke 1:41).

At least one issue here is that all these passages refer to specific individuals, David, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist. It is therefore dubious to apply them to all of humanity without further justification.

There is one passage that I’m aware of in the Old Testament that makes reference to a general heuristic for assigning value to an unborn human. See Exodus 21. However, I think we need to be careful when extracting our morality from the Levitical law. The danger here will be made explicit later on.

What is a definition of ‘pro-life’ anyways?

“Pro-life (adj): the belief that all human life is created equal regardless of size, level of development, education, and degree of dependency. Therefore, taking the life of a preborn baby is a violation of the fundamental right to life.”

This definition comes from Focus on the Family’s website. https://www.focusonthefamily.com/pro-life/pro-life-pro-choice/

Actually, take a look at this one too, https://www.focusonthefamily.com/pro-life/is-the-bible-really-pro-life/

Here’s a quote from the above article, “God is a pro-life God, and the Bible is a pro-life book.”

Using Focus on the Family’s definition of pro-life the claim that God is pro-life and the Bible is a pro-life book is, to quote Wolfgang Pauli, “not even wrong”.

Let’s assume that the Bible is the literal word of God and it describes actual historical events. Consider the following:

1. The Global flood: If there was a global flood that killed all of humanity except for eight people, what fraction of the people who died were children? What fraction were babies? What fraction were the unborn babies still gestating inside their mothers?

Presumably a few right? So morally why is God justified in violating a fundamental human right to life? I’m not arguing that there couldn’t exist a justification for this but if such a justification exists then we can at least conclude that it is not always immoral to terminate a pregnancy. Otherwise, God’s actions would be a violation of his own moral law.

2. Canaanite Genocide: “Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, in order that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 20:16–18).

3. Annihilation of the Amalekites:

“ Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” (1 Samuel 15:3).

You see the trend.

Usually, these examples of carnage in the OT are referenced as reasons to not believe in the God of the Bible and then the Christian apologists will respond that there are reasons why it was ok for God to sanction genocide or they might provide reasons why the OT text is analogous to ‘legacy code’ that is never executed. I’m not saying you shouldn’t believe in the Biblical God because of these passages. I’m saying you can’t claim he’s pro-life in the way Focus on the Family and their political allies do.

This next one is the most troubling. Now this passage is a little weird because the translation isn’t crystal clear so it may not be referring to what it sure sounds like it’s referring to. In fact, I would rather it not be talking about what it seems to be talking about. Here’s how the NIV handles it.

4. Test For An Unfaithful Wife:

“‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband” — here the priest is to put the woman under this curse — “may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. May this water that brings a curse to enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries” (Numbers 5).

So here’s a text that is not only descriptive it is also prescriptive and it prescribes a procedure that will result in the termination of pregnancy. Notice that this is a practice that is sanctioned and carried out by the Levitical priests. If you take axiom 1. seriously and you’re pro-life, in the Focus on the Family sense of the term, this passage should haunt you. You should lose sleep over this.

So here’s my question. How can we claim to base our Christian morality, on a literal reading of the Bible?