A Presbyterian pastor attempted to make the case that Christians can and should support killing unborn babies in abortions in a column at Newsweek on Thursday.
Responding to the passage of a 12-week abortion limit in North Carolina, ordained minister Rebecca Todd Peters claimed abortion restrictions are based on a “narrow,” “patriarchal” “perversion” of the Bible.
“Christians who support abortion access must publicly challenge the perversion of the Christian principles of justice, love, and care of neighbor that are daily being obliterated by the public policies of Christian nationalism. And we need the media to recognize and complicate public understanding of the complexity of Christian thought and practice,” Peters wrote.
A professor of religious studies at Elon University and vice president of the Society of Christian Ethics, she did not explain how killing unborn babies in elective, unnecessary abortions equates to loving one’s neighbor or promoting justice.
Instead, she attacked pro-life advocates by erroneously describing them as a small, loud group of “religious zealots” who want to “impose a narrow vision of Christian theology on a diverse and multi-religious nation.”
The truth is that many pro-life advocates are Christians, but the pro-life movement is made up of people of all faiths and no faith who are united in the belief that every human being, from conception to natural death, is valuable and deserving of a right to life. It is not a Christian view alone.
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Peters mentioned unborn babies – she called them “prenates” – briefly in her column, but did not explain why she believes the Bible teaches it’s ok to kill them.
In attacking the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, she wrote: “The logic of Roe, which established that the state’s interest in regulating abortion lay in the prenate’s ‘potential’ for life, was theologically neutral. In replacing Roe’s language of ‘potential life’ with that of ‘unborn human being’ Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito fundamentally rewrote American law and changed the legal status of the prenate.”
Most Christians recognize that abortion is wrong because it kills a unique, living human being who is a valuable person created in the image of God. The Bible condemns murder, the harming of children and the shedding of innocent blood, and it recognizes unborn babies as valuable, living human beings.
Peters did not use scripture to defend her pro-abortion beliefs or even refute Christian pro-life arguments. Instead, she claimed that most Christians are not pro-life either, and then bragged about how her denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), passed a resolution supporting “reproductive justice” and “abortion care” last summer.
“Most mainline Christian denominations support continued legal access to abortion care and hold that the decision should be made by pregnant people and not the state,” she wrote.
However, she neglected to mention that most “mainline” Christian denominations are shrinking drastically due to a mass exodus of churches who adhere to traditional Christian beliefs about human life and sexuality. For example, nearly 5,000 churches left the United Methodist Church just this year over its leaders’ views supporting abortion and homosexuality.
Peters also asserted that “many Christians … believe that abortion is a moral and social good.” But she did not cite evidence of it. A 2022 Pew Research poll found a strong majority of Christians believe abortions are morally wrong in most or all cases, including 62 percent of Protestants and 54 percent of Catholics.
True Christianity raises up the most vulnerable, defends the defenseless and offers compassion to the suffering. This includes babies in the womb who, throughout the Bible, are recognized as unique, valuable human beings who are created in God’s image.
All across the U.S., Christians are working to save unborn babies and providing support and encouragement to pregnant and parenting mothers in need. Of course, pro-lifers of other faiths and no faith are doing this, too. Through pregnancy centers, maternity homes and many other charities, pro-life advocates are practicing true justice and the “love-thy-neighbor” commandment by providing baby supplies, housing, financial assistance, parenting classes and more to help millions of mothers and babies thrive.
