What Is Abortion, And Is It Murder? (Rewrite)
Perhaps one of the most debated and emotionally driven topics of today is the topic of abortion. Is it wrong? A Gallup poll taken in May (2026) of 1,001 U.S. adults found that of them, 48% prefer that abortion be legal---and of that, 33% wanting it legal everywhere, and 15% only in certain situations like rape and incest.1 Pew Research Center also did one in January of this year, of 8,500 U.S. adults gathered from various sources, and found that on the political spectrum, 84% of left-leaning voters want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, compared to 36% of Republicans. It's even to the point where over half of men and women say abortion should be legal in all or most situations.2 It has plagued the media and conversations across the globe---but about both sides---who is right? Many people who support the "termination" of life that is created during pregnancy for any reason at all; Some are neutral on the issue and have mixed opinions; While the rest of us stick to the moral standard we find in God's character as revealed in Scripture.
The Pew Research Center poll found that 43% of Americans say abortion should be legal at or past 24 weeks of pregnancy. Studies in the past show that since the mid-80s, when the opinion in favor of abortion in any circumstance was around 24%, it has been on a steady rise. In 2006, those in favor rose to around 30%, dropping in the years to follow until around 2016, when it rose to its highest support at 34% of Americans. Today it sits just one point lower at 33%,3 yet we can notice a slow incline. For a starting point, the first Gallup poll on abortion in 1975 shows that 21% of Americans favored abortion in any situation.4 Though the rise seems small---the near even-split of opinion not changing much---the slow upward trend, along with political messaging, rhetoric, abortion propaganda, and other issues creating such a hostile political climate hasn't made things any better in the grand scheme.
In this post series, I will tackle the Biblical view on abortion and how Christians should treat it. This is fundamentally a moral argument, but we will get into that in a later part. For now, we will discuss what I mean by abortion and if it raises any red flags.
Getting Definitions Straight
Before you begin any discussion, semantics are key to clear communication. Lest we be committing a fallacy, treating abortion and murder as having two different definitions each of us is using, or treating abortion or murder as including two different definitions (such as murder being the same as justified killing in self-defense). When we are talking about abortion and whether it is murder, we need to know what we mean by those terms. Words aren't just social constructs---the symbols we use for them may be decided by people groups---but the referents for them remain the same. This means that nature, or things outside of our experience and stances, transcend our opinions and feelings. Some things simply have no grounding within the material world. For instance, metaphysical things such as the laws of logic, presuppositions about the regularity of nature and reliability of our mental faculties, or moral laws are things that are unchanging. The law of non-contradiction (a law of logic) remains the same, yet our universe is characterized by its state of constant change. So it cannot be grounded in any one place or object in the universe, as they change. In short, some words can refer to things in our universe, like the descriptive side of "murder," and some can refer to things outside of the universe, or transcendent to it. Sometimes a word's meaning has two components, like in the case of murder, where it has a descriptive component (the physical action in the world), and, more professionally, an evaluative component that ties in a moral standard to be compared to (transcendent, unchanging, and absolute moral law).
So if someone is going to treat abortion and murder in one sense and in one sense only, they are being disingenuous. If we want to know the truth about something, and here whether abortion is murder or not, we must know what these words refer to and mean. Let's start with murder. Murder is the unlawful, unjustified, and intentional ending of a human life by another human being with malice aforethought. Can we agree on that? If not, where is the inconsistency? We can unpack murder into two more components: a Descriptive term, and an Evaluative term (what I will call a Moral term because it ties in a moral standard). The moral aspect would ask whether murder is wrong, and this raises the question of what standard of morality we are appealing to to call it wrong or good. Is it an opinion? Someone's stance? Groups? Governments? Or something higher?5 The descriptive aspect is what the word Murder is refering to. Just like how the word "screwdriver" can refer to the screwdriver in my toolbox, so too does murder have a referent. Murder's referent would be the action of killing another human being. But there is something that separates murder from just any standard killing, and that is that murder is an unjustified killing. If a man shoots another man who is walking home from work peacefully, and another shoots a man who is trying to kill his family, the latter is not murder because it had a justification.
Murder is essentially the killing of another human being without a moral justification to do so. What is moral justification? Any sufficient reason that makes the action in question permissible, and this involves appealing to fixed moral laws and values, such as the inherent lack of justification of murder because it violates the inherent values of human life. I will touch more on moral standards in the last part; for now, we know that murder requires a lack of a sufficient reason for permitting the ending of another human life. In other words, something has to do something to deserve it. So when we say "murder," we must keep in mind the moral and descriptive aspects of its referent and meaning. It cannot be separated from its moral aspect. On one hand, it describes a physical event, and on the other hand, it carries a moral verdict that "nothing justifies murder." Murer being wrong is a universal normative statement, since it is claiming murder is wrong in all places, times, and contexts (it is normative because it is prescribing behaviour, and universal because of its "all" scope). It does not change, and thus it is not a human construct or a phenomenon of nature, as both men's minds and nature can change, yet the truth of the statement does not. Moral rightness is not determined by our feelings and opinions, but transcends them. In the words of Francis Schaeffer, all men have "moral motions," which include a moral law imposed upon all of our consciences. So whether or not abortion is murder, and henceforth is wrong, is not dependent on how we feel about moral statements or what we "want" to be true. Convenience is not an argument, and utilitarianism is not a universally normative system.
Now let's move on to abortion (italics are being used when I refer to this definition). Abortion is the intentional ending of a human life produced in a healthy pregnancy. A medical abortion, or abortion without italics, refers to the act of removing a child from the womb after they have died of natural causes, or forces outside of man's control. Miscarriages are not abortions since the mother did not kill the child intentionally. Contrary to popular thought, a lot of "abortions" that abortion proponents use in arguments aren't actually abortions as defined, and we will see why this is important shortly. This definition is perfectly medically and logically sound, and I think anybody with properly functioning moral cognition can see the implications ahead. We are focusing on a specific form of the action of abortion, a situation where a child is healthy and innocent, and its life ends by the intentional act of the will of its mother. A strawmanned hypothetical does not work here.
Before I continue, notice that the abortion I am referring to is not any abortion (just like how murder is not just any killing), it invariably involves the willing intentions of the mother, or a doctor, to end the life of a child who literally hasn't done anything wrong out of their own will. When we talk about murder and killing, one way to frame it is that murder is killing that involves malice or immoral intentions. And the type of abortion I am referring to also involves such intentions. Just like how murder cannot be split into separate descriptive and moral terms, so too can this form of abortion not be separated from its moral aspects. This is crucial to whether abortion is murder.
For us to definitively determine if abortion is murder, we must discern whether or not a fetus is alive and a human being (which is the main topic of part 2). In short, from the moment of conception, the newly formed child consists of and is developmentally driven by a three-billion-letter code stored in the DNA molecule. The genome of this creature is not similar to any other genome besides that of a human. It was also produced by two humans. So from the moment the egg is fertilized by the sperm, a new, specifically unique human genome is created that already contains the information to form a full adult. The child's gender is decided at this stage. From here, we can learn three main things. 1) Since it has a genome that is consistent and originates from human beings, biologically, this organism's identity may be classified as a human being first and foremost. 2) Whether or not this child will develop into a female or male has already been decided, whether or not we may be able to tell from initial observations of the child in the womb. 3) We can also confirm this child is alive because of its cellular makeup. Cells were the things that combined to produce this child, and cells are the things containing and translating the human genome for this child's development.
From a smaller-to-greater argument, if a cell is defined as alive, then something made of multiple cells is also alive. We can confidently say this being, at its first stage a zygote, is a human being that is alive. In fact, we already know this, as in biology we have two main classifications for life---that of unicellular, or multicellular. Both are alive, and can you guess which one you are? Since we now know what abortion and murder are, and that the child, from conception and the zygote stage, is a living human being, we can now move on to what the Bible says, the types of abortions and the procedures done, and whether or not abortion is murder.
The Biblical View Of Abortion
The Bible is crystal clear that the unlawful or unjustified killing of another man is wrong, and an offense to God (Romans 12:14, 13:14; Deuteronomy 5:17; Exodus 20:13, 23:7; Revelation 21:8; Leviticus 24:17, etc.). This is because within the Christian worldview, all humans are specially created in the image of God, which entails that an attack on an innocent person is an act against the image of God, an attack on God Himself. The Christian worldview also has a Moral standard adequate to account for murder to actually be wrong in the universal sense. If moral law is decided by opinions, groups, or nations, then it is ultimately down to people's opinions. Philosophically speaking, the criteria for justification of moral claims are stance-based. There is nothing beyond somebody's own opinions and stance on morality to justify their morality. In simpler words, everybody's opinions on morality are all equal, and none is better or worse than another in an objectively binding way. This fails to be a proper integration point for moral laws because of their unchanging nature. But God has an infinite, unchanging nature that is the grounding of goodness. Therefore, Christians have a moral standard adequate, if we entertain God's existence, to justify and ground universal moral statements, as well as make sense of every human being's moral motions, or simply the general concept of a "right" and "wrong."
Many abortion advocates claim that a miscarriage is an abortion, but it is in no way an abortion. In a miscarriage, the baby has already died due to natural causes and forces outside of man's control, and not the malicious intent of the mother and doctors to "exterminate the problem." Some also say certain laws in place prevent babies in miscarriages from being removed from the womb because it is classified as an abortion. But this is not true because a miscarriage is medically classified as a "medical abortion," which refers to the sudden removal of the child who has naturally died. What abortion advocates want is simply the ending of a child they view as inconvenient; they insist that this medical abortion is the same as an abortion. This is the same fallacious mistake that is laid out at the start of the last section. In the context of a miscarriage, the word "abortion" refers to the sudden removal of the child who didn't die by the volition of the mother.
With what we know about the human body, genetics, and utero development, an abortion is by all means murder of a fully human life. All arguments against this use emotional manipulation and logical fallacies. If that revelation offends you, I apologize. My goal is to tell you the truth that is external to your reflection, not out of spite or disagreement, but because if I love you, then I want you to know what's real and lie. This position will be supported in depth in a later article titled "Abortion Arguments." Moreover, this is a moral argument. The abortionist is claiming abortion is a human right and a moral good, and the Christian is arguing that abortion is morally wrong. Only one can be correct, and there cannot be any in between. Either abortion is a universal normative affirmative, or a universal normative negation. Either it is morally permissible or morally impermissible. And it all comes down to epistemic justification and grounding. When I say my car is black, the truth of my claim is grounded in my car's being black. When I say 2+2=5 is false, the truth of my claim is grounded in the laws of mathematics not being violated. When I say something is absolutely wrong, I am appealing to something above human opinion, groups, and conventions. A grounding that is not in the material world (as it is essentially change and fluctuation), unchanging, and framed in a way that these "duties" or obligations are owed to it.
Here's the catch: duties are only owed to persons. You are never morally obligated to help a rock falling off a cliff. You do have a moral obligation towards the innocent kid being bullied. Moral duties have an unchanging, immaterial element, but also a personal element. This is why God is the answer to even saying abortion is good or bad to begin with. But the subjectivist/relativist rejects transcending personal truth. They are thus left in a position that has no room for normative claims and presuppositions, and from a philosophical point of view, therefore, is not viable or even argues for abortion in any aspect of right and wrong. Anytime they do argue for objective truth or try to make their position, they are stealing presuppositions from a theistic worldview to make their case, which has no room for such superstitious things. The abortion advocate must violate the rules of their own worldview in order to argue for their worldview, a self-refuting system, and a vicious circle. More on this in the last part, which covers this exact issue.
With that out of the way, i want to finish this out by showing you and describing the many types of abortion procedures that are commonly (one is not used anymore) performed daily in the West, and honestly internationally---forming the largest genocide of any group or class of people in all human history!
Types Of Abortions
There are two main types of abortion procedures: Medical and Surgical. Medical abortions (different from a normal, naturally occurring miscarriage) are taken in pill form to end early pregnancies before 11 weeks (not always the case). The chemicals used in these pills are either mifepristone, which stops the production of the hormone progesterone, which is necessary to continue the child's development, or RU-486, followed by misoprostol, which is a stomach ulcer medication. This eventually kills the child prematurely, ending the pregnancy. This is essentially an intentional and artificial miscarriage, where the mothers often discharge the dead fetus into the toilet, or they wrap it in paper towels. Some people even make little caskets for their baby they just killed to bury them, often out of regret of doing so. A big lie that is spread about medical abortions is that you MUST have the pills prescribed by a doctor and that it is very difficult to obtain them any other way. This can be debunked by ordering abortion pills in under 30 minutes online, and if you are low on cash, some websites even offer them for free if valid reasoning is provided. One more kick to the mule is that buying these online is illegal in several states, but as far as I know, nobody is behind bars for E-abortions. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania, the state I reside in, has these pills online being fully legal, although those who do so are legally required to attend counseling at least 24 hours before they can buy them, which is perhaps hard to confirm for every case.
Surgical abortions are those done in the clinic, and multiple methods are used that each deserve to be unpacked. The next few subsections will deal with each procedure, when it's done, and the steps and tools used.
D&E Abortions
The Dilation and Evacuation Abortion is usually done in the time following the 14-16 week mark. Because the pregnancy at this stage is further along, sometimes a vacuum cannot be used alone, like in a suction abortion, and thus requires tools to be used to rip the child's body into smaller pieces. The doctor paralyzes the cervical ring to open the womb. Using an instrument or stencil, they slowly pry the womb open, which can be very difficult because the cervical muscles are not ready to open and give birth yet. A set of specialized forceps is then inserted into the uterus, and then begins to cut and rip limbs from the child before removing the remnants manually. The bigger bits are removed with forceps first, moving to the smaller bits. Abortionists who perform these abortions must lay out each body part to ensure they have removed everything. And some journalists have found that some of these dismembered parts are sold, with one document showing purchases from the UCLA laboratory in 2023 for a total of $16,065, selling 21 fetal body parts along with other organs.6 This method sometimes results in profuse bleeding infection, the uterine wall can be broken, which can lead to organ and blood vessel damage, and urinary tract infections.7
Aspiration Abortion
Aspiration (suction) Abortions are similar to D&E, with the cervical ring being weakened and pried open. This is typically done in the first trimester, within 14-16 weeks. The tool is a tube attached to a powerful vacuum that, when turned on, blends the fetus and placenta before sucking them out. The risks for this method include incomplete procedure, resulting in the remains of the fetus left inside the mother, which, when rotted, can cause fatal infections; the cervix can be damaged by the violent suction, and pretty much the same as a D&E Abortion.
Hysteronomy
Hysteronomy is a method very similar to a C-section, where the mother's abdomen is opened along with the womb. Although this method is rare nowadays, the baby is then removed from the womb and killed, after which it is discarded along with its placenta. All babies aborted by this method are born fully alive outside of the womb before being killed. If a hysterotomy is done and the mother gets pregnant another time, she runs a high risk of complications during the birth. A C-section will be required to deliver another baby (if she doesn't kill it). This is a lesser-favored method today, with suction methods being rather efficient---the hysteronomy is only used in situations where all other methods have failed---but it is still nonetheless done today.
Many pro-abortionists say that this type of method is necessary for situations like in the case of placenta accreta, where the placenta has attached itself so deeply into the uterine walls that it does not detach and exit normally. But this is false, as a C-section can also be done, and is the suggested method. The course of action when placenta accreta is discovered early on is to wait until some time in the third trimester to deliver the baby through C-section. Some women, once they find out they have accreta, just abort their child, either out of inconvenience, finally a reason to justify the action, or they are scared of abortion propaganda that tells them they need to abort in this situation---when they entirely don't have to. We do everything possible to save the child, and if they naturally die in the process, we let God take them home with Him (1 Samuel 2:6-9; John 3:16; Romans 8:28).
Saline Poisoning
Saline poisoning is not used anymore today, being done mainly in the sicties and seventies. This method requires a long and thin needle to be injected into the mother's stomach, directly into the womb, and into the amniotic sac. Then a salt mixture is injected into the amniotic fluid, so that when the child breathes (amniotic fluid replaces air for a developing child in the womb), the saline mix poisons the child, and they die. A day or so later, the mother should go into labor and give birth to a stillborn, dead child. When it was performed, it was recorded to have caused brain and lung damage in several women, and it is for that very reason that it was abandoned for the previously mentioned methods.
Is Abortion Murder?
It may be early in this series, but we can already begin to make some conclusions about abortion being murder. The methods involved to kill pre-born children consist of violent, dangerous, and repugnant actions with results that are not guaranteed to be good. In fact, the number of deaths caused by abortions is very underrepresented, as a study done in Finland examined women's medical records of death certificates found that 94% of deaths related to abortions could not be identified by their death certificate alone!8 If murder is the unjustified killing of a human being, with malicious intent to kill, then killing a pre-born, helpless human being (abortion) is absolutely murder. In the next article following this topic, we will dive into the scientific facts about life, conception, and when human life begins.
We know the basics of abortion; it's time to dive into the deep end and make, dare I say, a further logical step. For all who are guilty of ending a pre-born human, there is forgiveness and healing in genuine faith in Christ. Jesus doesn't offer self-forgiveness, as spirituality does with its self-worship; it doesn't offer a good feeling that lasts for a moment and leaves you empty. Jesus Christ offers Real Forgiveness, a clean conscience, and the opportunity to heal by placing His Spirit to dwell within you.
All other things lie within the boundaries of time, space, and energy. All of those things are perishing, turning into useless heat, all winding down to a final day. A final day where no amount of money, gusto, women, entertainment, food, or music will continue to plague us. None of those things will be standing, except Jesus Christ and His eternal Kingdom.
From this point, all we know is that abortion is murder. What we are unsure of is whether murder is objectively wrong, which comes in the last part. From here, we need to cover the biology of a developing child, how it's a human, the history of abortion, and responding to cultures' popular objections. The final part tackles this from a philosophical point of view, asking what evil is. What is good? What is required for good to be real and binding? And why God is the only answer to any moral claim and statement. I pray that this series may help you identify the evils of this modern society. May we all be bathed in the presence of the Holy Spirit, and may He provide us all with the patience to read over some things that may aggravate us. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
2 (64% of women, and 55% of men, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/)
4 (Gallup Poll #926, April 4-7, 1975, see 3)
5 (For a more fleshed-out treatment of God's moral necessity, see my article on The Problem of Evil and God's Moral Necessity, https://www.ptequestionstoeden.com/post/the-problem-of-evil-and-god-s-moral-necessity)
6 (RECORDS: Abortion business sold fetal body parts for $765 each to taxpayer-funded labs, Live Action News, Oct 3, 2026, https://www.liveaction.org/news/records-abortion-business-sold-fetal-body-parts)
7 (Numerous studies have shown these risks in D&E abortions, The Safety of Later Abortion, Later Abortion initiative: https://laterabortion.org/safety-later-abortion. Farhadian, Y., Friedman, M., Tarashandegan, D., Mor, L., Cohen, I., Gluck, O., … Sagiv, R. (2026). Complications Following Late Second-Trimester Dilatation and Evacuation: A Retrospective Cohort Comparison of Missed and Induced Abortions. International Journal of Women’s Health, 18. https://doi.org/10.2147/IJWH.S561941. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Health Care Services; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Committee on Reproductive Health Services: Assessing the Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the U.S.. The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the United States. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2018 Mar 16. 5, Conclusions. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507231/. Dzuba IG, Chandrasekaran S, Fix L, Blanchard K, King E. Pain, Side Effects, and Abortion Experience Among People Seeking Abortion Care in the Second Trimester. Womens Health Rep (New Rochelle). 2022 May 12;3(1):533-542. doi: 10.1089/whr.2021.0103. PMID: 35651992; PMCID: PMC9148646.)
8 (David C. Reardon, The Cover-Up: Why U.S. Abortion Statistics Are Meaningless, The Post Abortion Review, Vol 8, April-June 2008, cited in Rachel Wilson, Occult Feminism: The Secret History of Women's Liberation, pg 91)
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