We’re all aware of the pro-choice rhetoric about the “right to choose.” Those who defend abortion say a woman has the right to choose whether to have the baby or terminate it in the womb. However, this “right to choose” rhetoric is not at all airtight. McQuilkin and Copan explain:
[The ‘right to choose’ language] is laden with questionable assumptions. For one thing, right to choose what? ‘Choice’ is a relative term – like saying ‘to the left of.’ A right to choose in relation to what? We gain moral clarity when we ask: What is the object of one’s choice? Is one free to rape or murder? Obviously not.
Second, the ‘right to choose’ assumes an individualistic outlook that undermines community; it fails to welcome ‘the least of these’ unborn children into the world, where they can be cared for and loved.
Third, this mindset fails to see life as a gift from God and thus a charge to keep. We are not sovereign over our own lives or the lives of others God has entrusted to us.
Fourth, we do not choose our earthly family (or spiritual family for that matter), yet we are called to committed love – to seek the well-being of others, even if doing so is inconvenient and even challenging. Abortion undermines the spirit of these loving commitments that make life meaningful.
McQuilkin and Copan, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p. 370.
Shane Lems
Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Hammond, WI, 54015
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