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Proverbs 31 begins when King Lemuel’s mother gives him wise counsel in the form of several proverbs. After challenging him to avoid several vices that are not fit for a king, she says this in Proverbs 31:8-9—Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.            

Notice that twice King Lemuel’s mother mentions rights. Rights for which the king must speak up, rights he must defend. This may surprise you, but the notion of rights is no American invention. The Mosaic Law in the Old Testament gave the Jewish people unprecedented rights in that day. These included rights for:

  • Fair trials (Ex 23:1-8; Deut 17:8-13, 19:15-21)
  • Fair marketplace (Lev. 19:35-36)
  • Fair lending practices (Ex 22:25-27)
  • Property ownership (Ex 22:1-15)
  • Privacy (Deut 24:10-11)
  • Proper burial (Deut 21:22-23)
  • Combatant nations (Deut 20:1-20)
  • The injured (Ex 21:7-36)
  • The disabled (Lev. 19:14)
  • Servants (Ex 21:1-6, Deut 15:12-18)
  • Employees (Lev. 19:13)
  • Immigrants (Ex 23:9; Deut 24:17-19)
  • Women (Ex 21:10, 26; Deut 21:10-14, 22:13-21)
  • Orphans (Deut 24:17-19)
  • Widows (Deut 24:17-19)
  • The poor (Deut 15:7-11)
  • Those guilty of accidental manslaughter (Deut 19:1-14)

Each of these rights was important to defend. But none of them mattered if you didn’t have underneath them the most basic human right, the right to life. Who cares if you have rights to a fair trial or a fair loan if you don’t have the right to live? There is no more foundational right than the right to life.  

The abortion debate is often a debate over rights. A woman has the right to privacy. A woman has the right to control her own body. A woman has the right to make decisions related to her own economic future. A woman has the right to decide whether she wants to be a mother.  

Every Christian should agree that a woman has each of these four rights and more! The problem is that none of those rights are more important than the right to life! A woman’s right to privacy isn’t absolute. It doesn’t give her the right to take another life as long as she does so in private. A woman’s right to control her own body isn’t absolute. She doesn’t have the right to use her body to take the life of another person’s body. A woman’s right to make decisions about her economic future is not absolute. She doesn’t have the right to take the life of an expensive toddler. A woman has the right to decide whether or not she wants to be a mother. But once she conceives, she already is a mother. In tragic situations when she conceived due to rape or incest, she is still already a mother, even if she did not choose that for herself.  

Sadly, when a society denies a foundational right, like the right to life, other rights begin to erode as well. Consider one example. Many pro-choice advocates have argued for years that "Every child should be a wanted child! Forcing a mom to have a baby she doesn’t want will lead to greater child abuse.” In other words, it’s compassionate to end the life of an “unwanted” child because every child has the right to be wanted and to live a life free from the horrors of abuse.  

But how does this logic play out in reality? Randy Alcorn writes: “In 1973, when abortion was legalized, child abuse cases in the United States were estimated at 167,000 annually. In 2017 there were 674,000 substantiated cases of abuse and 1,720 fatalities, over four times the rate of abuse before abortion was legalized.”[1] He continues: “We should ask ourselves why far more children in America have been abused since abortion was legalized than before. I believe a large part of the answer is that abortion has changed the way we view children. The attitude that results in abortion is exactly the same attitude that results in child abuse: children are seen as an inconvenience, and adults imagine they have the right not to be inconvenienced by a child.”[2]  

Denying foundational rights like the right to life will have a trickle effect in the way we treat one another in society. Therefore, Christians must speak for and defend the right to life because failure to do so will affect all other rights.  

This does NOT mean other rights aren’t worth defending. Christians are often accused of only caring about the unborn. That may be true in some cases, but by and large that is patently false. According to the Heritage Foundation, 350,000 religious congregations operate schools, pregnancy resource centers, soup kitchens, drug addiction programs, homeless shelters, and adoption agencies. These serve 70 million Americans each year and the value of their services are estimated at over $44.3 billion annually.  

Don’t be a one-issue Christian! But don’t think you can ignore or minimize the most foundational issue—the right to life—and still fight against injustice. The evil of abortion is the greatest horizontal injustice in our world today because there is no more foundational human right than the right to life.

 

[1] Randy Alcorn, Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims—What Do Facts & Common Sense Tell Us? (Sandy, OR: Eternal Perspective Ministries, 2020), 47–48.  

[2] Alcorn, 48. Emphasis added.