Before I say anything about abortion, I want you to know where this is coming from: the heart of a pastor. I know this isn’t just an issue to debate. It’s a deeply personal story for many people. Researchers estimate that about one in four American women will have an abortion in her lifetime. That means some of the women who sit in my church each Sunday carry this in their past, and some of the men carry it too. I’ve seen the grief, the regret, the secrecy, and the quiet devastation it can leave behind long after the moment has passed. And on top of that pain, abortion has become one of the most political, divisive topics in our country, where people shout past each other instead of listening. So I want to do something different here. I want to slow down, honor the emotion and the hurt this topic brings, and then gently walk through the logic of why I believe every unborn child is a human being worthy of life and protection, and why I’m fully pro-life.
The entire abortion conversation comes down to this ONE question.
What is the unborn?
If the unborn is not a human being, no justification for abortion is necessary. But if the unborn is a human being, no justification for abortion is adequate.
What Scripture says
Some people say the Bible is silent on abortion. That simply isn’t true. It’s correct that the word “abortion” never appears in Scripture. But the Bible speaks again and again about the very question at the heart of this issue: who the unborn child is and how God sees him/her. And when we listen to what it says, the answer is clear.
As a pastor, I start with God’s Word, and the Bible speaks clearly about life in the womb. David wrote, “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13, NLT). He even described himself as a person from the moment of conception (Psalm 51:5). God told the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5, ESV). Isaiah calls God the one “who formed you from the womb” (Isaiah 44:24, ESV), and Paul said God set him apart before he was born (Galatians 1:15). Job even grounded human equality in this truth, asking, “Did not he who made me in the womb make him?” (Job 31:15, ESV).
One of the most beautiful pictures comes in Luke’s Gospel. When pregnant Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptist leaped for joy in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:41–44). Luke uses the same Greek word, brephos, for the unborn John that he later uses for the newborn Jesus lying in the manger (Luke 2:12). Scripture makes no distinction between a baby before birth and a baby after.
Because every human being is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), human life is sacred. That’s why God commands, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13, ESV), and why He hates “hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:16–17, ESV). Children aren’t a burden or an accident. They’re “a heritage from the LORD” (Psalm 127:3, ESV). If God sees us as persons with purpose before we ever draw our first breath, then so should we.
What science says
You don’t have to be a Christian to see this. Embryology textbooks agree that at conception a new, distinct, living human organism begins. The unborn child has his/her own DNA, often his/her own blood type, and is directing his/her own growth. He or she isn’t a potential life. They are a life with potential.
The differences between the unborn and you are differences of size, development, environment, and dependency. None of those determine worth. A smaller person isn’t less human. A less developed child isn’t less valuable. Moving eight inches down the birth canal doesn’t change what someone is. And depending on others, like a patient on dialysis, doesn’t erase your right to live.
The hard questions, asked honestly
People who support abortion aren’t monsters, and most of the reasons they give come from real pain or real compassion. So I want to take each one seriously. But I’d also ask us to run every reason through one simple test: Would this reason justify ending the life of a two-year-old? If not, the argument has quietly assumed the unborn isn’t human. And that’s the very question we need to answer.
“It’s my body.”
I understand why this resonates. Women have often been told what to do with their bodies by people who didn’t care about them, and that wound is real. Your body matters, and your voice matters. But in pregnancy, there are two bodies. The child has his/her own heartbeat, his/her own fingerprints, his/her own DNA. Caring about a woman’s body and caring about her child’s body aren’t in competition. We’re called to protect both. And to the woman contemplating if it’s your right and your body… please pause. The baby you’re carrying is your baby. As his or her mother, your responsibility is to protect your baby, even from yourself.
“Pro-lifers only care until birth.”
I understand where this comes from. Many people have seen Christians who seemed louder about politics than about helping a scared, struggling mom, and that’s left a real wound. But the evidence tells a different story. Across the country, 2,775 pregnancy centers served more than a million new clients in 2024, providing ultrasounds, parenting education, and post-abortion support, along with diapers and baby clothes, mostly free and mostly run by people of faith. Practicing Christians are more than twice as likely to adopt as the general population, and evangelicals are five times as likely. The church isn’t perfect, and there’s always more we can do. But the claim that pro-lifers stop caring at birth simply doesn’t hold up. And even if it did, our failures wouldn’t change what the unborn child is. Being fully pro-life means caring for life from the womb to the tomb, and many believers are already doing exactly that.
“What about rape?”
This is the hardest question, and I want to answer it gently. Rape is a horrific evil, and a woman who survives it deserves our deepest compassion, protection, and support for as long as she needs it. Nothing I say here minimizes that. If this is you, I’m so sorry. I know I can’t change your pain. I can’t make it better. As a pastor, all I can do is weep with you. Grieve with you. Pray for you. And offer to help. If this is you, email me HERE, and we’ll do what we can to help you heal and start moving forward. But here’s the truth… the child conceived is innocent of his/her father’s crime. We’d never punish a two-year-old for how he/she came into the world. True healing for one victim can’t come by creating a second one, and as a church we are committed to that mother with every ounce of care we have.
“What about poverty, or a child who isn’t wanted?”
Some of the most frightening moments in a woman’s life come when she sees two pink lines and doesn’t know how she’ll make it. Rent, a job, a partner who walked away; those fears are real, and I won’t brush past them. It may even feel compassionate to end a pregnancy when the likelihood is that the child would grow up in poverty or in a single-parent home. But we don’t solve hardship by eliminating the person who makes life harder. We’d never accept that answer for a toddler. Instead, the church has to step in with real help: meals, money, mentoring, and family. Love that’s willing to carry the weight with her. And I believe no child is an accident, and you don’t have to raise your baby alone. There are people willing to help!
“What about a child with a severe diagnosis?”
When my wife was pregnant with my son Jude, we did the normal tests, and one came back with a marker that was flagged as a potential Down Syndrome diagnosis. Within a week and more testing, Jude was in the clear, but during that week we had decided no matter his potential diagnosis, we would love him, care for him, and provide the best life we could for him. His potential disability didn’t determine his worth or value. I’ve walked with parents, first-hand, who heard that their baby may not live long or may face lifelong challenges. But a diagnosis changes what a life will look like, not whether it’s a life. Many families who walked that road found that even a few hours holding their child were sacred. Every life, however short or fragile, bears God’s image.
“The baby is human, but not a person yet.”
I get why this feels like a way through. It lets us acknowledge the science while easing the weight of the decision. But if worth depends on abilities like self-awareness, then newborns, people with advanced dementia, and those in comas are at risk too. History shows us that when the strong decide who counts as a person, the weak always lose. Personhood isn’t something we earn; it’s something we have because we’re human.
“What if the mother’s life is at risk?”
No one who is pro-life wants a mother to die. When a woman faces a life-threatening condition, like an ectopic pregnancy, doctors must act to save her. That’s not the same as abortion, because the goal is to save the mother, not to end the child, even when the child can’t be saved. Being pro-life means valuing both lives, every time.
“Bans just push women into dangerous back-alley abortions.”
This fear comes from caring about women’s safety, and I share that care. No woman should be harmed. But “people will do it anyway” isn’t a reason to make the taking of an innocent life safe and legal. We don’t apply that logic to any other harm. The better answer is a community where no woman feels so alone and desperate that ending her child’s life seems like her only option.
“You can’t legislate morality.”
I understand the worry that one group’s beliefs will be forced on everyone. But every law legislates morality. Laws against murder, theft, and child abuse are all moral judgments. The real question isn’t whether we’ll legislate morality, but whose life the law will protect.
“Men shouldn’t have an opinion on this.”
I hear the frustration behind this, especially from women who feel unheard. I want to listen more than I speak. But truth doesn’t depend on who says it, and some of the most powerful pro-life voices are women. And men need to step up and own their responsibility: to the women they’re with and to the children they help create.
Grace for every reader
If you’ve had an abortion, or encouraged one, or paid for one, hear me: you are not beyond God’s love. Forgiveness and healing are real and freely offered. You can’t earn God’s grace, and not one of us deserves it. It’s true your abortion was a sin, BUT when you come to Christ, your sin gets washed away. Don’t let the world or those in the church hold something over you that Christ died to set you free from. You can be forgiven. You can be redeemed. You don’t have to let the shame or the guilt of your decision weigh you down for the rest of your life. Jesus died for every sin, including this one.
“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, NLT).