Introduction: What Does the Bible Really Teach about Abortion?
[This is the new book I’m writing, What Does the Bible Really Teach about Abortion? This Introduction is free, but if you want to read the rest of the book as I write it, you need to subscribe, and you’ll also receive a paperback copy when it’s published. My goal is to write the definitive book defending the personhood of embryos from the moment of conception, based solely on Scripture.]
A few years ago, I was sitting in my local AT&T store waiting for a new cell phone. Mine was no longer supported, so I had about an hour to kill. Only three people were in the store: me and two employees.
While I waited, the man and woman in front of my table started talking about abortion. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision had been leaked a few days before. They were planning to overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion at the national level, and leave it up to the states. The employees stood right in front of me, speaking casually to one another: “It should be a woman’s choice whether or not she keeps her baby.” They kept using the term “baby.” I calmly spoke up and said, “If an embryo is a baby, then you can’t kill it.” Their conversation stopped immediately.
But it struck me how cavalier they were, that they actually believed it was morally good to value a human being, not according to his or her humanity, but according to his or her age and location. To kill a baby outside the womb is murder, but to kill a baby inside the womb is health care? And the value of a baby is determined not by God but the baby’s mother?
They would never speak this way about any other human being in public, especially not at work in front of customers! But when it comes to the unborn, our culture has decided that a human being’s value depends on two things: age and location. That is the heart of the issue: Are embryos human beings made in God’s image from the moment of conception, or are they something less than human?
Non-Christians are not the only ones who get this wrong, some Christians do as well. Among evangelicals in 2024, 33% believed abortion should be legal in all/most cases and 65% believed it should be illegal in all/most cases.[1]
If an embryo is a baby from conception, and of course he or she is, then every miscarriage is the death of a baby, and every abortion is the murder of a baby. We all know this. That is why most people weep over miscarriages. We do not weep over what the embryo would become; we weep over what he or she is from conception: a very small baby! A very small image-bearer!
That’s why I wrote this book: to show that God’s word teaches that embryos are babies from the moment of conception and are as valuable as any other human being.
Abortion is the greatest moral issue in American History, and possibly, in the entire history of humanity. In 2025 alone, there were over 1,126,000 abortions in the United States,[2] and over 73,000,000 worldwide.[3] Since 1973, when abortion became legal across the nation in the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, there have been over 65,000,000 abortions in the United States.[4]
To put these numbers in perspective, America’s greatest war in her history with the most casualties was the Civil War, which had almost 700,000 deaths from 1861-1865.[5] More human beings are killed in abortions every single year in America than were killed in the entire Civil War.
Even after the Supreme Court returned the issue to the states, the total number of abortions has not declined, largely because of the widespread access to mail-order abortion pills. This shows that laws alone will not stop abortion. Hearts and minds must change. This change must begin in the church, among those who believe the Bible is God’s word. And Christians must bring these truths to the public square, for God is not silent. He has spoken clearly in His word.
In the chapters that follow, we will walk through eight clear lines of evidence from Scripture showing that embryos are truly human, body and soul, from the moment of conception. We will see what God’s word actually teaches rather than what our culture, or even some Christians, assume it teaches. The Scriptural evidence is undeniable:
Chapter 1 – Since Jesus is truly human from conception, every embryo is too.
Chapter 2 – Since John the Baptist was truly human from conception, every embryo is too.
Chapter 3 – Since Ancient Israel believed embryos are truly human from conception, we should too.
Chapter 4 – Since King David was truly human from conception, every embryo is too.
Chapter 5 – Since death is the separation of the soul from the body, embryos must have souls at conception.
Chapter 6 – Since our loved ones in Heaven are human persons, embryos on earth are too.
Chapter 7 – Since every human being is made in God’s image, that image is not defined by size, age, or location.
Chapter 8 – Since only the Holy Spirit gives life, only He has the right to take life.
My prayer is that as we open God’s word together in the pages that follow, you will see with fresh clarity what God has said about the smallest and most vulnerable image-bearers, and that your love for them will grow.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/02/PR_2025.02.26_religious-landscape-study_report.pdf, 243.
[2] https://www.guttmacher.org/node/300867/printable/print.
[3] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion.
[4] https://nrlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AbortionStatsFS.pdf.
[5] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2b22/c60a85c8dc89a6c9755c450e9d1c48dd7473.pdf.