I recently saw a picture of a teen-age girl holding a protest sign that said, “My body is only mine.” The claim of women who want to abort babies has been, “It’s my body…Keep the government away from my body…It’s my decision.”
Consider this concept from a Christian’s point of view. Is it really my body?
“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
Does this sound like it is my body? Can I alone decide what to do with it, or has God given me this body so I may serve Him with it?
It is a Choice
A woman may choose to have a sexual relationship with a man, but she cannot choose when conception takes place. This becomes God’s choice, for only God can form a child within that woman (Job 31:15; Psalm 127:3).
We read that God knows babes in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5) and has control over conception. He closed wombs in the house of Abimelech (Genesis 20:18), and He opened Leah’s womb (Genesis 29:31). Look at Eve’s wonderful example of giving God the credit for her firstborn, “she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the LORD.” (Genesis 4:1).
When God forms a baby within a woman, that baby is not her body. It has a body all its own. It has a beating heart, brain waves and fingerprints. It depends on its mother’s womb to survive until the point of birth, but that does not make it her body! (Ecclesiastes 11:5; Psalm 139:13-16)
One feminist, Sallie Tisdale, wrote in the July 1992 issue of Vogue magazine, “Many women, good mothers, who become unwillingly pregnant, speak of the fetus they carry as an invader, a tumor, a thing to be removed.” She later describes pregnancy as “terrorism,” but Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil.” When we call an unborn child a “tumor” or an “invader,” we are calling something good evil. We do not change the fact that it is a child!
A woman has already exercised her right to choose” when she chooses to indulge in the sexual act. If a new life is formed because of that choice, choosing to kill it will violate someone else’s body – the unborn child’s.
Tisdale agrees here by stating that she subscribes to “a feminist ethic of privacy, a biological definition of the body’s right to move through the world unharmed.” This would apply to the child as well as to the mother!
What is the sin?
Fornication is a sin and must be avoided to please God (l Corinthians 6:18). When a woman fornicates and becomes pregnant because of it, having the baby is not sinful. There is no sin in the child. The sin is in the act of fornication. To murder that unborn child only adds another sin; it does not “correct” the first sin.
God does not require a woman to marry the man who sinned with her. This outdated idea has no foundation in the Scriptures. Its practice was merely an attempt to “hide” the fact that a sin had occurred, with no regard for the likelihood of a future unscriptural divorce. Again, the sin is in the fornication, not in giving birth to the child.
Some women who are married decide to abort the baby. The decision is often based on inconvenience because of financial matters or poor marital relations. But no matter how dark the circumstances may seem; God’s will must take first place. We must trust Him. Who knows that the baby one kills might not have become a great evangelist, a doctor who could have saved many lives, or the parent of someone great?
A woman does not have to keep a child if it is not in the best interests of that child. Adoption to godly parents is a good alternative.
Listen to God-Not the World
Please don’t listen to worldly values. God’s law is perfect, and He knows us better than we know our selves.
Listen to David in Psalm 139:1-3: “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thoughts afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.” David had a humble spirit about his body. So must we.
We can argue all day about “our” bodies. But if we are Christians, we must realize that they are temples of God and given to us and the unborn for his glory: ”Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
I wrote this article in 1993 and it was published in the Christian Woman magazine Mar/Apr 1993 issue.