It’s My Body!

As part of the current battle over the abortion issue, we often hear women saying something like, “It’s my body, so I can do whatever I want.”

For instance, the Amnesty International website features a headline that says, “My body, my rights,” followed by the words, “Being able to make our own decisions about our health, body, and sexual life is a basic human right.”1

On the BBC website’s Ethics Guide page, we read, “Here are some of the women’s rights arguments in favour of abortion: women have a moral right to decide what to do with their bodies.”2

From a Christian perspective, human beings do not own their bodies.

So do we own our bodies? Well, from a perspective of evolutionary naturalism, our bodies are the result of natural processes, so each human being owns his or her body. Thus any person can decide their own purpose and meaning for life. Morality is subjective, so anyone can decide what they determine is “right” or “wrong.”

But from a Christian perspective, human beings do not own their bodies. We are not the product of natural processes, but we came into existence because of the actions of our Creator God.

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. (Psalm 24:1–2)

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. (1 Chronicles 29:11)

For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.” (Psalm 50:10–12)

Many Scriptures make it clear that God owns everything, including us. This means God has a right to tell us the rules. He is the absolute authority. He determines what is right and what is wrong.

From a perspective of observational science, is a fertilized egg and the resulting developing child a part of the woman’s body? No. In sexual reproduction, we know DNA from the father and DNA from the mother come together when a sperm fertilizes an egg. The result is a unique combination of information, different from the mother and different from the father. As the cell then divides to build the human body, no new information is ever added. So from a scientific perspective, a unique human being with information from both father and mother exists at fertilization. And right from fertilization, genetic information for this human being determines whether this individual is male or female. Think about it—a fertilized egg with the sex chromosomes XY, and all its future stages of development, is a male being carried in a female’s body. So how could this be a part of the woman’s body anyway?

Another corroborating fact from science is that the mother’s body would reject the developing baby as foreign tissue, but God has built an anti-rejecting mechanism into the uterus and placenta so the developing body of this tiny individual can be accepted by the uterus and nourished until birth. In a way, it’s similar to the following situation: if a person has a kidney transplant, then that person must take anti-rejection drugs since the body does not recognize the tissue and would normally reject it.

So if a woman claims she can have an abortion because what is developing in her womb is her body and she therefore has the right to do what she wants, then she is wrong scientifically. She is a science denier.

Now biblically, we know we don’t own ourselves, because God owns us—he owns everything. And in Genesis 1:27, we read that God made humans in his image.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

No animal was created in God’s image. But with humans, right from fertilization, the new unique individual is made in God’s image.

So what is abortion? Abortion at any stage, from fertilization through birth, is the killing of a unique human made in God’s image.

At the Creation Museum, a stunning pro-life exhibit called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made opened in September 2020. This exhibit details the biblical and scientific aspects of human life beginning at fertilization and helps people understand the reality of abortion.

The unique models show various stages of human development and powerfully teach the scientific and biblical truth about the unique individual developing in his or her mother’s womb. Because women who have had an abortion will come through this exhibit and be convicted about what they see and read, the exhibit ends with teaching on God’s forgiveness and love. And for those who have suffered from a miscarriage in this fallen world, we give encouragement and hope from God’s Word.

Right from fertilization, we can exclaim with the Psalmist,

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:13–14)