Christianity and abortion

For many people, abortion is a polarizing issue that often ties in closely with religious beliefs. As one of the world's largest religions, Christianity has long influenced views on abortion in many populations around the world, although perspectives are diverse. Modern Christianity is composed of the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Churches, and the many denominations of Protestantism. The Catholic and the Orthodox Churches teach that life begins at conception, and thus any interference with this life is a moral crime. This is the stance of many antiabortion advocates. In the Protestant churches, views of abortion vary from denomination to denomination. Fundamentalist or evangelical Protestants tend to be socially conservative and also consider abortion inherently immoral. In contrast, liberal Protestant groups tend to believe that pregnant people should have the legal freedom to choose an abortion as part of the broader right to bodily autonomy and health care access. It should be noted that these are generalizations, and there can be significant variance and nuance in perspectives among individuals within any Christian denomination.

The intersection between Christianity and abortion has been particularly prominent in the United States. The modern antiabortion movement that developed in the mid- to late-twentieth century was heavily driven by conservative Christian activists. After the US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) made abortion legal throughout the country, abortion became a key social and political issue. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that religious opposition to abortion became a crucial aspect of the conservative-liberal divide that dominated US politics into the twenty-first century. Christian groups played an influential role in efforts to pass personhood laws—granting rights to the fetus and fertilized eggs—and other abortion restrictions in many states, as well as the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) that overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion in the United States.

Early History

Abortion can be defined as a procedure that terminates a pregnancy and the life of a fetus. A fetus is an unborn human baby eight weeks after conception. Abortion is an act or procedure that has existed since the beginnings of history. It has often been controversial, but perspectives can vary significantly between different groups and have also often changed over time.

In the ancient world, views on abortion varied and were influenced by philosophy, religion, and scientific advances. The history of abortion in Western society (the part of the world most closely linked to the rise of Christianity) can be traced back to two main and opposing views. The first view, held by the Pythagoreans of ancient Greece, was that the embryo had human rights equivalent to the child it will become and thus, abortion or harm to the fetus is murder. The second view, held by the Stoics, was that the unborn child had some rights that would expand with the duration of the pregnancy; however, a fetus was not considered the same as a child and thus an abortion was not the same as murder. In the pre-Christian Roman Empire, abortion was not outlawed, was common, and was written about by many intellectuals of the day. The Romans did not consider a fetus a person. Jews living at the same time as these early Romans opposed abortion, but that belief was held only within the Jewish community.

Christianity grew out of the Jewish community under Roman rule with the emergence of Jesus and the proliferation of his teachings. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 313 CE, and many laws were changed. The first known laws regarding abortion appeared around this time, and focused on protecting the right to pass on property to an unborn heir. Abortion was thoroughly condemned in the writings of St. Basil, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria. Despite the condemnation of abortion on the part of the Church, there was little consensus beyond that about the practice. In the twelfth century, the Roman jurist Gratian argued that abortion during what is now known as the first trimester was not considered murder, a view that proved long influential.

Meanwhile, over the centuries Christianity splintered many times over disagreements about doctrine and other aspects of the religion. The Orthodox churches began splitting from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054 CE in what is called the Great Schism (the separation actually took several hundred years to complete). In large part, the Catholic and Orthodox religions have remained fairly similar in their doctrines. The Protestant split began in 1517 with Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, which created a domino effect of sects breaking away from the Catholic Church. These divisions led to a wide range of official stances on various issues, including abortion.

The idea that abortion early in pregnancy was not considered murder remained influential within Christianity into the nineteenth century. The science of human physiology long remained rudimentary, and it is likely that even second trimester pregnancies were often not seen as murder due to the difficulty in determining the start of a pregnancy. Terms such as "animation," "formation," or "vivication" were used to describe how an embryo was formed. "Quickening" came into use in the 1800s to describe when a person felt fetal movement. As there were still no reliable methods to prove when a person became pregnant or experienced a quickening (fetal movement usually occurs between the fourth and seventh month of pregnancy), prosecuting a person accused of having an abortion during the quickening remained rare. It is generally believed that abortions were fairly common, although reliable data is scarce.

Shifting Perspectives

Perspectives on abortion in general changed significantly in the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Over a relatively short period of time, the social and legal climate toward abortion changed from tolerant to highly restricted in the United States and some other Western nations. For instance, during this period, every US state implemented laws prohibiting abortion at any stage in a pregnancy unless the procedure was needed to save the pregnant person's life. Scholars have linked this trend to various other social changes, notably including the increasing professionalization of medical practice and related efforts to suppress less formal competitors such as midwives. Industrialization, urbanization, and surges of immigration were other broad influences on attitudes toward abortion. These same factors also affected Christian belief and practice in complex ways.

Many historians suggest that the first dedicated antiabortion movement (1850–90) in the United States was not driven primarily by religious belief, but by medical professionals who believed abortion was dangerous and morally wrong. Elite doctors in particular were at the forefront of this movement, petitioning lawmakers and writing material in a successful campaign to sway public opinion. Around this time the American Medical Association was formed, and in 1859 it uniformly denounced abortion and urged states to pass laws against the procedure. In 1864, the AMA created a prize that would be awarded to the best antiabortion book written for the general public. While this early antiabortion campaign was not necessarily religious, it did align with the moral views of many Christians, helping to boost its influence.

In the 1800s, the Catholic Church determined that it would teach that life begins at conception. Catholic leaders viewed motherhood as the ultimate vocation for women, and as such, prohibited all forms of contraception and abortion. The Catholic Church is largely credited with the creation of the modern antiabortion movement in the second half of the twentieth century. The phrase "right-to-life" originally applied to debates on capital punishment, health care, euthanasia, and others. It was first used in relation to pregnancy and abortion by Pope Pius XII in 1951. The National Right to Life Committee was established in 1967. These mid-twentieth-century antiabortion advocates believed unborn babies had a right to life from the moment of conception.

Compared to Catholicism, Protestant denominations generally grant more freedom to the individual; there is a hesitancy to embrace absolute moral rules. As a result, there was historically relatively little organized Protestant-specific involvement on either side of the abortion debate. This changed quickly, however, as abortion became increasingly politicized from the mid-twentieth century on. Many conservative Protestants aligned with Catholics as vocal opponents of abortion. More liberal Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church, United Church of Canada, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and the Episcopal Church tended to take a more neutral approach or sometimes even officially supported access to abortion.

Modern Debate in the US

After the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973), abortion became a central debate in American politics. The decision made abortion legal in all fifty states, which was hailed by many feminists and other liberal observers but also generated strong backlash. Opposition to abortion became a key value espoused by the conservative Republican Party, helping to reshape the landscape of partisan politics in the country. Crucially, many Christians who opposed abortion on religious moral grounds increasingly aligned themselves with the Republican Party as "single-issue" voters. In the decades following Roe v. Wade, a number of antiabortion laws were adopted at the state level. Several states passed fetal homicide laws that apply to the early stages of pregnancy.

The Personhood USA movement began in 2008 and was founded by Kristi Burton of Colorado. During the 2010s, this organization campaigned in various states to pass personhood laws that would classify human fetuses, embryos, zygotes, and fertilized eggs as persons and make abortion a criminal act. Many of such proposed state laws and initiatives were rejected due to concerns raised by doctors and abortion-rights advocates about access to health care, including access to in vitro fertilization, contraception, and routine gynecological care. The abortion-rights movement believes people have the legal right to terminate a pregnancy. Abortion-rights individuals vary widely in their stance on the matter, but most agree that legal abortions are safer. Access to legal abortions is just one aspect of having access to health care, contraception, and fertility treatments.

After Republican Donald Trump became president in 2017 and that same year appointed the first of what would be three conservative justices during his term in office to the Supreme Court, several conservative, antiabortion state politicians saw these developments as a greater opportunity to challenge and potentially overturn Roe v. Wade. By the time that Justice Amy Coney Barrett had been confirmed to serve on the Supreme Court in late 2020, an increasing number of especially restrictive abortion laws had been introduced and/or passed in states that included Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Mississippi, and others. A number of these laws prohibited the procedure from as early as six weeks, and some did not include exceptions for cases of rape or incest, with supporters advocating for banning abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. Antiabortion activists considered it a major victory when, by September 2021, the Supreme Court had declined a request to block a restrictive Texas abortion law, allowing it to go into effect, that institutes an effective ban on abortions after six weeks as well as enables the filing of civil suits against a pregnant person who has an abortion and their supporters. Many fundamentalist Christians, including groups such as Faith2Action, which had been a driving influence behind the passage of such antiabortion bills, celebrated this development.

They further celebrated when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, ending the constitutional right to an abortion in the United States. Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the opinion, argued that the court had ruled incorrectly in Roe, writing that "the Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion." Thus, the legality of abortion again became a state-by-state matter, with three states—South Dakota, Kentucky, and Louisiana—having earlier passed trigger laws that immediately outlawed most abortions after the ruling. In other states, trigger laws were due to take effect after a waiting period of up to thirty days after the ruling. Several states, such as Georgia and South Carolina, had bans in place before the ruling that were temporarily blocked; following the Supreme Court's decision, those bans could now be enforced. In nine states, the fate of abortion restrictions remained uncertain following the Supreme Court decision and were dependent on the outcome of new legislation or a change in leadership. After Roe was overturned, abortion remained legal and protected by state law in twenty-one states, many of which passed new laws to expand access to the procedure.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision, antiabortion groups praised the Court, including evangelical and other conservative Christians, many of whom had fought for nearly fifty years for the ruling to be overturned. Many evangelical leaders saw the ruling as a spiritual victory and urged antiabortion activists to continue advocating for state laws that outlaw abortion.

Bibliography

Clarke, Paul A. B., and Andrew Linzey. Dictionary of Ethics, Theology and Society. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Callahan, Sidney. Abortion: Understanding Differences. New York: Springer, 2012. Print.

Dias, Elizabeth. "For Conservative Christians, the End of Roe Was a Spiritual Victory." The New York Times, 25 June 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/us/conservative-christians-roe-wade-abortion.html. Accessed 19 July 2022.

Dudley, Jonathan. "The Not-So-Lofty Origins of the Evangelical Pro-Life Movement." Religion Dispatches. USC Annenberg, 5 Feb. 2013. Web. 29 Aug. 2016.

Goodwin, Kristine, and Alise Garcia. "Fetal Homicide State Laws." National Conference of State Legislatures. NCSL, 3 Apr. 2015. Web. 14 June 2016.

Kaveny, Cathleen. Law’s Virtues: Fostering Autonomy and Solidarity in American Society. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2012. Print.

Lai, K. K. Rebecca. "Abortion Bans: 9 States Have Passed Bills to Limit the Procedure This Year." The New York Times, 29 May 2019, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/abortion-laws-states.html. Accessed 6 Oct. 2021.

Luker, Kristin. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. Print.

"Personhood." Rewire. Rewire, 18 Mar. 2016. Web. 14 June 2016.

"Personhood Legislation." Resolve: The National Infertility Association. Resolve, Apr. 2012. Web. 15 June 2016.

Ravindran, Jeevan. "Explainer: What Is the Texas Abortion Ban and Why Does It Matter?" CNN, 3 Sept. 2021, www.cnn.com/2021/09/03/us/what-is-texas-abortion-law-as-equals-intl-cmd/index.html. Accessed 6 Oct. 2021.

"Religious Landscape Study: Views About Abortion." Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/views-about-abortion/. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.

Risen, James. "How America's Evangelicals Turned Themselves Into an Anti-Abortion Machine." The Intercept, 12 May 2022, theintercept.com/2022/05/12/abortion-roe-v-wade-francis-schaeffer-evangelical-christians/. Accessed 19 July 2022.

Schiff, Daniel. Abortion in Judaism. London: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.

Stensvold, Anne. A History of Pregnancy in Christianity: From Original Sin to Contemporary Abortion Debates. New York: Routledge, 2015. Print.

"Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade." The New York Times, 15 July 2022, www.nytimes.com/news-event/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-abortion. Accessed 19 July 2022.