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Does the Bible or the Catholic Tradition Condemn Abortion? There is Much Evidence to the Contrary [1]

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Date: 2025-03-26

Politicized Christian leaders have used the abortion controversy to rally Christians to join conservative churches as well as to support right-wing political groups.

Criticizing this conservative approach to abortion is a sensitive issue that demands some compassion because people love their children so much and are inclined to see accepting abortion as a direct threat to children, families, and society in general.

We can sympathize with this approach however that does not mean we should turn a blind eye to this controversy and accept their views both theological and ethical without a thorough examination.

The Bible and especially the New Testament says almost nothing about abortion and Christian leaders who decide to make it central to Christian ethics therefore have a big challenge.

Christian conservative’s claims about abortion are sometimes based on confusion, misinterpretations, and wishful thinking about the Bible and what it says and does not say about abortion.

Since I disagree with some of these anti-abortion interpretations, I will note three approaches that can be decerned about abortion from the biblical text. They each appear to disagree with the belief that most or all abortion is wrong or that it is a sin to be punished.

In the first approach, the Bible and God does not care about abortion. It is irrelevant. In the second, the Bible accepts abortion and does not think it is a sin (at least in the earlier stages of pregnancy). In the third, the Bible promotes abortion for some purpose such as to punish immoral women.

So sincere Christians may have been misled by their leaders to believe something false. Let us examine their false or questionable interpretations by examining what the Bible says about abortion.

The focus on abortion dates back to the 1973 Supreme Court decision for Protestants and a few decades earlier for Catholics. In other words, it is very recent when examined in the context of 1600 years of Church history. So, viewing abortion as murder is not a conservative position. It is in fact both liberal in the sense of disagreeing with traditional Church authorities and modern.

One might ask how this modern issue became central to conservative theologians and pastors who claim to want to “conserve” tradition and are thus trying to understand how the Bible was understood in the distant past rather than by more modern, liberal believers. Conservatives often take thoroughly modern interpretations and claim they come from the past to give these doctrines more credibility. This has happened to some extent with abortion.

But ignoring this conservative versus modern issue, let us first note that there are 613 commandants in the Hebrew Bible (the 10 common ones are only an abridged list). Given all of these laws, somehow God failed to outlaw abortion in this comprehensive list. The focus on legalism in the Hebrew Bible is indisputable and a rabbinical education is largely based on understanding a complex system of interpretation of these Hebrew Biblical laws.

It also seems clear that the people of the time the Bible was written knew about miscarriages, both accidental and induced. Given the focus on "thou shalt not ..." biblical laws, it is obvious that if God wanted to outlaw abortion, it would have been a simple matter to make a commandment which forbids it (perhaps commandment 614). Since there is no such commandment, although abortion may be objectionable or even repugnant to many modern Christians and non-Christians, it follows that abortion is not against God's law in the Hebrew Bible.

So, the above facts support the view that abortion is irrelevant, and God does not care about it.

We might also look in the Book of Numbers 5:27:

“7 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse.”

Here, there is an apparent recommendation that the Jewish Priest should give a drink intended to curse a woman and abort her child who has had sexual relations with a man other than her husband. Scholars may argue whether the cursed "water" is intended to physically or psychologically/spiritually abort the fetus because of the obscure language used. What is clear is that the woman and by extension her "innocent child" will be outcasts to the community if the child is born after adultery is proven.

Here God and his priests do not appear to be protective of innocent children but vindictive instead. If the cursed "water" is intended to abort the unborn child, we have an instance where God and his Hebrew priests condone and prescribe abortion, and this presents a serious challenge to anti-abortion Christians. In this instance, the priests use abortion to punish the immoral woman. So here, abortion is supported in the Hebrew Bible and has a greater moral purpose.

In Exodus 21:22, the text says that if men cause a woman to have a premature birth which might harm the child, then they must pay a sum to the father to compensate him for any damages. In accordance with Roman Law, the unborn child is owned by the father and considered property.

Fetuses are not "persons" as claimed by conservative Christians since the individual causing the premature birth would likely be charged with assault if the fetus was considered a person. If the unborn child died, the man would presumably be charged with destruction of property rather than murder or manslaughter. Here, the Hebrew Bible states that actions leading to the harm of a fetus (and probably the death of a fetus) are NOT murder of an unborn child.

In this situation, God as interpreted by his priests cares about harm to a fetus only because it is a loss of or damage to property that requires compensation to the victim. It is a civil (damage-related) rather than a criminal (assault, manslaughter, or murder) charge.

Again, here the fetus is not considered a person that can be murdered. God and his priests do not consider it a very serious matter but rather a damage to property case.

For a different approach that does not depend on interpretation of specific scriptures, we can ask the general question, “Is God against abortion?” Let us look at the situation of miscarriage to determine if this is the case.

It is well documented that somewhere between 15% and 20% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage.

Since there is no human intervention, the question arises: “Who or what is responsible for these miscarriages?” For Christians, God created man and woman in his own image and with certain characteristics. One of those features is that women’s bodies are prone to have miscarriages or to spontaneously abort fetuses.

But Christians do not treat God as evil because he created women's bodies to miscarry which results in these abortions. If it is immoral for a woman to choose to abort her child, why doesn't the same moral standard apply to God?

So, whether we like it or not, God being at least partly responsible for hundreds of millions of abortions seems to be the greatest abortionist in history, and his actions over time far surpass the actions of human medical interventions leading to abortion.

This notion that God can do whatever evil he wishes but we must be good (oppose abortion) does not make for a consistent moral law. It makes morality relative rather than absolute (many Christians are strongly against relativistic morality). Abortion is bad based only on who causes it to happen. It is only good when God does it (which follows God’s will).

One conclusion might be that God is not against abortion and since abortion in the form of miscarriage is not against God’s will, women who choose to have an abortion are not sinful and certainly not guilty of murder. When abortion is not evil or sinful, God remains good in this interpretation which is consistent with what most Christians believe.

Finally, there is the issue of the Catholic traditional view of abortion and the Church’s concept of the “quickening.” Catholics strongly support the traditional interpretations of the Bible and Catholic doctrine written by the Doctors of the Church who are the greatest authorities on Catholic belief.

The early Catholic Church (based on the writings of such great Doctors and thinkers of the Church as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St, Jerome, and Tertullian) believed in the quickening. This is also called ensoulment, or the moment when the soul enters the body of the fetus. Some of these thinkers were none the less against abortion. But they did not consider abortion murder until the fetus is “formed” or had a soul infused months after conception.

With this approach, the soul is said to enter the fetus at the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, when the mother begins to feel the fetus stirring or kicking. Therefore, for older Catholics (as opposed to very modern ones), most miscarriages or induced abortions would not be considered "murder" since without a soul being present, there is no individual or “person” to murder.

The current Christian language about “life” being present in a woman’s womb obscures issues related to abortion. Sperm is alive. Eggs are alive. Cells are alive. My kidney is alive. Animals and plants at alive. The statement that “life begins at conception” and abortion kills that “life” seems meaningless. Killing a “living” kidney or a “living” though soulless fetus is not murder.

Christianity is a dualistic system. Mankind is composed of a body and a soul. A “person” requires both. A body without a soul is not a “person.” So, performing an abortion on a fetus with no soul is not murder. One can kill a group of cells (a fetus) which may eventually contain a soul, but this is not murder. People often mourn the loss of potential and the loss of the person that might have lived if no miscarriage or abortion occurred. Women sometimes deeply mourn both their miscarriages and their abortions. But the loss of that potential person does not seem to be a sin or to be murder.

The claim that abortion is immoral seems false from a biblical perspective, but conservative preachers continue to insist it is "in the Bible" using tortured logic and vague biblical statements.

They believe that God is against abortion since the Bible describes how God loves little children and does not want them harmed (even though he seems to harm little children himself as in the book of Job). They claim to know that the fetus is a person since God knew some of his prophets while they were still in their mother's wombs. But God knows everything, and such statements say nothing about when the soul enters into the fetus in the womb.

This is not a comprehensive list of arguments but it is thorough enough to make many of the claims of conservative Christians about abortion highly questionable.

Given all of the above, people can still dislike abortion and strive to make it illegal, but they will have greater difficulty claiming God and the Bible are on their side.

Taking the religious component out of the abortion debate can calm the highly charged disagreements on abortion, making the country far less divided.

The many Christians who have reduced much of their morality to the single issue of opposing abortion will then have to find another reason as to why they are good people and worthy of salvation. This may be a difficult transition for them, but it is better to acknowledge the moral ambiguity of the abortion issue than it is to live an illusion based on misinformation about Christian history and false or questionable interpretations of the Bible.

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/26/2312770/-Does-the-Bible-or-the-Catholic-Tradition-Condemn-Abortion-There-is-Much-Evidence-to-the-Contrary?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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