A Christian Defense of Roe v. Wade

I walk more in ignorance than in knowledge. When I don’t feel this way, I take it on faith.

I try to live my life as if the Bible were the inspired word of God; I believe that it is. I read it faithfully. I read it to learn how to live. I read it to know God better.

But I wrestle with it. If it’s inspired by the Holy Spirit, as I believe it is, I have no simple answer about why this inspired book has two different descriptions of the death of Judas Iscariot, one in Matthew and one in Acts. I have no simple answer about why Paul, John, and Luke can’t agree about who was the first person to see Christ risen from the dead. I have no simple answer about why the man of God Paul thinks that women are innately more sinful than men, as he suggests in his first letter to Timothy; yet with all the men that lived in Judea in the time described by the Book of Acts, God chose to speak to the daughters of Phillip the Evangelist, who were prophets. And with all the men in ancient Israel, he raised up Deborah in her time, who was both a wartime leader and a prophet. (I consider not accidental Paul's attitude toward women and his assertion that Peter was the first to meet the risen Christ. John says it was Mary Magdalene.)

Once when I was young and well-traveled in the Bible, I explained to my brother Peter that I felt that I could answer any theological question. He promptly asked me a question that I could not answer.

It’s a good working hypothesis that I’m prone to error.

So I hope that I approach with due humility an area of much controversy. There is a rough divide between Republicans and Democrats over the issue of right-to-life versus freedom-of-choice. It’s a controversy that some right-leaning Republicans use to paint Democrats as innately un-godly. When a Democrat prevails in the contest for the White House, I imagine conservative Christians crying out, "Why, O God, and how long?"

Bless their piety, and bless their yearning for God’s will on Earth. May I be blessed in the penumbra of their faith.

I make here a Christian case for Roe v. Wade.

1. A fundamental concept: the image of God.

 This is my core concept to assay the rightness or wrongness of abortion: that mankind is created in the image of God.

This concept appears in the first chapter of the Bible:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:27 (NIV).]
More pertinently, Genesis chapter 9:
"Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind." [Genesis 9:6 (NIV).]
The question is: at what point does the unborn acquire the image of God, such that destruction of the unborn is murder?

2. "Created in the image of God": what does this mean?

The meaning "image of God" is not self-evident. Certainly, Genesis speaks of God as walking in the Garden of Eden as a man would, so that in some sense it can be taken literally – we physically resemble God, and he physically resembles us. This is true at least when he chooses a corporeal form.

The concept of created in the image of God might also foreshadow the incarnation of God as a man. Jesus was one with God, and he looked, fundamentally, like we do.

So there is a literal way in which humankind bears the image of God.

But mere physical resemblance doesn’t satisfy. There must be a mystical way in which humankind bears God’s image; but what is that mystical way isn’t clear. It’s not necessarily the capacity for moral judgment, because God created humankind in his image before humankind ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Nor is it moral purity, the state of innocense before the fall. This is true because God proclaimed humankind to be made in his image as he spoke to Noah, and that was after the fall of humankind. (Genesis chapter 9.)

This condition of bearing God’s image has persisted through history. Jesus was asked whether it was right to pay taxes. Jesus asked who's image was on a coin. He was told that Caesar's image was on a coin. So Jesus said to give to Caesar what was Caesar's, and to God what was God's. The kicker to that story is that while Caesar's image was stamped on the coin, we ourselves bear the image of God.

And then we crucified Christ.

Maybe there is a good and precise and satisfying answer to the question of the full meaning of "created the image of God." I don’t have it.

3. "Created in the image of God": what it doesn’t mean.

But I doubt that the meaning of "created in the image of God" reposes in a genetic sequence of DNA. And at the time of fertilization, that is the zygotes’s sole claim to being human. It doesn’t look human; it doesn’t have a mind. It isn’t aware of itself or its surroundings, and in that way it is less human-like than any variety of fully-formed mammal.

Being uncertain of the precise meaning of "created in the image of God", I lack a clear idea of when in the chain of existence between a human zygote and an infant that breathes air – I have no clear idea of when in that chain of existence a fertilized human egg becomes the "image of God". I do trust that there is a time between these states that a fertilized egg – a zygote – ceases to be mere tissue. I do not believe that that moment necessarily comes at the moment that the father’s DNA mixes with the mother’s.

4. Roe v. Wade and emerging human-ness.

Roe v. Wade acknowledges this. Roe v. Wade is clear: government's interest in forbidding the artificial ending of a pregnancy expands as the pregnancy proceeds. I find this analysis to be intuitively and morally defensible.

 Therefore, the mother has greatest freedom of choice to end a pregnancy at the beginning of it. The government has the greatest freedom to protect the unborn at the end of the pregnancy. In between lies judicial and legislative line-drawing.

5. The reason for this piece.

These words appear near the beginning of the majority opinion of Roe v. Wade, written by Justice Harry Blackmun. They acknowledge strong feelings against abortion and suggest the legitimacy of those feelings.
We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one's thinking and conclusions about abortion. That was true then; it’s true now.

This piece isn’t designed to stir up anger or hard feelings. But I have a friend who as a young man got his girlfriend pregnant. He helped her get an abortion. For this, he considers himself literally to be a murderer. I hope that this piece is balm to him and to others like him.

Some pregnant women have been poor, ill, crushed by shame, or all three of those. They were financially or emotionally or physically unable of bringing the unborn to term. I hope that this piece is balm to women like them who have made a hard choice and now feel guilty.

I write this so that my conservative friends might consider that Roe v. Wade was not defiance of the will of God but a reflection of it. I hope that some who are mystified by the moral blindness of persons who support a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy might see that there are godly arguments on the side of choice, so that they don’t judge others harshly.

I acknowledge that there are arguments that persons who oppose Roe v. Wade can make, and that those arguments have moral force. Certainly, abortion would not exist in a perfect world. But rightly or wrongly I believe that abortion has a place in this imperfect world, within some of the limits outlined by Justice Blackmun and his majority four decades ago