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QUESTION: Can we call abortion murder?

ANSWER: We answer YES for the following reasons: 1) The Scripture calls it murder. 2) It fits the definition of the word murder.

Let us look at the second point first. MURDER is defined as the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought. The word also means “to kill or slaughter inhumanly or barbarously.”

Abortion fits the definition. The act is carefully planned. No woman is simply walking down the street when an abortionist mugs her and then performs surgery on her. Women seek abortions, they plan them. The fetus is a human being with its own blood supply, its own heart, its own liver, kidneys, brain, etc. In the womb, it is dependent upon the mother for its food and oxygen and the removal of waste but is a human being. To terminate, to kill a human being with a deliberate plan is murder (first-degree murder by most definitions).

The second definition also fits. What could be more barbarous than the cutting up of a living human being into many tiny pieces, or immersing a living person in a chemical solution that burns them to death, or going to them while they are sleeping in a supposedly safe place and smothering them? Yet those are three of the common methods of abortion, depending on the age of the child. It is a heinous crime.

As Christians, we have an even greater reason for labeling abortion as murder. The Bible teaches us that taking another human life (except in the case of the government justly punishing a capital crime or waging a just war) is murder.

In two ways the Bible shows that abortion is murder.

The Bible teaches us that the pre-birth child is a living human being and a sinner. (e.g. Luke 1:44, Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 51:5). The taking of such life is murder.

Secondly, even the accidental causing of a child’s death in the womb while committing a felony is called murder punishable by death. (Read Exodus 21: 22-25.) In the case cited, two men are fighting. During the fight, one accidentally hurts a pregnant woman and her child. If the child is injured, the guilty party has to pay limb for limb, eye for eye, life for life. If such a case is punishable by death, unpremeditated and all, how much more is the premeditated act MURDER.

As Christians, and as responsible citizens of our world, we must acknowledge that ABORTION IS MURDER.