“Abortion is an incredibly complex issue.” Well, that is a phrase with which I disagree, but it’s a phrase that I hear often. In fact, as a pro-life worker, I often get into discussions with people about the ethical considerations of abortion. I find that folks will justify and defend their support for abortion by making it sound as though there are deeply complex moral and legal considerations that merit special attention surrounding abortion. For instance, they will say, “Fetal anomalies deserve special consideration.” Let us say the mental stability of the mother and the father in the home in which the baby will be raised deserve special consideration or the economic standing of the mother and father deserves special consideration. The potential pitfalls of adoption matches deserve special consideration, and, of course, we always hear the life and the health of the mother deserves special consideration in each and every pregnancy.

The list goes on and on with very little variation. These complexities that people describe are used to defend the necessity of the availability of abortion as a service to women and families, a service that should be made available without restrictions or interference from politicians or advocates on the pro-life side. Now, without a doubt, I will admit that there are indeed unique and significant considerations surrounding the circumstances of many people who find themselves pregnant when they did not expect to be, or they did not intend to be.

I recall a woman in Vietnam a number of years ago who was dealing with the twofold complexities of her husband, she was not sure, would stand by her bringing the baby to term. So she was faced with bringing this baby to term and raising it possibly by herself, which is a frightful consideration for any woman. Also her doctor was advising her to have an abortion and the reason he was advising her to have an abortion was cause she had been diagnosed with hypertension. He told her that this was a high risk factor and that it would be in her best interest to abort her baby. Please let me assure you, women across the globe for many years have been able to manage hypertension and bring babies safely to full term and delivery.

Hypertension is not a de facto reason to abort a baby. But if you are being told that by your doctor, you are now being faced with a scary dilemma and a complex consideration as far as a life issue goes, and this woman was caught up in it. She went back and forth from wanting the baby to wanting an abortion from feeling like she could bring this baby to term and raise it and feeling like there is no way that she could possibly do so.

I assure you that I agree with the sentiment that circumstances in people’s lives surrounding pregnancy can have many complex considerations, and I assure you that what you hear in the progressive media and the progressive culture is not true. You will hear, contrary to the truth, that pregnancy help centers are there to just trick people into having babies and that they won’t help people beyond bringing a baby to term. You will hear that they do not consider or care about the baby after it is born.

That is not true in every circumstance. In fact, I would tell you that the complex considerations of the people’s lives, the mother and the families of these people who are pregnant, is the core consideration of your local pregnancy help center. In fact, the primary questions that they will wrestle with, if you are a client, is what circumstances in your life make you feel that there is too much complexity to bring this baby to term and to raise it. They also ask, “How can we, as a pregnancy resource center, help you work through those complexities and possibly solve some solvable issues?” That is the core consideration that they have. So along with my affirmation that circumstances in pregnant women’s lives can be very complex, I will submit to you that abortion itself is never a complex issue.

The morality of abortion is not complex at all. There is really only one consideration when it comes to the moral permissibility of abortion. Is it okay to kill an innocent human? That is the only relevant consideration when it comes to the morality of abortion. Is it okay to kill an innocent human? If the answer is no, that it is not okay to kill innocent humans, then abortion is always a moral injustice because science affirms that abortion always targets an innocent human for slaughter. If however, the answer is yes, it is okay to kill innocent humans, then you have made a logical argument, and then it is the responsibility of the abortion advocate to establish under what circumstances it is okay to kill an innocent human being. Truly, there is no other way to argue for an abortion than to accept the fact that abortion exterminates an innocent human being. And you have to delineate when and why it is permissible to do that.

Here is one example of an honest pro-choice advocate. This is a woman by the name of Mary Elizabeth Williams. John Ensor alerted me to the existence of this article. She is an abortion advocate who wrote an article called, So What If Abortion Ends Life? and this is an honest article. Here she writes, “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live. All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for people like me to talk about, yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.” Now that is an honest take on abortion. She is saying that a fetus or a baby in utero is indeed a human being and that that human being does not have the same rights as the woman in whose body that human being resides. She is arguing that all life is not equal at every stage, and that there are times when it is morally permissible to end the life of one human being in favor of another. You can tell though that she is extremely uncomfortable with her own position. She is not sure that she believes it. That’s why it is, “A difficult thing for people like her to talk about” if abortion ends innocent human life. If ending human life is a moral injustice, then abortion is always a moral injustice.

From God’s point of view, we argue against abortion because it always targets an innocent human being. For slaughter is always a moral injustice and always wrong, and for that reason we can say that abortion is not a complex issue. Is it complex to help people think through the solutions to their life that they feel stand between them and bringing this baby to term that could sometimes be complex? Yes, and we are there to help these people work through their complex life circumstances, but abortion itself is not a complex issue.

Passion life exists to help. Christians, especially pastors and pro-life leaders, sound a clarion call on morality and the impermissibility before God of abortion at all stages. Abortion intentionally ends in human life and therefore is an abomination to God. It is not complex. And we are there to stand with women and with their families who are wrestling through difficult and complex life circumstances that make them feel like an abortion is a necessity.

Pray with us. Join in with us. Follow us as we go around the world to the places where abortion rates are very high as we work with those Christians to help them stand in the gap for people in their communities. Join our mailing list@passionlife.org. Put your email address in there to get emails about where we will be next and how you can help. Send us and pray for us as we go. We appreciate your partnership in the gospel because abortion is not a complex issue when it comes to understanding what God has said about it.