Why I’m “Pro-Life”

I started writing this blog post a couple weeks before having a baby in hopes to publish it before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case that could potentially overturn Roe v. Wade (1973). I didn’t meet that personal deadline (we’ve been a bit busy around here with a newborn), but I still want to share with you why I’m “pro-life” and what I mean by that term.

I grew up in a town where the “pro-life” position was the majority one. People assumed you were “pro-life,” and that assumption wasn’t unfounded—most people were and still are. 

I keep putting quotes around the term because it’s not always clear what people mean by it, and it’s become a shibboleth since the 2016 election. Shared meaning and definitions are important to have constructive conversations, so I’ll explain soon what I mean by “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the rest of this article.

I grew up considering myself pro-life. Many people reach a point, however, where you want to know what you believe and why, apart from the assumptions and beliefs you’ve inherited from your home, church, community, or college classroom. It’s a crucial and healthy part of becoming an adult.

In 2016, the debate surrounding abortion was such a point of contention not just among American voters, but also among evangelical Christians. Memes flood the Internet about “Christians and their pro-life views,” but many Christians disagree on this issue and have since before Roe v. Wade. But the presence of disagreement doesn’t mean there’s not a right position in the debate. Christians disagreed on slavery, but a large majority of us would look back today on our nation’s history of chattel slavery and say firmly that Christians who supported slavery were in error.

In 2016 when many people were making voting decisions in a contentious election based largely on this issue, I realized I needed to think through and own my position in the debate between what have been called the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” sides. For the sake of clarity and consistency throughout this blog post, here’s how I will define and use these terms. 

Pro-life: describing a person who believes that the preborn have the right to life at any stage of development and that right should be protected by the government.

Pro-choice: describing a person who believes that women have the right to an abortion and that right should be protected by the government.

Those definitions might seem oversimplified, and maybe you’d quibble with one or both of these. But they’ll do it for the purposes of this blog. 

I’m writing this for two groups of people. 

First, I’m writing it to people who, like me, have grown up in overwhelmingly pro-life parts of the United States. Maybe you feel pretty strongly pro-life, but you can’t explain why. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, you’re hearing arguments for the pro-choice position that have you questioning your own or feeling for the first time like you don’t know why you believe what you believe.

Good! I just want to affirm that feelings of dissonance aren’t always bad simply because they’re uncomfortable. It is good and right to own what you believe, even if it means going through a period of uncertainty. 

Second, I’m writing to those I’d call “personally pro-life.” Maybe you wouldn’t personally get or encourage an abortion, but you also don’t think Roe v. Wade should’ve been overturned.

I reached a point where I wanted to understand why I was pro-life—or pro-choice if I were persuaded differently. The purpose of this blog is to share some of that process with you. This is my process, which means all pro-life people don’t get from Point A to Point B the way I did.

Because I’m a Christian and most of my writing here is from that perspective, let’s talk about the Bible first.

“The Bible Tells Me So”

Is the Bible sufficient in making a comprehensive, legal case against abortion for in 21st-century America?

From Genesis 1, Scripture declares that people are made in God’s image, giving us all inherent dignity and worth just by virtue of being human. The Bible is full of verses about God’s handiwork, even in the womb. I’ll only cite two verses (besides Genesis 1:26-27) here that are common proof texts against abortion:

Psalms‬ ‭139:13-14‬: “For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well.”

Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in your mother’s body I chose you. Before you were born I set you apart to serve me. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”

I always heard Christians quote these verses and others—now we share them on Facebook, too—as if they settled the matter: a preborn baby is a human created by God, so abortion should be illegal.

I’ve always believed a preborn baby was a human life planned and created by God. I don’t think many atheists or agnostics would disagree with my first claim that a baby is a human. Scientists also agree that a preborn baby is a member of the human species. 

I also don’t think many religious or Christian people would disagree with my second claim that a human life is preordained and created by God, even if we disagree about our definitions of “God.”

These and verses like them would’ve once settled it for me, too. As I got older, I felt like they fell short in making a comprehensive, legal case against abortion.

Why?

These verses are descriptive, meaning they describe what is.

Here’s what I mean. The psalmist says God created “my inward parts” and “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” He writes that he “had been remarkably and wondrously made.”

In the second verse, God said to Jeremiah that he set Jeremiah apart to serve him and chose him for this purpose “before I formed you in your mother’s body.”

These describe God’s involvement in the creation and formation of a preborn life and are important building blocks for a biblical case against abortion.

But these verses are descriptive, not prescriptive: they don’t tell us what should be as a result of what is.

Specifically, they don’t mention abortion and what should or shouldn’t be done about it in 21st-century America as a result of the claim that a preborn baby is a human life pre-ordained and created by God. 

Prescriptive verses in the Bible do get us closer to the heart of the debate about whether abortion should be protected or outlawed by the government. Here are two prescriptive verses commonly used as proof texts against abortion:

Exodus 20:13: “Do not murder.”

Exodus 21:22-25: “When men get in a fight and hit a pregnant woman so that her children are born prematurely but there is no injury, the one who hit her must be fined as the woman’s husband demands from him, and he must pay according to judicial assessment. If there is an injury, then you must give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound.”

Like I said, these are prescriptive verses. They were laws given to the nation of Israel about what they should and shouldn’t do. Exodus 21:22 is especially interesting because God prescribes a punishment for the guilty party when a baby born “prematurely”—a preborn baby—is killed or injured. (You might not know that our nation’s Unborn Victims of Violence Act (2004) even considers an embryo or fetus a legal victim if injured or killed in over 60 federal crimes of violence.)

These add more building blocks to a biblical or religious case against abortion. Notice my emphasis. That’s because we don’t support and enshrine every Bible verse—even prescriptive ones— into law for a plethora of reasons.

Maybe you’re thinking, “But outlawing murder seems like an obvious one.” I know, but stay with me. As Christians, we have to think carefully about Scripture and how or when we advocate for biblical truth in the public square for a couple of important reasons. 

First, certain prescriptions were given by God to a specific group of people in a specific time and a specific place, such as the nation of Israel. The United States is neither the nation of Israel nor a “Christian nation” that’s adopted a singular national religion. We live in a democratic republic where we have the freedom of religion, so a great gulf separates our context and the Bible’s, both in the Ancient Near East and first-century Rome.

For example, Exodus 20:8—given right before the command not to murder—says to keep the Sabbath day holy and do no work on that day, but Exodus 20:8 isn’t enshrined in our law. I believe the Sabbath is a good practice for rest and worship for Christians, but I don’t believe the Sabbath should be legally binding for all people in our country. 

So why is one found guilty for murder but not for failing to keep the Sabbath holy in the United States? 

I know this is an outlandish comparison. Most people in the United States—religious or not—would agree that killing an innocent life is so wrong that it should be illegal. My point is that how we go from Point A (what Scripture says) to Point B (how or when to apply what Scripture says to modern civil law) requires a lot of wisdom. Even Christians don’t always agree on Point B.

If you’re a pro-life Christian, I just want you to understand why “the Bible tells me so” for many people, including Christians, might be an insufficient or frustrating response. It’s not that these Christians don’t believe in the Bible’s authority, but they also might have questions about how and when we apply Scripture in the public square. Many people also recognize how Bible verses have been stripped from their context and used to justify horrible atrocities and laws, such as slavery and segregation.

Here’s the thing: most pro-life and pro-choice advocates—religious or not—agree that murdering an innocent human being is so wrong that it should be illegal. 

Most also believe that preborn lives are human lives. You won’t find scientists arguing that a preborn baby—even from the moment of fertilization—isn’t a member of the human species. Its DNA contains all that’s necessary to be in that category.

So what in the world is dividing us? That’s what I didn’t understand for a long time.

The Dividing Line

In college, I constantly heard two arguments in favor of Roe v. Wade. The first argument focused solely on the mother—her life, well-being, and freedom to choose whether she gets an abortion or not. “My Body, My Choice” has become the slogan for this position.

This argument admittedly never appealed to me because two bodies are involved in abortion: the bodies of the mother and baby. This seemed obvious to me and still does. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, my Facebook newsfeed has been flooded with pro-choice posts and memes that never mention the presence of a baby, which feels like a glaring omission. Two lives are always involved in abortion—centering only the mother in conversations about abortion and chanting “My Body, My Choice” doesn’t change the fact. In order to be intellectually honest, I think pro-choice people have to address what you believe about the status of preborn lives; it can’t be skirted.

I know many of my pro-choice friends and aquaintances will respond that they’re not advocating for abortion but a woman’s right to choose. This shift in focus from abortion to choice still begs the question of “which choice?” After all, pro-life advocates support a woman’s right to make a lot of choices, like those about buying a home or applying for a job.

However, the law limits certain choices we might make when those choices put another citizen’s life in danger. My child might not always like riding in her car seat, but I will face legal consequences if I don’t always buckle her in it while driving because not doing so certainly puts her life at risk. We faced similar debates during the Covid-19 pandemic about how much the government and other institutions could limit our choices to protect the lives of others. Shifting the focus of the conversation from abortion to choice still avoids the fact that we’re debating whether one should have a right to a very specific choice: having an abortion.

The second most popular argument for abortion I heard in college was that abortion was a personal or religious view that shouldn’t be imposed on others. This argument was (and still is) the most popular one I heard from my Christian friends who didn’t think Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

When someone advocates for this view, the conversation usually begins, “I’m personally pro-life, but who am I to impose my view on others?”

In thinking through where I stood in the debate, this was the most compelling argument to me at the time for leaving the ruling in Roe v. Wade alone.

After all, the subtle implication in this question is that the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade is a neutral one. On the surface, it was at least persuasive—maybe even convincing.

Author and speaker Jen Hatmaker recently wrote a blog about the leaked initial draft majority opinion for reversing Roe v. Wade, and one paragraph summarizes this view well:

[Abortion] is intensely personal and private, and women deserve agency and choice not only with their bodies but over the decision to parent for the rest of their lives. Anti-abortion advocates have every right to their convictions, but those convictions should only apply to their bodies, their families, and their futures.

Jen Hatmaker in “My Thoughts on the Roe v. Wade Reversal”

The last part of her statement is important because that’s the argument many people (including Christians) find most convincing who say they are “personally pro-life,” meaning they believe abortion is morally wrong. They wouldn’t have or encourage an abortion, but they also didn’t want Roe v. Wade overturned for the reason Hatmaker describes.

That was the question I struggled with in college, too: should my conviction only apply to “my body, my family, and my future,” in Hatmaker’s words?

Again, the subtle implication of the question is that Roe v. Wade is the neutral, morally superior position to take.

But is Roe v. Wade truly neutral?

Answering this question would be the final weight to tip the scale on where I eventually landed.

Is Roe v. Wade Neutral?

We might not agree with how every person uses certain allowances in our legal system, but many of us agree that certain allowances are good because of the freedoms they afford us. For example, freedom of speech or freedom from a state religion are good laws on the whole, even if I don’t always agree with someone’s religion or speech. 

The question before me in what I’ll call the “personally pro-life position” was whether the ruling in Roe v. Wade falls under this category.

We rightly look back on history and think some actions were so egregious that it wasn’t enough to be personally opposed to them. For example, many argued that slavery remain legal under the banner of “states’ rights” leading up to the Civil War, but most of us agree that slavery was so morally egregious as to warrant federal prohibition.

During the Civil Rights Movement, many people promoted a similar argument. They were personally opposed to segregation but preferred to stay above the fray when it came to the question of whether the federal government had a moral duty to make segregation illegal. 

Reading a book called Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey finally persuaded me of the implicit, erronious belief in the “personally pro-life” position that Roe v. Wade was neutral.

The decision in Roe v. Wade to legalize abortion relies on what’s called “personhood theory.”

Although the fetus is a human, personhood theory argues that a human becomes a person at some point after conception. Pearcey wrote, “Personhood theory is the hidden premise in arguments for abortion” (52).

Why? According to personhood theory, being biologically human is not enough to qualify you as a person. You must demonstrate other characteristics besides having human DNA or a human body, but people don’t agree on when a preborn human becomes a person. Pearcey writes, 

Every bioethicist has a different answer. Some propose that personhood emerges when an organism begins to exhibit neural activity, feel pain, achieve a certain level of cognitive function or consciousness or intelligence, or even have a sense of humor…

But which of these cognitive functions are really pivotal for defining human life? And how developed do they have to be? No one agrees. To choose any stage in gestation as the point when a pre-born baby becomes a person is arbitrary and subjective.

Nancy Pearcey in Love Thy Body (53)

I’d vaguely heard of “personhood” in college. While I was a student at the University of Mississippi, an initiative failed in 2011 to amend the Mississippi Constitution so that it defined a “person” as “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.” I didn’t know then that the initiative was a response to Roe v. Wade and its view of personhood.

How did personhood theory decide Roe v. Wade? Pearcey writes (quoting the court ruling itself!),

In the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, Justice Harry Blackman asserted point-blank that the unborn is not a person: “The word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” If the fetus were recognized as a person, he acknowledged, then abortion would necessarily be illegal: “If the suggestion of personhood is established… the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed.”

Nancy Pearcey in Love Thy Body (49)

What’s the Fourteenth Amendment got to do with Roe v. Wade? Here’s Section I:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

United States Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment: Section I

The Supreme Court decided that the preborn do not count as “persons” whose lives are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, enshrining personhood theory into law. This is why Roe v. Wade isn’t neutral. I’ll quote Pearcey one more time:

People often claim that laws legalizing abortion are neutral. The idea is that since no one agrees when life begins, the state should remain neutral by permitting abortion. But laws permitting abortion are not neutral. They express personhood theory, which is a substantive philosophy excluding babies in the womb from constitutional protection…

By legalizing abortion, then, the Supreme Court did not remain neutral. It established personhood theory, with its… body/person dualism as the lay of the land.

Nancy Pearcey in Love Thy Body (49)

This part of her book is what “put the nail in the coffin” for me and reaffirmed my pro-life position. I was persuaded I could adopt neither a pro-choice stance nor a “personally pro-life” one against abortion while ignoring the moral and philosophical implications of personhood that Roe v. Wade promoted.

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People will claim that pro-life advocates are imposing their “religious” view on others, even if pro-lifers never use a Bible verse to make their case against legalizing abortion. I don’t think they really mean in these cases that it’s a “religious” view so much as a moral or philosophical view.

However, by supporting the ruling in Roe v. Wade, you’re supporting a moral or philosophical view, too, even if you’ve never heard of “personhood theory.”

You can’t claim one view is “religious” and exclude it simply because the majority of people who hold that view might be religious or people who hold that view use religious moral presuppositions to support it, as Neal Hardin writes here:

[S]eparation of church and state does not mean a separation of religiously informed moral reasoning from public policy… Whether secular or religious, everyone brings moral presuppositions to the table. Religious people should not be told to check their beliefs at the door simply because they are religiously based. This smacks of an arrogance which most would not want to be accused of. Everyone, whether religious or secular, should have the freedom to publicly or privately make the case for laws which they believe should be passed.

Neal Hardin in “What Does Separation of Church and State Actually Mean?”

The question of who counts as a “person” under the law isn’t a new one. Last year I interviewed people involved in one grassroots pro-life effort to overturn Roe v. Wade for an article in Christianity Today, and a pastor pointed out that our nation historically has grappled with who counts as a person a lot and gotten it wrong:

The question of when somebody is or what makes somebody a person is something that has been asked and answered incorrectly a number of times through human history, and, sadly, in the United States of America, we’ve got times like our bout with slavery where the personhood of an entire population was in question based on skin color, which is completely outrageous. It’s not scientific, yet it was the law of the land.

Keith Pavlansky in “Pro-Life Advocates Push Local Resolutions” by Lanie Anderson

Another interviewee said the most powerful in the United States have historically and presently used what he called an “arbitrary sliding scale” of physical or cognitive function to determine who does and doesn’t count as a person worthy of legal protection. 

Think about some of the qualifiers mentioned above for personhood. Once someone is outside the womb, do they stop becoming “persons” with the right to life if their heart stops beating? If they can’t feel pain or demonstrate a certain level of intelligence?

No, they don’t. In fact, medical professionals go to extreme measures to save or improve their quality of life because of their belief that humans are also persons with inherent dignity.

At the time I began thinking through this issue, I was also co-leading a racial reconciliation discussion group. We talked about the egregiousness of things like the “one-drop rule” where people were considered “black” and subhuman and denied certain rights, opportunities, and protections because of their ancestry and skin color.

I didn’t and still don’t believe I would be ethically consistent if I were indignant about people creating racial categories to determine personhood yet remained indifferent about people drawing other arbitrary lines like the presence of a heartbeat, ability to feel pain, or a certain level of intelligence to determine personhood.

For me, any debates about Roe v. Wade and abortion moving forward had to include the acknowledgement of the personhood of mother and child, regardless of the child’s stage of development in the womb.

What Now?

Roe v. Wade has been overturned. I believe the Supreme Court’s decision was right and just, and I’m thankful for the outcome. Depending on where you stand, you’re likely celebrating or mourning the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The Court’s decision doesn’t outlaw abortion. It returns abortion laws back to the states. This means we need more conversations between pro-life and pro-choice constituents, not less. I’m not overtly optimistic this will happen after watching how people are speaking to and about one another on social media, but I’m hopeful and willing. There are many important concerns pro-life AND pro-choice advocates raise on behalf of both women and children (as well as fathers) that we could discuss.

Fellow pro-lifers, I hope we consider this question together: what does it look like to cultivate a culture of life and empowerment for the preborn, children, AND mothers beyond the Supreme Court’s decision, both privately and publicly?

Dr. Robert P. George wrote several weeks ago,

Going still further, [the pro-life movement] needs to work in both the public and private spheres to provide necessary support for mothers and children, never allowing their interests or well-being to be pitted against each other. To its great credit, the pro-life movement has been doing this since before Roe v. Wade—again, in the face of hostility from the most powerful forces. We will need now to do more and better. We can and we will.

Dr. Robert George in “Statement on the leaked Alito draft opinion in Dobbs”

I bolded part of his statement for emphasis because, as I sit here with a baby just over one week old, it’s not lost on me how difficult it is to carry, birth, and care for a child—and I have an incredible support system.

How might you be part of a mother or child’s support system? Are there policies you can support that help mothers flourish who choose to carry and have their children? Can you support local pregnancy centers with your time and/or resources? Do you have influence in your workplace to create a better work/life balance for employees so that families don’t feel like they have to choose between caring for their children and paying the bills or pursuing a career?

Please hear me say this: you can’t do everything.

On the Internet right now, a lot of people disappointed with the Supreme Court’s ruling are suggesting that you can’t be pro-life unless you also do A, B, and C or support policy X, Y, and Z. That’s false. The truth is that we are limited human beings with limited time, energy, resources, and knowledge or expertise. You don’t answer to them; you answer to God and how He moves you to action.

So you can’t do everything, but you can do something to live out your conviction. Pray and ask God to show you the way He wants to use you—your time, resources, skill set, and knowledge or expertise. Then trust that He’s using others in different ways to live out a pro-life ethic publicly and privately.

I anticipate the feedback that I don’t spend enough time addressing certain questions about specific cases, policies, or solutions. The focus of this blog is intentionally narrow because I wanted to explain in depth how I arrived at my position to be pro-life and what I mean by that term.

Pro-lifers and pro-choicers raise questions that I didn’t cover here but believe are important and have given a lot of thought, such as cases where a mother’s life is in physical danger (please read here as there’s a lot of misinformation online about this topic); instances of incest and rape; alleviation of healthcare and daycare costs; a father’s choice in whether their child is aborted and their responsibilities thereafter; policies that promote the flourishing of parents and children; broken adoption and foster care systems; and so many more.

There aren’t easy answers to many of the questions people are asking. I admittedly don’t have answers for all of them, and I hold loosely the answers I’ve begun to form to others as I learn more. Some of the questions make me weep because of the sin, brokenness, and suffering they expose in our society.

However, I also believe in God’s ability and ongoing work to save, redeem, and transform people from those in families to those over institutions. I believe he uses both His Church and people who don’t believe in Him or follow Christ to promote the common good. I hope those of us who are Christians will ask how He’s inviting us to be a part of that work.

Almost 50 years ago the Supreme Court enshrined a view of personhood into law that has implications far beyond the preborn. In the wake of the Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, many are saying the Court has imposed a view on society without citizens having a vote or say in the matter. Setting aside for now the Supreme Court’s function to rightly interpret the law rather than answer to popular opinion, in 1973 the Supreme Court also imposed a view on an entire group of people who cannot advocate for themselves.

Proverbs 31:8-9 (CSB) says, “Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed. Speak up, judge righteously, and defend the cause of the oppressed and needy.”

The preborn truly have no voice. Speaking up for justice on their behalf doesn’t negate the command to do the same for others. But justice requires us to advocate for them in addition to mothers, fathers, and children if the preborn are persons made in the image of God with a legal right to life. 

I believe that’s true, so any discussion about abortion must speak up for two lives.

Yes, I believe abortion is wrong, but I also believe in God’s abundant grace and forgiveness for all sin, including abortion, even if you don’t view abortion as an act necessitating it. If you’ve had an abortion, please know that I’m always willing to listen to you and sympathize with circumstances that influenced your decision.

If you’re wrestling with your position on this issue, I hope you’ll consider the argument I’ve made here, and I’m happy to talk more with you about it. 

I can’t recommend Nancy Pearcey’s book Love Thy Body enough if you want to understand more about personhood theory and it’s implications. I also recommend these videos from a ministry in the United Kingdom called Speak Life:

Roe vs Wade || Protecting the Unborn || Interview with Debbie Mountford
Roe vs Wade, The Unborn & The Church
Roe v Wade Overturned – Twitter Reactions

The videos thoughtfully engage this topic, and sometimes I find it refreshing to listen to Christian leaders outside the United States, as they’re not so enmeshed in our nation’s political polarization.

C.S. Lewis said, “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

I believe we’ve begun to walk back to the right road. The route we will continue on is to be determined. My prayer is that we will seek God’s wisdom, justice, righteousness, and compassion in the days ahead.

Thank you for reading.