It’s been a fairly common complaint that Christians are so against abortion that they are blind to other ethical issues.The most recent person I have noticed saying this is Paul Windsor:

Since when was abortion a bigger ethical issue than the deaths of children caused by global poverty due to an improper distribution of the world’s wealth? There are babies on both sides of the birth event - in the USA and abroad - that need to be protected with equal zeal.

While I don’t want to provide an excuse for ignoring social evils other than abortion, I’ve never been able to shake the idea that abortion is a greater evil than other issues and always has been.

Here are three reasons I come to that conclusion:

1. Unborn children are the most vulnerable. The people who are able to finally protect unborn babies from abortion are those who carry them, but it is the mothers who allow and even pursue an abortion to be performed. In no other social evil are the victims so defenseless; for a child that has been born there is always at least the possibility of another who can take them away, care for them, or protect them, even against the wishes of the primary caregiver. Not so in the case of unborn children. The very act of abortion requires the primary caregiver to refuse to provide the unborn child with their only protection - they have no chance of running away or appealing to another and no one else is able take on the responsibility of providing for their primary care.

2. Abortion is a direct evil. Many (not all) of the other social evils mentioned are indirectly fatal. Take Paul Windsor’s example: the death of children due to the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources is a side effect of greedy and corrupt business practices. Death is not inevitable where inequality exists because it is possible to keep children alive through intervention even while these other unjust and evil practices are occurring. That is not to say there are not situations where these possibilities are not realised, but it does mean that death is not the necessary outcome of those actions. Abortion, however, is chillingly direct. It’s purpose is the destruction of a child’s life. You cannot have abortion without taking a life. There is no other goal.

3. The legal system protects abortion. Related to no. 2, the legal system supports abortion (even if not in all cases). While it can be argued that other laws contribute to the deaths of those who have been born through setting up and encouraging inequitable or dangerous conditions, the law does not protect people who directly kill those who have been born, except perhaps in extreme circumstances. Only pro-abortion laws directly protect the taking of life.

For these three reasons (and more I haven’t got the time to put down) abortion is a greater evil than other social evils. Even so, the point that Paul Windsor and others are making has weight: other social/ethical evils in the world need far more attention than they are getting from Christians. However, to support this extra attention by saying that abortion is no more important than other social evils is, in my view, incorrect.

In my next post I will look at another reason the Church’s concern about abortion over other issues is ethically justified.

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