Redefine Success
If one cuts through the politics, noise, and distraction, the policy dilemma of abortion comes down to one very stark question: how do we balance the God-given, full legal rights of women with the God-given, full legal rights of the unborn? Where is the line drawn? Can it be objectively defined or is it always subjective? Is there a line at all?
In considering such important and consequential questions, one will always fall short of a substantive answer when looking solely at the law or philosophy. Law and philosophy are man-made and have been searching for answers to questions like these for centuries. To find truth, we need to look to Scripture; Scripture is God-breathed. What does Scripture have to say about the rights of women? “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”1 Women, as well as men, are made in the image and likeness of God which means they are equal in His sight, value, and love. This is the standard against which all women’s issues should be measured and weighed.
There is a natural dimension to this as well: what are the rights of women according to the laws of our nation? It is worth mentioning the struggle that women have undergone throughout history. From ancient societies onward, women’s lives have been considered very cheap and often the property of men. Aristotle remarked that a woman’s life falls somewhere between a free man and a slave.2 In today’s America, women’s rights have been hard-won and in legal terms their God-given rights to life, liberty, property, and happiness have been recognized and these rights are to be equally protected. The key complication arises in that women inherently have a super-power that men do not and never will possess: to create life.
In propagation of life, God saw fit that a woman’s body would hold and nurture a human life in its early formative stages. When considering the life and rights of an unborn human child, one should use the same standard of application: God’s Word. Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us before the foundation of the world and in Jeremiah 1:5 God proclaims, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”3 When interpreted with an exegetical lens, we find that God had every human life in mind before He created even the world. This means every human life was ordained by God and is thus equal in value and has purpose. This is what people of faith mean when they cite “the sanctity of life.” Defining the rights of the unborn legally is much more complicated, especially in a pluralistic society like America. For most of human history what occurs in the womb from conception to birth was a mystery. With twentieth-century modern science we know that at the very moment life is conceived a unique cell with unique DNA is formed which distinguishes it from any other human life. “Human embryos from the one-cell (zygote) stage forward show uniquely integrated, organismal behavior that is unlike the behavior of mere human cells.”4
In the case of abortion, this is precisely where the conflict lies: If we consider the unborn to have equal rights to the women who carry them, how will the woman’s God-given rights and autonomy be necessarily impacted? To explore this, an examination of the historical background of abortion laws is necessary.