Should Christians Be Pro-Life?

If you’ve been Youtube at all recently, driven past a sign on the highway, or been getting those pesky presidential campaign texts, you know that the issue of abortion is astronomically huge in our society.

I’m pro-life, I always have been, and I always will be.

I’m mainly directing this post toward the Church, because I see that most Churches under-discuss this topic, and I want to inspire change in that. I think many Christians honestly don’t know many of the realities of abortion, and would have different views if they really knew. This is a complex topic, and as such, I will be splitting it up into a few weeks. In today’s post, we’re going to be looking at some statistics on why women are getting abortions. Next week, we’ll look at what abortion is, and the following week we’ll look at ways to be involved and better educated.

In a study done by the Pew Research Center, around 33% of Evangelical Protestant think Abortion should be legal in the United States. In general, only 18% of adults in the United States who thought abortion should be legal didn’t believe in God.

This means that 79% of adults who think abortion should be legal are those who have some margin for God in their lives, or believe in Him.

Of those who think abortion should be legal in most/all cases, 22% attended church weekly, and 37% attended church at least monthly.

Clearly, being religious, attending church, or affiliated with a church does not equate being pro-life. This means, that there are very likely people in every church who support abortion. In my specific church, we have about 1000 people in attendance each Sunday, I believe. If this data from Pew is correct, that means an average of 220 of those weekly attendees likely support abortion. I surely hope that number is lower in my church, but reality is likely more in line with these statistics.

So why are Christians aligning with the Pro-Choice movement so much? I think I have an answer: empathy and compassion.

Culture also makes the argument that women need access to abortion because it’s only used for health of the mother, rape, and incest. They shout that abortion is not being used as birth control, but as a last resort. This is the drum they beat, no matter how off-tune it is, or how blatantly contradictory it is to the prior argument.

“Would you force a twelve year old who got pregnant from rape to carry that child?”

“Would you force a woman who was raped to carry another man’s baby?”

“I guess men can just choose women to carry their babies now, and rape whoever they want.”

These are some of the main arguments we are hearing from culture.

Unfortunately, the statistics disagree, and disagree sharply that these cases are common. Take a look at these numbers from the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

In the year 2023, there were an estimated 1,037,000 abortions carried out in the United States. This included abortion pills, surgical, and saline abortions.

Cases of incest or rape account for only 0.4% of abortions, nationwide, accounting for only 4,148 of abortions. This is the demographic that culture is saying need access to abortion. They hold this demographic up as the reason abortion needs to be legalized, and inflate what percentage of cases come from this demographic.

Health of the Mother risks account for only 0.3%-2.2% of abortions, accounting for between 3000-22,814 abortions. These numbers are also likely inflated, due to recent changes in what is considered “health” of the mother. Mental health, or her quality of life taking a hit can now be considered “Health of the Mother Risks” in many states. A woman could say that she wasn’t mentally prepared for a baby, and have that pregnancy terminated for that reason alone.

Fetal Abnormalities account for only 1.2% of abortions, accounting for 12,444 abortions. It is also common that babies that are believed to be abnormally formed in many cases turn out to be just fine. There are large percentages of women who are told to abort their child due to abnormalities, but the child is later born totally fine or with the abnormality not being as fatal or obvious as originally thought.

A staggering 95.5% of abortions are elective abortions for unspecified reasons, accounting for the remaining majority of 990,335 abortions. This statistic, unfortunately, is likely under reported. Due to recent restrictions on the abortion pill being removed, women (or men) can now access the abortion pill online with no required doctor visit, or proving their identity to another human being.

The statistics are clear, abortions are not being used in 95.5% of cases to save abuse victims. As such, that minority is not a sufficient data pool to attempt justification of what abortion is really being used for.

We cannot say that abortion must be legal because 0.4-2.2% out of over a million women needed them.

In fact, I would offer that these cases of Incest and Rape are proffered by culture as a reason for abortion to be legal, with the sole intent of empathy shaming those who stand against abortion. These arguments, while especially compelling to female compassion, do not stand up to logic.

“You force a teenager who’s been raped to carry a baby? How could you!”

“You would force a girl pregnant by her brother to carry that baby?! You’re just pro-birth, not pro-life.”

These types of arguments make it seem as if Pro-Lifers are the ones responsible for the hardships that arise in these types of situations. It also pulls the focus away from reality. Remember, only 0.4% of abortion cases are actually due to incest or rape.

95.5% of the time, abortion is not being used to spare abuse victims. In the 95.5% of cases, it is being used electively, when not medically necessary, to allow a woman to get out of an unwanted pregnancy.

We as Christians should have immense compassion for the minority of women who find themselves in situations of rape or incest. We should seek justice for those who abused them, and do all we can to help those women/children heal from the abuse they have endured. But we must acknowledge, as the statistics tell us, that they account for a sliver of a fraction of abortions carried out. So these cases cannot be used to justify abortion as a whole.

If a death is necessary to right the wrong of rape or incest, I would offer that it is the rapist or abuser who should face the death penalty as a form of justice. Killing an innocent life, and putting the mother through the trauma of abortion does nothing to punish the abuser, and only traumatizes the victim further.

The argument that women who are victims of rape or incest should be the reason for abortion to be legal also ignores another huge set of data. The NIH did a study on women who conceived after rape or incest, and found that 32.4% of those women carried the pregnancies to term, 5.9% put those infants up for adoption after birth, 11.8% had miscarriages, with just 50% choosing the abortion option.

Abortion is not the only option for women in these circumstances. Many choose to keep their babies, because they recognize that the child conceived from that abuse is not at fault for that abuse. Instead of passing the trauma of abortion down onto an innocent life, they choose to allow that life to flourish in spite of the circumstances it was created in.

As we begin to unpack this issue, the point I want you to take away is this; abortion is not being used simply for abuse victims. As the statistics clearly show, abortion is elective 95.5% of the time.

That is 990,000 babies dead in a year for no medically necessary reason.

Next week we will begin to look at abortion procedures, and unpack the reality of what happens during an abortion, both to the unborn, and the mother. But for now, let me answer the question I asked at the beginning of this post.