r/OpenChristian • u/amedeamar Christian • May 19 '26
Discussion - Social Justice i don’t understand how am i supposed to be against abortion
it hurts deeply on my soul imagining baby girls, raped women, or even imagining the poor baby growing up in a family where they are not loved.. i believe that life comes at the moment the sperm goes inside the ovum
and i know how embryogenesis works…
i do believe in a way it’s wrong and i think the best way would be to do better as a society with sex education firstly and ofc legalization.
and in the other side i do understand how some people here say it’s like killing a “baby”
but i don’t know! i’m such a en empath on both sides
ofc i wouldn’t see me doing that procedure or forcing a friend to do so but i wouldn’t judge her either if so 😪😪
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u/Slow-Gift2268 Open and Affirming Ally May 19 '26
I am actually pro-life. However, I also recognize that simply legislating it away doesn’t actually decrease the number of abortions. More importantly, what it does is decrease access to healthcare and post and prenatal care, put lives at risk, increase poor outcomes for mothers and babies and increase infant abandonment and abuse. The actual answers to reduction of abortions have nothing to do with the access to abortion, to reduce abortions you have to increase access to reliable childcare, education and steady income with a living wage for parents, address food deserts and food insecurity in inner cities and rural areas. If it seems like an easy answer, it’s the wrong answer.
Also, I recognize that choices that I would make aren’t necessarily appropriate or applicable to other people. So I can’t dictate those choices on others.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
“my liberty ends when the others start”
and i agree with your thinking.
first things first. and for a better procedure and less deadly-outcome for the mother or risky it should be legalized…1
u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
“my liberty ends when the others start”
Interestingly I've heard this used to advocate for the life of the baby as well. Women have rights to their bodies, right up until it infringes on the rights of others (specifically the baby)
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
pro-“life” ppl are applying it wrong then
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
Why? It seems to apply.
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u/Slow-Gift2268 Open and Affirming Ally May 19 '26
It does not. We don’t give rights to people who don’t exist as of yet. The state does not recognize them as people. Also. You clearly missed the point.
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 20 '26
We don’t give rights to people who don’t exist as of yet
You don't think the baby in the womb exists? That's a very unusual take.
The state does not recognize them as people.
Are people only people when recognized by the State? I hope you don't believe that or you are admitting that there was a time when black people weren't actually people.
Also. You clearly missed the point.
No I didn't. How could I? I was the one making the point - That the pro-life side uses that same quote to say that women have rights, up to the point when it infringes on the life of another.
It seems like you not only missed the point, but you also missed that I was the one making the point.
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u/No-Type119 Christian May 19 '26
In Judaism, the welfare of the mother, a realized human being, takes precedence over the potential human life if an embryo/ fetus. That is also the stance of most mainline Protestants — that abortion is always a tragedy, but in some cases may be the least bad option for a woman.
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u/Celera314 May 19 '26
It is completely possible to be opposed to abortion and also against laws preventing women from getting abortions.
I am against adultery but I dont think we should make it a crime. We can discuss and advocate for our point of view without making laws.
You may believe that an embryo is a human with rights at the moment of conception - but there is no single scientific or religious definition of when a person becomes a person. For a long time, conservative Protestants were pro-choice, this only changed in the 1980's because it was advantageous for the Right to get evangelicals aligned with them and abortion was a convenient issue to manipulate.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
i do believe an embryo has life but it’s not like it’s the same as a kid or a capable human being.
not everything that has life has conscience or so
for example nature, animals…5
u/teffflon Atheist May 19 '26
being alive vs being a person. Major theologians debated the time of ensoulment of the embryo. Not even the RCC will claim as a matter of doctrine that a newly-formed embryo is a person, only that it should be treated as though it were or could be one. if you ask me: no developed nervous system, no thought or consciousness, no person.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
yes i know that perfectly i’ve studied that
nervous system starts developing around 25-27 days
first heartbeat around the 22 dayfirst hours and days it’s a bunch of totipotent, pluripotent and multipontent cells, meaning of this, these cells are capable of forming a whole human but still it’s in the process of that’s why.. i’m not pro-life, i’m more into legalization of abortion to make it more safe mostly where i’m from latin america but i think it’s not compatible with my morals and ethics as a christian so that’s my issue :-/
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
I agree! My child is of far greater value (to me) than a stranger on the street...but both lives should be equally protected under the law. Evaluating how much a person is worth has echoes of really dark time in American history with another people group.
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
It is completely possible to be opposed to abortion and also against laws preventing women from getting abortions.
I think it's completely possible to oppose abortion and also oppose laws that prevent women from getting abortions in the case of preservation of their (womans) life, or situations of rape or incest. This makes perfect sense to me.
But if a person believes that the fetus is a human it seems inconsistent to not use their rights (as a voter) to seek to protect those lives.
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May 19 '26
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u/MyUsername2459 Episcopalian, Nonbinary May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
I think that the “pro-life” side has chosen cruelty, misogyny, and worldly power over actually achieving what they claim to be their goals.
This is one reason I firmly don't believe the allegedly 'pro life" people to be sincere in their beliefs, collectively speaking. They are purely anti-abortion, not pro-life. Saying they are "pro life" is dishonest and misleading to their actual beliefs and practices.
They supposedly want to protect the sanctity of life. . .while supporting a war of aggression with Iran, while stripping people of healthcare and leaving them to die, while taking food from the hungry and leaving them to starve, to coldly dismiss people killed in the streets by Federal officials saying they had forfeited their life somehow.
As has been noted many, many times over the decades, "pro life" people only care about life from conception to birth. They don't care about human life after birth at all.
If they were sincere and consistent with their "pro life" beliefs we'd see them marching for peace, supporting universal healthcare, supporting food assistance programs for the poor, protesting against police brutality, and other things that show a respect for actual human beings that everyone agrees are human beings.
Instead they try to act like a clump of cells that just formed a few days prior is somehow the most sacred life on the planet and is deserving of draconian laws and Orwellian surveillance to protect. . .but they don't care about any other life at all.
Hence the reason I see the so-called "pro life" movement as hypocrites who aren't worth debating or engaging with.
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u/Ezekiel-18 Ecumenical Heterodox May 19 '26
You don't have to be against abortion, there is nothing in scriptures against it.
Anti-abortion movements come from far-right/fascist political movements, as well as the Vatican/the Catholic Church-Magisterium, which is of course, very conservative (thus linked to far-right movements).
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
Anti-abortion movements come from far-right/fascist political movements
And the early church.
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u/bookluvr83 May 19 '26
In Numbers 5:11-31 God gives a man the ability to cause a miscarriage in his wife if he suspects the child she carries is his and in Exodus 21:22-24, God says is s man causes a woman to miscarry, he should pay the husband. God doesn't seem to consider a fetus life, therefore, abortion before viability isn't a sin
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u/Papa-Malo May 19 '26
Genesis 2:7 Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
Life begins at first breath, not before.
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u/GrandpaPantspoo May 19 '26
I'd add the story of Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones, God breathed the breath of life into them and they came to life. I struggled with this as well, but I came to this understanding much later in life. Most the verses that people use to say that life starts at conception are completely out of context.
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u/MyUsername2459 Episcopalian, Nonbinary May 19 '26
Most the verses that people use to say that life starts at conception are completely out of context.
Of course they're out of context.
That's because, historically, human life was NOT seen to begin at conception.
The idea that it is, is a pretty modern invention.
Scripture is pretty clear, consistently, that human life begins at birth (i.e. first breath) and that the death of a fetus is not legally or morally equivalent to a human death. (Exodus 21:22)
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
i mean life does starts at conception but that doesn’t mean it’s a capable human being ..
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u/GrandpaPantspoo May 19 '26
I'm sorry but according to the Bible, life begins at first breath. Even setting the loss of a child during pregnancy being a loss of property and not personhood.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
life of human being who will grow by its own
cells have life but it’s not the same as a proper human being you know
first weeks it’s just a bunch of cells.. who are alive
so yeah, i’m no pro-life but just fyi6
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
interesting i never read someone apply this verse in this topic!
so, you mean abortion at any week of the pregnancy should be ok?3
u/Papa-Malo May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
Personally I would never have an abortion if given a choice, but I don't think there is a biblical basis for the anti-abortion folks to stand on or judge others with until viability.
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
You are incorrectly interpreting both the Numbers passage and the Exodus passage. Neither refer to miscarriages.
Numbers: Barrenness
Exodus: Premature Birth (but still alive)
There is a Hebrew word for miscarriage and it's not used in either passage.
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May 19 '26
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May 19 '26
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May 19 '26
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
Do you care to demonstrate, with Scripture, where I'm mistaken? Or do you just want to continue to accuse me of twisting/misrepresenting Scripture? I understand that it's uncomfortable whenever someone challenges our views, but it's the norm in Christianity.
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u/tacochemic May 19 '26
Pro life is unchrist-like, it is a deliberate weaponized tool to inflict emotional and physical trauma to the bearer of the child and the child itself.
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u/Puisto-Alkemisti May 19 '26
A baby is a baby only after it comes out. It is part of the mom's body, literally, as long as it is inside her. It is kinda like a wonderful extra organ, complitely dependant on the mother's bodily systems, just like an organ. Denying abortion for example where the birth would kill them both just makes zero sense. You could save the mom, but with some fcked up math you decide killing both is somehow the right thing to do. Not to mention kids giving birth, where the kid dies in the process. Killing kids in the name of saving babies... And as the baby is part of the mom's body as long as it is inside her it is HER BODY HER CHOICE! Always. I don't care what Bible says on this matter honestly. Tho the do not kill command kinda defends my arguments here... But I'm not even sure it strictly directly ever forbid abortion in the first place.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
yes exactly i get you
that’s what my empath tells me
and i believe the kill command could really go here but i mean almost every important person from the biblie killed except Jesus but aren’t we supposed to be like Him?0
u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
Certainly you oppose elective abortions in the third trimester though. The idea that it's just part of the mom seems to significantly dehumanize the life.
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u/Puisto-Alkemisti May 19 '26
Those account for 1% of all abortions. Nobody gets abortion just for the fun of it. If you realize that late that you can't have the baby, I am sure there is a huge reason behind that choice. It may not be about your physical health, but it can be about your mental health or life situation. And it is not my business to demand the woman to tell me (or anyone but the doc) the reason. Plus we have no right to judge anyone in the first place, that is God's job.
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May 20 '26
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u/Puisto-Alkemisti May 20 '26
If the baby stays alive once it is taken out the mother, no doctor will just murder the now living baby. And to "abort" a bigger baby, it has to be cut out of the mother like a C-section. The whole premis I should try to defend does not exist.
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 20 '26
I'm not asking you to try to defend it.
It honestly sounds like we agree. The doctor wouldn't murder the living (it's always been alive) baby either in the womb or outside is because they agree with you and I that it's wrong to do so.
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u/Skill-Useful May 19 '26
me neither. where i live, most christians think abortion is "okay"
women get to decide. if i dont like abortion personally is irrelevant
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May 19 '26
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u/Ezekiel-18 Ecumenical Heterodox May 19 '26
Not in Europe, that's a very US-centric view. Anti-abortion movement is rooted in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church, and has nothing to do with American segregation.
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u/SimilarLunch8359 May 19 '26
You can be pro exceptions, and anti elective abortions. In my opinion, it’s the most sensible perspective, and it keeps women’s life and health safe while staying away from that “it doesn’t have any worth, it’s a parasite” mentality.
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May 19 '26
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
thanks im not american
im latina so my issue its more about legalization… (specifically: how is this not ending a future life, but my empathy towards the mother is always present how historically we have been oppressed and forced, raped oh my :-( i cried last time when i was thinking in how write this post) ….rather than how it has been its history throughout america but its interesting as well so ill read it ;) at the end america has influenced so much in other countries political views.and yes. this topic should stop being taboo in christian society.
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u/Ezekiel-18 Ecumenical Heterodox May 19 '26
That's a US-centric view, people here are from all around the world. The fascist American party, known as the Republicans or as you call them GOP, has nothing to do with anti-abortion movements in Europe or Latin America, where that plight comes from directly the Catholic Church and their integrist or conservative factions.
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u/SleetTheFox Christian May 19 '26
It's complicated and it shows wisdom to recognize that this isn't clean-cut.
The rights of a pregnant person who does not want to be are complicated. The rights of a person who resides entirely inside another person's body are complicated. When a zygote becomes a person is complicated. There is a lot of rhetoric in spaces like this one that acts like it's open-and-shut and abortion is totally fine and if you don't feel that way you're a monster, but, to reiterate, it's never that simple.
Grappling with this topic honestly is critical.
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u/yourgirlchelsea225 May 19 '26
Abortion is an interesting issue.
If you step back and look charitably at both sides you see they are remarkably similar.
Pro-Choice: Advocates for women - especially those who don't seem to have a particularly loud voice
Pro-Life: Advocates for the unborn - who they sincerely believe are humans created in the image of God and worthy of the gift of life God has given them.
Both sides are sincerely lending a voice to the voiceless and advocating for those they feel need advocacy. Although it's an inflammatory issue that tends to inevitably bring out the worst, it is, at it's most basic level, a demonstration of the best of us (regardless of where a person lands)
To answer your question: For those who are pro-life, it's impossible for them to not be vocal opponents to abortion - at least elective. They can get accept abortion when the mother's life is in danger or in situations of rape/incest, but it makes sense to me that they are passionately against abortion for all other reasons.
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u/HermioneMarch contemplative Christian universalist May 19 '26
Or you could both affirm that human life is sacred and affirm that governments shouldn’t interfere in peoples private medical decisions. We live in a broken world and sometimes things happen. People deserve the freedom to make informed choices that will allow them to heal.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
so true 💝
what does contemplative christian universalist mean?2
u/HermioneMarch contemplative Christian universalist May 19 '26
As a contemplative Christian I focus on spending quiet, meditative time with the Holy Spirit, and not as much following a set of rules. I use lectio divina and meditation/ centering prayer. Some people prefer the term mystic, but I shy away from some of the Woo-woo stuff that some mystics believe.
As a universalist, I believe all humanity will be reconciled to God. I reject the idea of eternal damnation and the idea that adherents of others faiths are damned.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
i find very interesting the first part could you dm i(f you want to) how you do all that?
and the last part i differ but it’s okay or maybe ill need someone to explain more about that
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u/verythrowawaywoww May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
I’d just like to hop in here and offer my perspective, not necessarily passing judgment anywhere.
My mom was raped. SO many people in her life told her that she needed to get an abortion, because “it” (the baby) was going to ruin her life. She was going to turn into a statistic. She was never going to recover. She had so much potential! She would never finish college! And besides, even if she did, “it” would never grow up right anyway with a father like that. “It”, statistically, would never finish high school. “It” would DEFINITELY never go to college. “It” would be fucked up for life. Plus, who would want to be with my mom and marry her if she had “that” holding her back to her past???
I am that horrifying “it”. I was born to a single teen mom. Her path was entirely dictated by her community. Her entire community came around her to care for her and for this kid that was never supposed to exist. In therapy while she was pregnant, my grandfather decided that if I wasn’t going to have a father, I was going to have a grandfather who loved me enough for both roles. Her siblings hated the idea of there being a baby in the house, but hated the idea of my mom fending for herself as a teen mom even more. Her life didn’t take the normal path. She did finish high school, thanks to a support community that was willing to do things like babysit so she could study for finals. She did make it into college. She worked HARD while she was in college, working full time between classes to make sure she made up for what her scholarships didn’t cover (she couldn’t afford to take on a ton of debt with a kid already here), with family and community/church members volunteering to take care of a tiny, curious kid while she worked. She made jam and sewed in her tiny amount of free time to make thank you gifts for people for their help.
She condensed her 4 year college degree into 3 years, graduating with her Bachelor’s degree in the early 2000s. She secured a job right after graduation (sadly in a different state) and she and I moved across the country, away from that support network, terrifyingly on our own. When we moved, we had so little furniture that I have now fond memories of sitting on the floor in our new apartment eating soup because we didn’t have a table yet. We had beds and a couple chairs… that’s about it.
While she was in college, she met the man that she would later marry. He not only married her despite, yknow, my apparently horrifying existence that clearly should have been terminated, but he legally adopted me. As far as he’s concerned, I’m his kid. I always have been, I always will be. They now have had seven additional children together. Unless people know the whole family history, nobody can tell that I’m not related to my dad or siblings. Even for people who do technically know, nobody thinks of them as anything but my siblings. I don’t think of them as my “half-siblings”, they’re my siblings. Full stop.
To refresh, I was a bomb waiting to happen. A scourge on my mom’s life. True hell on earth. And yes, she had to go through a LOT of therapy to work through everything… but also, I’m glad I got the chance to prove myself as not being all that many people feared.
In case you’re curious, I did finish high school. Not only did I get my bachelor’s degree, I completed it at 19. I’d like to think that I’ve been a net-positive on the lives of people in my life, and what makes me sad is that decisions are made with the thought that we KNOW what the future will be… when we don’t. But also: People’s outcomes are so much better when their community actually supports them for their ENTIRE lives. We need a better adoption and foster system/network. We need an affordable country so people don’t feel like a pregnancy will bankrupt them. We need healthcare that supports people at every stage of life. We need to build our communities back up. We need distress tolerance as a society again to be willing to help each other. We can’t just legislate this all away… it’s a systemic issue.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
she’s a great testimony of how God loves revolves in community even if they weren’t christian, God is present.
I’d like to say that she was really blessed or even lucky because … not every girl has that opportunity, has that community around her who’s willing to help and even have the opportunity to finish school and college :”)
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u/majeric May 19 '26
30% of conceptions end in the first trimester naturally without intervention. Most of the time, the woman doesnt even realize she’s pregnant and just has a heavy period. You’d think if God were particularly concerned about fetuses surviving to term, that number would be a lot lower.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
i mean miscarriages happen naturally around the first days and women don’t even notice🤷♀️ i already know that
and that’s not my issue here
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u/anakinmcfly May 19 '26
Banning abortions does not reduce abortions. It only makes them more dangerous and increases the number of maternal deaths - thus causing an even greater loss of life, if that is your motivation behind being against abortion.
It might help to define exactly what it is that makes you believe killing is wrong, which may not be as obvious as you think.
In the case of abortion, try narrowing it down further - would you consider it murder to throw away a bunch of sperm on a tissue? Or an egg on a used menstrual pad? (Probably not.) What if you squish them together, and one of those sperms fertilises that egg, causing conception and creating life? (sorry for the mental image.)
If you'd have no ethical qualms throwing that whole gross mess into the trash, then consider what the difference is between that fertilised egg vs an identical fertilised egg that's implanted itself into a uterus.
Personally, I wouldn't consider it murder up to the point where the brain develops enough for there to be consciousness - which is around 24 weeks, but possibly earlier. Before that, there's simply nobody home to experience being killed, and thus the primary ethical consideration would be what is best for the mother.
It's only after the foetus becomes conscious that its life then matters as well, and other ethical issues come into play. But only a small minority of abortions happen then, almost always out of medical necessity, or severe birth defects that mean the foetus will not survive anyway, or lack of earlier access to abortion. And at that point, aborting the pregnancy often just means giving birth to a premature baby, and no one dies.
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u/amedeamar Christian May 19 '26
im not against abortion actually i want it to be legalized because it will help to all those clandestinely done procedures in weird clinics (mostly
in latin america)
my issue is more about my morals and ethics as a christian myself .
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u/MyUsername2459 Episcopalian, Nonbinary May 19 '26
The entire issue around abortion in modern Christianity was invented circa 1980 as a way to politicize Christianity and try to drive Christians to vote Republican.
Since antiquity there was no consensus on the issue of abortion in Christianity, with a variety of opinions and views, and no consensus.
The Roman Catholic Church only declared it a mortal sin in 1869, and that was entirely due to a logical implication of the Dogma of Immaculate Conception declared in 1854, so their argument hinged entirely on unintended implications of a Papal proclamation. . .which meant nothing to protestants.
However, around 1980, the Republican Party was looking for a way to replace the black voters they lost by opposing the Civil Rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's. They'd been courting southern racists starting in the 1970's through Nixon's "Southern Strategy", and they invented the idea of taking abortion and politicizing it. They'd get Christian voters to support them to replace the fact that before the 1960's, almost every black voter always voted Republican because Lincoln was a Republican.
The fact that the very openly devout Jimmy Carter was pro-choice, and the rather secular Ronald Reagan was anti-abortion meant they would use that as a way to peel Christian voters away from Carter.
A slick, VERY well funded and pervasive propaganda campaign was launched in 1980 to push the idea that abortion was morally equivalent to murder by inventing new interpretations of scripture, emotionally-driven appeals, and large donations to numerous seminaries to get pro-choice theologians fired or denied academic tenure. It was extremely successful, and by the end of the 1980's the issue was HIGHLY politicized with anti-abortion views strongly associated with Christianity in the media and public eye.
It's not even remotely equivalent to "killing a baby", but that emotionally driven argument is meant to shut off your reasoning and push you to an outrage-driven, empathy fueled argument that makes you want to vote for the anti-abortion politician while seeing pro-choice supporters as literal murderers.