With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the conversations about abortion rights are ramping up. How is a Christian supposed to engage in controversial cultural conversations well? In today’s podcast episode we discuss important things to know about what actually happened in the court system, how we as Christians should and can engage well in these conversations, and why it matters that we do.
Listen to the episode below or read the full transcript in the article:
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Episode 48. Roe V. Wade & a Christian Response
Hey friends. Happy Wednesday. We are walking into a series of episodes that are going to be a little different than our normal Bible study series.
After talking with a lot of women from around the country and listening to the things that are heavy on your heart, one of the overwhelming issues I hear women talking about is the desire to step into the space of cultural conversations around them, but them not feeling equipped to engage the conversation without things feeling combative, judgmental or emotional.
So, in this series of episodes we are going to be discussing how to engage in controversial cultural conversations from a biblical worldview.
I believe one of the enemy’s greatest tactics in our culture today is to silence the voice of Christians because we feel ill equipped to engage in these conversations well.
So, for the first topic we are going to address is the cultural conversation of the US Supreme Court’s recent overturning of the Roe V. Wade court case. My goal for today’s episode is to educate you about the decision, implications and current conversations happening in the culture, and then equip you on how to engage in the conversation from a biblical worldview, and encourage you to be a messenger of grace in the world God has placed you in.
Now, on the onset of this episode, before we dig in deep to all the things, let me preface this entire conversation with the grace of God. I know all too well how it feels to be a woman staring down at a pregnancy test and thinking to yourself, “Oh, My God. What am I going to do now? I cannot possibly have a baby right now. This is not in the plan! I can’t believe this is happening, and is this really a life at this stage in the game.”
I have plenty of friends and aquaintances who have walked the painful road of abortion, who live with invisible scars of regret, and who deal with the long term consequences from decisions long ago.
I also know the Word of God and character of God to say with absolute confidence that the decisions of our past do not define the grace of God. No mistake, no sin, no pain can overwhelm His grace and forgiveness. God is the God of redemption, restoration and reconciliation. He is the God of second chances, and when we put our faith in Jesus, our sins are forgiven and counted against us no more. So if you have walked the road of abortion, and you are struggling with forgiving yourself, or feeling like God can’t possibly forgive you, let me stop you right there and tell you that those are lies from the devil himself. Satan wants you to live in the regret of the past and not focus on the forgiveness of the Father. We can’t undo things, and there are natural consequences to the actions we take, but there is absolutely grace, mercy and forgiveness for everyone who comes to the Father in faith through Jesus. So please, please, please, reach out if you have any questions about healing and salvation.
Now, as to how to engage in the conversations happening in culture, as Christians the Scriptures tell us in Ephesians to make the most of every opportunity and in chapter 4:29-32 Paul tells the church:
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
I believe that while Paul is talking to the church on how they are to behave with one another, there are principles we can take from here on how we engage with others in the world.
The first step as a Christian is to remember that when we enter into these conversations, chances are the people we are talking to will not have the same worldview and biblical framework in their understanding that we have. Therefore it is crucial we enter these conversations from a position of humility and grace not arrogance and hostility. We aren’t conversing to challenge and berate others, but rather to bring light and healing to a dark and hurting world. So let’s enter these conversations with humility and grace. This doesn’t mean we aren’t educated in our conversations or we can’t be passionate in our emotions and arguments, but we must be godly representatives of grace when we speak to others. And we must remember an argument is not a fight, but argument means we are able to make a case, define the thesis we want to defend, and then defend the point we want to make well so the argument is complete. It does not mean we argue for the sake of being combative to others.
So if you can enter into these conversations with humility and grace, then please, please, please enter into the space and speak up for truth. This world is desperate for truth.
Now, let’s get into the background of this conversation, because there are a lot of talking points that get thrown around and it can be hard to make sense of it all.
This past summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Roe V. Wade. Which in effect said that the original ruling was not constitutional, and the right to have an abortion is not a federally protected right. So a basic civics lesson for everyone. The job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the constitution and the laws already established by the legislative branch of government called congress. So the Congress, which is the house of representatives and the senate, make the laws for the nation, the Supreme Court interprets the laws when there are any disputes and the executive branch is responsible for enforcing the laws. And the individual states essentially have the same system in their local states. In 2022, the reason that this case came to the Supreme Court is because Mississipi wanted to pass a law restricting abortion, and court cases began to be filed saying the state could not restrict the law against abortion because abortion was a federally protected right. Thus the case went to the Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court reviewed the case, they issued a ruling that said the act of abortion is not a defined right in the constitution and therefore falls under the 10th amendment. The 10th amendment to the constitution basically says that anything not specifically laid out in the constitution then becomes a state issue. So if it’s not clearly defined, like the right to freedom of speech, religion, assembly, bearing arms and privacy, the individual states have the reserved power to legislate and restrict laws on issues as they see fit because it is not defined in the constitution. What this did was send the issue of abortion down to the indiviudal states to make their own laws. So it’s not that women in America cannot get an abortion, it’s not that abortion has been abolished and removed from practice, but rather in order to have an abortion a woman is subject to the laws of the state in which she lives in on when and how and how late in her pregnancy she can get an abortion.
Now, why did I just go through all that? Well because we have heard a lot of emotionally charged talking points in the social media and talk shows about how women are losing healthcare and will not have access to medically saving procedures. This is very much not the case. Women across this country still have access to healthcare, they can enter a hospital and will receive the medical care they need in emergencies.
The issue at hand is that the Supreme Court did their job and interpreted the constitution according to what it says, and not what culture wants it to say. There is no amendment to the constiition that grants a woman federal, or national access to abortion. The right to an abortion is not protected in the constitution. If the states want to grant a woman the right to abort her child, that is up to the state legislatures and they can determine that at the state level.
So as it sits right now, in the United States a woman can still get an abortion; her access in states may be restricted, it may be prohibited in many states and readily accessible in others, but that’s just the legal stuff.
Let’s get into the spiritual stuff. And hold tight with me, because this argument for life is one that may be a surprise for you. You’re not going to find a particular verse in the Bible that clearly says, “You shall not abort your fetus.” There is nowhere that says, “Life begins at conception, or a heartbeat.” Or “You have 20 days from your pregnancy test results to change your mind and go to a Planned Parenthood clinic and abort your baby. The text does not say that.
So if you enter into a conversation and someone comes at you and says, “You can’t argue with me as a Christian about abortion, because God doesn’t say I can’t do it anywhere.” Don’t panic. That’s not the argument we want to make.
I believe we often allow the enemy to bait us into the wrong arguments and we lose ground fighting about things that aren’t the most important.
The most important issue in the conversation about Roe v Wade or abortion is the sanctity of life. This is the point we must make. It’s about something greater than abortion rights.
From a Biblical perspective a Christian does not engage in abortion and support, condone or accept the practice of modern abortion because it is a desceration of the imago dei of that human being being formed in the womb of their mother.
This isn’t an issue of the mother’s right to her body, it’s the value of life on the second life within the body of the mother. There are two distinct lives that are both valuable and sacred because they both carry the image of the Almighty God.
We believe life is valuable because God has said so.
The psalmist David writes of God in Psalm 139: 13-16
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
God has formed us with a purpose and for a purpose. He placed us within the wombs of our mothers and he values our lives.
When the prophet Jeremiah struggled with the role God gave him to do, God tells Jeremiah, in 1:5:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
From these passages we can see the care, intention, eternal purposes and value God places on the life of humanity, beginning in the womb, not at their birth.
Also, Scripture tells us there is distinct value of two lives when a woman carries a child, God does not just see the life of the woman, for in Exodus 21:22-25 we read, “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
The life of the child is to be valued as much as the life of the mother.
Well, these are old testament Scriptures, you may say, and they are. But this isn’t about whether we are still following the law, we are looking at the character of God and what He values, and all throughout Scripture, God values life. He sees the fetus as distinct and valuable.
Psalm 127:3 tells us,
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
As a matter of fact, when we get to the history of Israel and the practices of the nations around them, we see that as the nations around Israel practice infanticide and child sacrifice to their pagan gods. This angers God greatly, and He brings forth judgment on Israel for participating in such abominations. 2 Chronicles 28:3; Jeremiah 19:5 and Ezekiel 23:1 make it very clear God is not in the business of harming children for worship, and it is only the powers of darkness that would bring about the practice of murdering children.
In the days of old they would practice throwing children into the fire of Molech as an act of worship, today we sacrifice our children to the idolatrous altar of convenience when we abort babies in the womb so we need not bring them to life.
The outcome is the same. The act of abortion is murder and the outcome is the same whether we murder the child in the womb or outside the womb. Which is really the slippery slope of the abortion issue as a Christian. If life is not sacred in the womb, is it sacred outside?
Once we allow life to be killed in utero, we must follow that logic through. Life now becomes justifiably extinguishable for the sake of convenience. If we no longer care to give care to the aging, elderly or disabled, are we thus able to abort their existence and end their lives?
The abortion issue matters to us as Christians because the consequences of eding life in the womb can be much more far reaching than people talk about.
Okay, why do an entire episode on this topic, why share all this? Because I truly believe the world is looking at us as Christians and needs us to engage in this conversation well. Not from a place of passionate volatility, or for silence or ignorance, but we must be women of God, equipped for the work of ministry, encouraging people around us to move toward grace and healing, not death and destruction.
When we hear these conversations happening in our community and the culture wants to drag things to the way of sin and disregard, it is our responsibility and opportunity to bring the conversation toward the direction of God. We do this by focusing on the true issue at hand, which is the value and sanctity of all human life. From womb to tomb we must care about humanity.
The last and final thing I want to say about this issue is how important it is for us as Christians to not just engage with our words but follow up with our actions. We must be people who speak truth and walk truth, and in this issue of abortion and the sanctity of life we can walk out the words we believe in practical ways such as volunteering in local pregancy centers, donating diapers, wipes and baby food to our crisis centers, churches and food pantry. Throwing baby showers to unwed expectant mothers, fostering, adopting and even just helping support women who are choosing life in the midst of challenging circumstances. The women in crisis don’t need our judgment on their past choices, they need the grace of God working through us to be the hands and feet of Jesus as they walk toward life and forgiveness.
Let’s be women who engage in these controversial conversations from a biblical worldview, not silent in fear. It’s okay for the world to not agree with us, and to be offended by the biblical worldview we hold. Darkness will always be angered by light infiltrating the spaces, but we are called to be salt and light to this world. But we must do it. And we must do it well. We must come from a place and position of humility and grace with the goal of educating, equipping and encouraging people to move toward God, not away from Him.
So as we close this episode out, know that I am praying for you. Thank you for listening to this episode and if you ever need to reach out with comments, questions or just need resources to help you on this journey of faith feel free to reach out!
Until next week!