Considering Abortion From Biblical and Ethical Perspectives (1)

By James Quansah, Pastor

CHRISTIANS MAKE up nearly a third (31 percent) of earth’s 7.3 billion people, according to a new Pew Research Center demographic analysis. This means a large number of people are more likely to approach Christian leaders for counselling so as to help them make best ethical decisions.

This pastoral task, in the view of International Religious Freedom Report, 2008, may even be enormous in a developing country like Ghana with high Christian population. Christians like other people in every part of the world are confronted with various challenging and difficult situations some of which require the ethical views of professionals and opinion leaders including pastors to help them address.

This article seeks to discuss the conditions under which abortion should be considered, taking into account biblical and ethical perspectives. Also, key reasons for it are presented. Abortion is one of the common yet covert things most people including Christians decide to do in various parts of the world.  Abortion is a dicey issue, carrying with it various factors which a pastor must consider when counseling people.

In the words of Asiedu-Amoako, “Some of the issues that come before us require critical reflection from biblical, ethical, social, cultural, medical, legal and psychological perspectives.”  Normal L Gaisler reacts to this and says, “Of all the moral issues, the most pressing are those involving life and death. And of the life-and-death issues, the one that involves the taking of the most lives is abortion.”

This makes counseling someone or a couple who wishes to abort an unwanted pregnancy very difficult; it appears to be every Christian leader’s dilemma. For the purposes of ensuring clarity on the issue, it is important that the term “abortion” is defined. Abortion comes from the Latin abortio, which means to abort, miscarriage, deliver prematurely. Thus, according to Mary B. Mahowald, medical practitioners tend to define abortion as premature termination of pregnancy, rather than as premature termination of fetal life.

In defining abortion, medical texts do not refer to the actual or intended state of the fetus as dead or alive.   Abortion is also referred to as ending a pregnancy prematurely. It is the termination of pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks. But why would a woman become pregnant and later decide to terminate her pregnancy?

A woman may terminate her pregnancy due to various factors or causes. Scholars have cited socio-economic factors, natural factors and medical factors as the most common reasons.  Bankole, Singh and Haas have observed in their work that “worldwide, the most commonly reported reason women decide to have an abortion is to postpone or stop childbearing.

“The second most common reason—socioeconomic concerns—includes disruption of education or employment; lack of support from the father; desire to provide schooling for existing children; and poverty, unemployment or inability to afford additional children. In addition, relationship problems with a husband or partner and a woman’s perception that she is too young constitute other important categories of reasons.

Women’s characteristics are associated with their reasons for having an abortion: With few exceptions, older women and married women are the most likely to identify limiting childbearing as their main reason for abortion.”

Moreover, a pregnant woman may suffer a miscarriage as a result of injury she sustained or disorder. This may be described as a natural cause. A number of Ghanaian women suffer miscarriages. For example, a married woman in my neigbourhood endured this spontaneous abortion for years until later medical doctors tied her uterus before she could give birth.

However, in a situation where a fetus suffers deformity in the womb thereby putting the life of the woman at risk, the baby can be removed prematurely on the advice of medical practitioners in order to save the mother’s life. In 1999, my family member’s life was saved by doctors when they realised that her pregnancy posed serious threat to her survival if she carried it to term.

But then why should a pastor be concerned about someone else’s decision to have an abortion even if he is approached? San Filippo speaks on these issues and argues that, “I recognize that within society there is a split between those who support a woman’s choice to have an abortion, and those who do not. I argue that both the decisions, to have an abortion, as well as to carry a pregnancy to term, have consequences.

He maintains that these consequences can be physical, sociological, and/or psychological. Therefore, the decision should be left to individual women to decide which consequences they are able to bear. For this reason, access to safe, medical care regarding reproduction and abortion should be available to all women.

However, in discussing issues concerning abortion, it is important to draw attention to the fact that abortion does not only involve the pregnant woman, but also the unborn baby even sometimes the society. Regarding the baby, Geisler points out three basic positions on abortion, centering on the question of the human status of the unborn.

He lists the three positions as “those who believe the unborn are subhuman favor abortion on demand, those who hold that the unborn are fully human are against all forms of abortion as such. And those who argue that the unborn is a human favor abortion in specified circumstances.”

To be continued…