I am pro-choice. I have been pro-choice my entire life. I have thankfully never had to have an abortion myself, but I’ve helped others to get them when they needed them. For a while I was getting my standard reproductive health services from Planned Parenthood. Now, I’m a monthly donor to Planned Parenthood. They are even listed as one of the charities in my will.
The biblical evidence for the pro-life position seems weak to me. The most I’ve ever seen anyone muster is a few passages about how God knows you when you are in the womb, and one admittedly cool story about the John the Baptist fetus being able to sense the Jesus fetus when their mothers were in the room together. As a counter, there’s the old testament law (Exodus 21:22) that clearly states the worth of a pregnancy is less than that of a wife, and there’s several passages (such as Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 37:10) that emphasize breath as being the important definer of life.
Abortion would have been legal under Roman law during the time of Jesus, which makes me feel like he would have mentioned something if it was supposed to be a real sticking point. Despite the common association with Christianity and the pro-life movement, polling indicates the majority of Christians agree that abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances. Even the widely publicized opposition from the Catholic Church doesn’t represent the beliefs of practicing Catholics, who tend to respond with roughly the same favorability as the general public (about 82% in favor).
The movement against legalized abortion is not about the sanctity of life. I know this because we still don’t hold funerals for miscarriages. We don’t actually think a fetus is alive, because we don’t mourn it when it dies. We don’t care about the baby, only about women being able to opt-out of motherhood. I could give you my whole list of arguments for what’s wrong with the anti-choice movement, but today I just wanted to offer the religious one. And that’s simply that there is no real scriptural support for either side. So no matter how you feel about this, I can guarantee God didn’t give you the idea.
I think the real test to see if a pro life supporter really cares about the life of the baby is in if they also support social welfare programs to help infants born into povery, or education programs to teach those children, or adoption reform to make it easier and cheaper for qualified parents to give these kids loving homes. Any “pro life” but anti-welfare is not doing it for religious reasons.