CLAIM:
I have heard people argue that the time to choose not to have a child is before it is conceived, not after, so that I could use birth control or avoid sexual activity altogether. If I have those rights before getting pregnant, why do I lose the rights over my body once I am pregnant?

REBUTTAL:
The claim is a familiar argument for personal autonomy in making choices. The presumption is that personal autonomy (the right to make all choices without incumbrances) is always the same in all circumstances, thereby considering it an absolute and unchangeable principle. The reality is that autonomy is not such a principle.

Autonomy is not absolute. For example, you cannot use your right to make decisions to rob others. You cannot use your autonomy to yell “fire” in a public theater falsely. You cannot use your autonomy to harm others. Arguing for absolute autonomy in all circumstances is like arguing for the right to drive 65mph on a city street because you can do that on a country highway. A broader and deeper set of absolute principles restrains the right to make a choice about anything.

What are those absolute principles?

When you study different cultures, you will recognize common threads in their adoption of absolute principles. In the United States, we often think of the Declaration of Independence’s opening lines as a solid representation of absolute principles: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The U.S. Constitution best reflects these principles in its Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which state that on the federal and state levels, no citizen shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Notice that the original “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” concepts were later “trimmed” to permit depriving them by “due process of law.” That is because even those so-called principles are not absolute.

Before those words were written, Christians recognized that God established irrefutable governing principles. Jesus put it this way in a dialog with a law expert:

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:35–40)

The key sentence is the last one: “All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.” In other words, all the commandments, rules, and regulations ever recorded in the Scriptures (the Law and Prophets) reflect the dual principles of loving God and loving others.

Another principle worth noting from Scripture is human depravity (a natural inclination to do the wrong thing). We are told that the inclination of every heart is toward evil (Genesis 8:21; Romans 3:10; 8:7). Not only does this depravity make some bad people really bad, but it also makes good people bad (Romans 7:15-24).

Even when the founders of America signed the Declaration of Independence, some of them enslaved people but did not see that as a conflict with the principle of liberty declared in the document; that is the kind of blindness all people have because of their evil inclinations.

This mindfulness of God and others before ourselves answers life’s most challenging ethical quandaries. Even though our natural inclination is to do wrong, which most often means we want to think of ourselves first, the principles of loving God and others first work.

Look at the claim. What does the circumstance look like when we realize we are to glorify God in all things (1 Corinthians 10:31) and think of others ahead of ourselves (Philippians 2:3-5)? That mindset governs our decisions regarding birth control, sexual activity, and the disposition of an unplanned pregnancy. These genuine guiding principles work on both sides of a pregnancy question.

The principle that governs the scenario in the claim is not some vague right to make decisions but the absolute principle to glorify God in all things and to think of others ahead of ourselves. The decision-making involves using God’s Word to understand what to do next. How we love God and others can vary significantly from one person to the next. When we understand our universal evil inclination, we realize how easily we might try to fool ourselves into justifying actions that we know God would not approve of. However, with Scripture as the guide, the right decisions can be made with the assurance that no matter how hard and disrupting it may be, it will work out in the end (Romans 8:28).

I must add one more thought about how we view women. No matter how progressive and modern it may sound to declare women and men to be equals, they are not. Men cannot carry another human life within their bodies. Only women can do that.

Equality at the cost of distinction is no gain. In the misguided pursuit of equality, women have been robbed of their uniqueness. When the first woman in the Garden of Eden was named, she was given the name “Eve,” which means “life-giver” or “mother of all the living.” Efforts to see men and women as equals look like an effort to rob women of their greatest distinction. That is why Christians view abortion as not only an assault on unborn children but also on the mothers who bear those children.

Our rights to make decisions are never absolute except to make decisions that glorify God and serve others. We have that right before a pregnancy, and it remains after the pregnancy. What guides those decisions is the crux of the matter. Christians appeal to the objective word of God. Most other people appeal to an elusive notion of autonomy, which lacks logical consistency to withstand almost any test.