Choose Life: How God is Pro-Life and Pro-Choice at the Same Time

Perhaps no issue has been so hotly debated in social, religious, and political circles as the pro-life, pro-choice debate. My purpose here is to provide relevant biblical truth that will lead ultimately to the flourishing of humans at all stages of life.

I found this description of the two positions from a conservative Christian, pro-life website, to be quite fair:

Pro-life- the belief that all human life is created equal regardless of size, level of development, education, and degree of dependency.

Pro-choice- the belief that every woman should be endowed with the right to her own life and body.

Full disclosure: I am pro-life. But in contrast to some who hold the same position, I recognize and am willing to acknowledge the difficulty of holding this position while supporting personal and bodily autonomy for women. Because women carry the unborn in their bodies, there is a tension between protecting the unborn while supporting women’s right to choose what happens in their own uteruses. 

To illustrate, we don’t have arguments about whether it’s okay for a mother to end the life of her toddler, even a toddler for whom she must sacrifice plans and careers. We all agree it would be criminal. The reason we struggle with whether a woman can sacrifice the life of an unborn child is because it is inside of her, literally living off her body. This adds a layer of difficulty to what would otherwise be an obvious moral choice. 

Moral Healing

Why is a mental health advocate talking about this debated issue in the first place? Because I’m a faith-based mental health advocate. I believe that true inner healing involves, not just mental and emotional healing, but moral healing. In other words, God has led me as a biblically-informed psychotherapist to consider how our moral choices contribute to our psychological health. And I have embraced the truth that God ultimately desires to cleanse our sin-infected hearts and transform our characters.

Jesus healed ten lepers, but only one turned around to throw himself at Jesus’ feet in thanks (Luke 17:11-19). I try to emulate God’s character—generous with immediate healing but hoping for a deeper healing which can only come when the person throws themselves at the feet of the Savior. Specifically, I want women whose hearts have been scarred by abortion to be freed from shame by the forgiveness of Jesus. But why seek forgiveness if it wasn’t even wrong in the first place? This is why I want to give a clear moral statement about abortion, backed scripturally of course, along with abundant assurance of the mercy of the Lord.

I find it fascinating that Moses, in his farewell address to Israel, gave the following charge:

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live (Deut 30:19, NIV).

Moses had been a great moral teacher, expounding the law to Israel, iterating the consequences of obedience and disobedience down to the minutia. He made clear that the choice was theirs, and yet with his dying breath he urged them to choose obedience. Here’s how he said it:

“Choose life.”

“Choose” emphasized human agency. 

“Choose life” provided moral and spiritual direction. 

And notice how he presented the end result of this choice: “So that you and your children may live.” How appropriate to this conversation about letting our unborn children live!

God is Pro-Life

Life comes from God, the Creator and Sustainer. Jesus stated this succinctly: “I Am the Life” (John 14:6). This makes human life sacred from the womb to the tomb.

Let’s be clear that God calls His children, especially His followers, to cherish life at each stage. Protecting the unborn while neglecting the needs of disadvantaged children is morally inconsistent. This is perhaps why in the U.S., over 2500 pro-life pregnancy resource centers support women and children, often long after the child is born. The sweeping accusation that pro-life people and groups don’t care about life after birth is not fair or supportable. But it is true that our concern for humans should not be limited to one stage.

As Nancy Pearcey beautifully fleshes out in her book Love Thy Body, nearly all scientists agree that life begins at conception. The confusion has come with modern ideologies that separate life from personhood. Pearcey explains:

In ordinary conversation, of course, we use the phrase human being to mean the same thing as person. The two terms were ripped apart by the Supreme Court in its 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision, which ruled that even though the baby in the womb is human, it is not a person under the Fourteenth Amendment.

But the Bible makes clear that an unborn child, whether an embryo—a fertilized egg implanted in the uterine wall—or a fetus—an embryo that has developed its organs—is a person. Does the Bible spell this all out in scientific terms? Of course not. But it does something even better. It tells truthful, beautiful stories of the unborn.

The Psalmist said: “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” (Psalm 139:13-15). He knew that God saw him as a person, even before he was born. 

The angel said to Samson’s parents: “For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5, ESV). Samson was God’s chosen instrument “from the womb.” 

Isaiah also felt God’s calling “from the womb,” saying, “Listen to me, O coastlands, and giveattention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name” (Isaiah 49:1, ESV).

Jeremiah received the same message: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:5, ESV).

Finally, the gospel of Luke tells the fascinating story of an encounter between two pregnant women—the newly pregnant Mary and her six-months-pregnant aunt Elizabeth. Mary had traveled from Nazareth to Jerusalem, seeking Elizabeth for sympathy and support due to her own unplanned pregnancy crisis. Here’s what happened when she walked in the door:

When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:40-45)

The six-month-old John, whom the post-menopausal Elizabath had miraculously conceived, leaped in the presence of Jesus, a mere first-trimester embryo in the womb of Mary.

These are humans interacting, not clumps of cells. Persons. To end the existence of them is, bluntly, to end the existence of persons.

A “Statement on the Biblical View of Unborn Life and Its Implications for Abortion” found on my church’s website, says it well. “The principle to preserve life enshrined in the sixth commandment places abortion within its scope.” In other words, the command inscribed by God on tablets of stone, “Thou shalt not kill” applies to the unborn.

God is pro-life.

God is Pro-Choice

In his own farewell address, the aged Joshua recounted a timeline of Israel’s history, including Abraham’s trek through Canaan, the births of Isaac and Jacob, the captivity in Egypt, Moses leading God’s children out of Egypt, the miracles of the Red Sea, the pillar of cloud and fire, vanquishing the Amorites, Balak, and Jericho, and the hornets driving the tribes out of the promised land. He then says:

But if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served, which were beyond the Euphrates River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15, NASB).

It can seem “disagreeable,” or difficult, to serve the Lord, yet this wise leader still admonished God’s people to choose it, “today.” God would never admonish us to do something impossible. His command to “choose” indicates that choice is possible. He gives us agency. Therefore, He says, “choose.”

Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me” (Rev 3:20). Who knocks? Jesus. Who opens? Anyone who hears. We must open the door. Again, God would not tell us to open the doorif we had no agency to do so.

But isn’t the human will captive to Satan? By birthright and nature, yes. The enemy steals and corrupts the will, holding us captive. But Jesus through the Cross led “captivity captive.” “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him” (Colossians 2:15, ESV). The Mighty Conqueror has broken our chains!

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:35-39, ESV).

Because Jesus conquered, we conquer. Nothing can separate us from His love and the freedom of choice He died to give us. God knew that our worship would mean nothing if we served Him from programming rather than our own free will.

Some believe that to limit a woman’s ability, either through moral teaching or legislation, to abort a child is to deny her this God-given freedom. This would certainly be true if what resided within her was not another human with God-given rights. The ultimate freedom is the right to life. Once a child exists, even in the very early stages of life, God grants them the same bestowals He grants all His children, “For there is no respect of persons with God” (Rom 2:11, KJV).

But even this doesn’t take away the freedom to terminate a pregnancy. Clearly, especially in our medicalized, Western world, the state offers options for surgical and medical abortions. Even post Roe v Wade, these things are widely available. Women in the West may, for the most part,legally and safely end a pregnancy. And God Himself won’t stop them.

But, as many have said, “We are free to choose our actions, but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.” We exercise freedom within the context of law. The laws of life, which the Creator has woven through all the dimensions of human existence, ensure that “whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal 6:7).

In contrast, modernity has made terminating a pregnancy a routine, if not trivial, matter. It is, for some, little more than a form of birth control. Birth control and abortion have separated sex from childbearing. They have disconnected doing it and diapers.

But no such disconnect exists in the cosmic picture. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The ark of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Over time, we will reap what we sow. Our children don’t belong to us; they belong to “the Father of all” (Eph 4:6).

Let’s plainly state that the termination of a pregnancy typically occurs in the context of many layers of human sinfulness. The formation of a life in a woman’s womb requires sperm. So often behind an unwanted pregnancy stands a careless and irresponsible, if not neglectful and abusive, man. In a perfect world we would run paternity tests on an embryo, informing the father than he would pay for expenses. We would also lay the guilt of systemic poverty at the feet of the powerful and exploitive. We would ask many questions about the abortion industry itself. Yet women have pretty much borne the burden of this practice alone.

If you are such a woman, let not shame overtake you. Even for this there is forgiveness. God is plenteous in mercy to all them who call upon Him. He has not set aside abortion as a sin worse than others. All have sinned and fallen short, being justified freely by His grace.

Choose Life. God did.

What do Steph Curry, Andre Bocelli, Justin Bieber, Steve Jobs, and Tim Tebow have in common?

All their mothers considered terminating them.

As the “Statement on the Biblical View of Unborn Life and Its Implications for Abortion” published by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists states, “While God could have abandoned and terminated sinful humanity, He opted for life.” When faced with the inconvenient, disruptive, future-darkening, even horrifying burden of saving fallen humanity, the Sovereign God said, “I’ll do it.”

And in the light of His decision to save us, we ask with Zechariah, “Who has despised the day of small things?” (4:10). Could it be that the overwhelming difficulty of an unwanted pregnancy is the beginning of a great thing? “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty” (1 Cor 1:27).

Jesus was rich, but for our sakes became poor, that we “through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). This trajectory of self-sacrifice, from wealth to poverty, bringing those in poverty to wealth, sharply contrasts with the idea of sacrificing the weak to strengthen the strong. While a pregnant woman may be weak in the things of this world, she is still strong in the context of her unborn child. And certainly the father of the child, the system which oppresses her, and the abortion industry itself, are strong forces.

A Story

I close with a story of a dear friend of mine and a public figure in church circles. You may know him. His parents were teens when his mother became pregnant with him. I wrote this person’s biography, so I’ll quote from it now and allow you to guess who he is. I use his birth name which was, ironically enough, Cross.

The mother was young and unmarried, the father unstable; money was scarce and the future uncertain. The baby would have joined the ranks of aborted fetuses but for the beliefs of the mother and her parents. This put it out of the question. That invisible-yet-powerful shield of conviction secured the life of what turned out to be a loving and loveable human being. Much potential is ensconced in a pregnant womb.

And so on August 16, 1972 a newborn’s tiny cry split the air of a hospital in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The cry followed a Caesarian birth. Body fluids everywhere, surgical instruments gleaming, doctors all around, mother dazed with medication and wondering how she would care for a child, being a near-child herself—this was the chaos into which ____ Cross was born.

The parents would try to make a go of it. The mother’s father, Oakley Atkins, worked for the Union Pacific railroad and secured a job for Frank Cross, a job which he holds to this day. The couple remained married for exactly 267 days, when Frank jumped ship as if it was the sinking Titanic. We might say he left his Cross behind, because all that remained with Debra and _____ was Frank Cross’s name.

My friend’s mother, after the birth father left, faced the hardships only a poor, single mom understands. Her second husband was abusive. But finally, she married a good man, who adopted my friend and gave him a home. God’s eye is on the sparrow, and He saw my friend in his tiny years as a story waiting to happen.

And happen it did. After his conversion to Christ as a young adult, my friend became an evangelist and pastor. To date, he tells me, he has preached thousands of sermons, graduated approximately 2000 students from his Bible training school, and, best of all, raised a beautiful family with his dear wife. 

Who is he?

*All quotes are NKJV unless otherwise noted.

Resources: 

Plana is a support system for unexpected pregnancy. All online, supportive, professional, nonjudgmental.

Go to Plana

Embrace Your Grace supports women with surprise pregnancies using a support group model-

Go to Embrace Your Grace

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