What did Jesus say about abortion?

At a Glance

What I said: Nothing about abortion. The gospels record no word of mine on it. They do record that I welcomed children when my friends tried to send them away (Mark 10:14), and that I refused to condemn a woman whom others wanted dead (John 8:11).

What the rest of the Bible says: It never names abortion. Poems say God knew a person in the womb (Psalm 139:13; Jeremiah 1:5). In the creation story, the first man becomes a living soul when God breathes into him (Genesis 2:7). The commandment is You shall not murder (Exodus 20:13), and the same law sets only a fine when a man’s violence ends a woman’s pregnancy (Exodus 21:22).

When today’s view appeared: Christians have opposed abortion since the first centuries. When the unborn becomes a person was argued for over a thousand years. Abortion became the central political issue for American evangelicals only in the late 1970s.

The short answer: I left you no rule about this. The commandment people quote, Thou shalt not kill, actually says You shall not murder, and the same law did not treat a lost pregnancy as murder. I never took a decision out of anyone’s hands by force, and I stopped the men who wanted to decide a woman’s fate over her head. Using the law to take this choice from women is not my way. And making a matter I never spoke of the one test of faithfulness, above the poor, the stranger and the sick, which I spoke of constantly, turns my teaching upside down.

I will begin by telling you plainly: I never spoke of it.

You will hear people on both sides of your country’s argument tell you what I thought about abortion. Some will say I would have marched with them. Some will say I would have stood with them at the clinic door. But the gospels contain no word of mine about it, and I will not put one in my own mouth now.

What I can do is show you what I did say, and what I did, with the two kinds of people at the center of this question: children, and women in trouble.

The children

People brought little children to me so I would touch them. My disciples scolded them, thinking I had more important things to do. But when Jesus saw it, he was moved with indignation, and said to them, “Allow the little children to come to me! Don’t forbid them, for God’s Kingdom belongs to such as these” (Mark 10:14). And I took them in my arms and blessed them.

In my world, children had little standing. My own people refused to abandon their newborns, but in the Roman world around us unwanted newborns were often left outside to die, and the law allowed it.¹ I put a child in the middle of my arguing disciples and said, Whoever receives one such little child in my name, receives me (Mark 9:37).

Luke tells that when my mother, pregnant with me, came to her cousin Elizabeth, the baby leaped in her womb (Luke 1:41). Elizabeth said the baby leaped in my womb for joy (Luke 1:44). Many Christians see here that Luke counted the unborn as persons. Others read it as a sign about me, not a teaching about pregnancy.

The women

The other person in this question is a woman, often frightened, often poor, sometimes alone.

In a story found in later copies of John’s gospel, when men brought me a woman caught in adultery and wanted to stone her, I did not join them, and I did not lecture her first. I asked which of them was without sin. When they had gone, I said, Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more (John 8:11).

When a woman known in her town as a sinner wept on my feet at a dinner, my host said to himself that if I were a prophet I would know what kind of woman this is who touches him (Luke 7:39). I knew. I defended her anyway.

I did not pretend that what people did had no weight. Sin no more, I said. But I always said it after I had lifted them up, never while I held the stone.

What the rest of your Bible says

Your Bible never clearly names abortion. A few translations read the ordeal in Numbers 5:11–31 as causing a miscarriage, but the Hebrew is unclear and readers dispute what it means.

It does have poems about God’s care for a life before birth. You formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13). Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you (Jeremiah 1:5). Many Christians read these as the clearest word in scripture on the question. They are prayers and calls, not laws, but they are not nothing.

There is one law about a pregnant woman hurt through violence. If men fight and hurt a pregnant woman so that she gives birth prematurely, and yet no harm follows, he shall be surely fined … But if any harm follows, then you must take life for life (Exodus 21:22–23). Readers have argued for two thousand years about whether gives birth prematurely means a miscarriage or a live early birth, and whether harm means harm to the woman or to the child. The Hebrew says only that her children come out. The King James says her fruit depart, and many modern Bibles, among them the New Revised Standard Version and the Jewish Publication Society’s translation, say a miscarriage. The ancient Greek translation drew the line at whether the unborn child was formed.² My own people’s teachers read it as a miscarriage: the man pays for the loss of the child, but he does not pay life for life unless the woman dies.³

The breath, and the commandment

Your Bible also tells you how the first human life began. The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). The body was formed first. He became a living soul when the breath came. When the prophet Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones come together, they had sinews and flesh and skin, but there was no breath in them, until the breath came into them, and they lived (Ezekiel 37:8, 10).

The scriptures I grew up on tied a living soul to breath. My own people’s teachers drew their line in the same place. A woman’s life came first until the child was born. Once most of the child had come out, it could not be harmed, for one life is not set aside for another.⁴

Then there is the commandment, the one you will hear quoted more than any other verse on this question: Thou shalt not kill. That is not what it says. The words are lo tirtzach, and they mean You shall not murder (Exodus 20:13). The Hebrew word is for the unlawful killing of a person. It is narrower than kill. The same law that gives this commandment also commands executions and war, so it cannot mean all killing. When I spoke of it, I said You shall not murder, and then went further, to the anger that comes before it (Matthew 5:21–22).

So when someone tells you that abortion breaks the commandment, they are quoting a commandment that does not exist. Look at what the same law of Moses did with the one case it names. A man’s violence ends a woman’s pregnancy, and he pays a fine (Exodus 21:22). If the woman dies, it is life for life. The law that says You shall not murder did not call the loss of the unborn child murder.

Later, many of my followers did call it murder. That is the next part of the story. But it was their judgment, not a commandment I gave, and not what the law said.

So your Bible gives you reasons for reverence, and it leaves real questions open.

What my followers did with it

From the first generations, my followers rejected abortion and the exposure of infants. A short book of church teaching from around the year 100, the Didache, says: you shall not murder a child by abortion, nor kill that which is born.⁵ Christian writers condemned leaving infants to die, and in time the church became known for taking in children others had abandoned.¹

But for most of the church’s history, teachers also argued about when the unborn became a human person with a soul. Augustine was unsure when the soul came, and judged that ending an unformed pregnancy was not murder. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, held that the human soul came some weeks into pregnancy. Both still called abortion at any stage a grave sin. Church law often punished early abortion less severely than late.⁶ In 1869 Pope Pius IX removed that distinction from the church’s penalties, and Catholic teaching since has held that human life must be protected from conception.⁶

Protestants also long opposed abortion, but most did not make it a political cause, and by the 1960s many Protestant leaders supported easing the laws. As late as 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that affirmed “a high view of the sanctity of human life, including fetal life,” and also asked its members to work for laws that would allow the possibility of abortion in cases of rape, incest, severe fetal deformity, or likely damage to the mother’s emotional, mental or physical health.⁷ In 1973 the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. By the end of the 1970s, writers like Francis Schaeffer had helped make abortion the central moral issue for many evangelicals, and it became a defining political cause.⁸ In 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe.

In a Pew Research Center survey in January 2026, 60 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Among white evangelical Protestants, 24 percent said so.⁹

I never took the choice out of anyone’s hands

Look at how I dealt with people, every time.

I told a rich young man exactly what I thought he should do: sell everything and follow me. He went away sorrowful (Mark 10:22). I loved him, and I let him go. I did not have him seized, and I did not ask the authorities to make him obey.

When many of my followers walked away, I turned to the twelve and asked, You don’t also want to go away, do you? (John 6:67). I asked. I never compelled.

When a man asked me to force his brother to divide an inheritance, I said, Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you? (Luke 12:14). I would not take the decision out of their hands.

When men dragged a woman before me and said, Moses commanded us to stone such women. What then do you say about her? (John 8:5), they had the law on their side, and a crowd, and stones. The man she had been with was nowhere. They were deciding her fate over her head. I made every one of them put the stone down, and the only judgment left in that place was mine, and I gave none.

When the men at a dinner scolded a woman for what she chose to do with her own costly ointment, I said, Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? (Mark 14:6). When a woman reached out on her own, against the rules, to touch me and be healed, I did not rebuke her for not asking permission. I said, Your faith has made you well (Mark 5:34).

And I told my friends that the rulers of the nations lord it over them … But it shall not be so among you (Mark 10:42–43). I warned against men who bind heavy burdens that are grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not lift a finger to help them (Matthew 23:4).

There is no burden heavier than a pregnancy a woman did not choose, and no decision more her own. The men who write laws about it will never carry it. Many of them will not lift a finger for her or her child afterward.

You may believe, as many of my followers do, that ending a pregnancy is wrong. You may tell her so, and offer her every help to choose differently. That is what I did with the rich man. But taking the decision from her by force of law, so that men in distant rooms decide what happens inside her body, is not my way. It is the way of the rulers who lord it over people, and of the men who held the stones.

Even my own people’s teachers, who valued unborn life highly, said that when a birth endangers the mother, her life comes first until the child is born.⁴ They did not hand her fate to strangers.

One issue above all the others

Here is where I must speak plainly.

I never said a word about abortion. I said a great deal about the poor, the hungry, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner, debt, wealth, violence, and loving your enemies. When I told my friends how the nations would be judged, I gave them a list: I was hungry … I was thirsty … I was a stranger … I was naked … I was sick … I was in prison (Matthew 25:35–36). That is the test I set.

When I was asked for the greatest commandment, I gave two: love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments (Matthew 22:37–40).

And I warned religious men who kept the small rules carefully while they left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith … You blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel! (Matthew 23:23–24). I did not tell them the small things did not matter. I told them they had their order wrong.

So when a movement in my name takes a matter I never spoke of and makes it the one test of whether a person, a candidate or a church is faithful, it has turned my teaching upside down. When Christians are told that one vote on this one issue outweighs everything I did name, so that they may support leaders who are cruel to the poor, the stranger and the sick as long as they promise the right judges, they are being asked to swallow a camel.

I understand why many feel it must come first. If you believe a child dies in every abortion, it can seem like the greatest injustice there is, and I do not mock that conviction. But a conviction I never taught cannot be raised above the ones I taught again and again. Protect the unborn if your conscience tells you to. Do not do it by abandoning the hungry, the immigrant, the prisoner and the sick, and do not call that trade faithfulness to me.

There is an older warning too. At the start of my work, I was shown all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory, and offered them all if I would bow down. I said, Get behind me, Satan! (Matthew 4:8–10). Power over the nations was the one thing I refused. A church that makes a single issue its ticket to political power has accepted the offer I turned down.

What You’ll Hear Back

“Abortion is murder. Thou shalt not kill.”

That is not the commandment. The commandment is You shall not murder (Exodus 20:13). Kill is the King James wording, and it is wrong: the Hebrew word means the unlawful killing of a person, not every taking of life. And the law that gave you the commandment did not count the loss of an unborn child as murder. It set a fine (Exodus 21:22). The argument heard most often on this question rests on a mistranslation.

“Psalm 139 and Jeremiah 1:5 prove that life begins at conception.”

They show that God knows and cares for a life in the womb, and many Christians hold to that. They do not give a law, or say when a person begins. Jeremiah’s line even begins before I formed you in the womb, before there was any body at all: it is about God’s call on a life, not about when a life starts. And the same scriptures say the first man became a living soul when he drew breath (Genesis 2:7). If you hold that the unborn is a person from conception, you hold a serious moral conviction that many in the early church shared. Hold it honestly as your conviction, and do not tell others I said what I did not say.

“Jesus was silent, so he must have been fine with it.”

Silence is not approval. I did not speak of many things, and the first Christians, who knew my teaching best, opposed abortion and the abandoning of babies. If you claim my silence, remember them too.

“If you care about the unborn, you’ll vote to ban it.”

I never told anyone that one vote made up for everything else. I will ask you this: what are you doing for the woman, and for the child after it is born? Will that child have food, a doctor, and a welcome if its parents are strangers? In the centuries after me, Christians who would not abandon babies also became the ones who took them in.

“A law is the only way to protect the unborn.”

Many who say this sincerely believe a child is there, and they are trying to protect it. But whatever they intend, a law that takes the choice from her controls her. I never used the law to make anyone good. I changed people by loving them, feeding them and telling them the truth, and I left them free to say no. Laws that take this decision from women fall hardest on the poor, the young and the frightened, the very ones I came for. If you want fewer abortions, do what I did: stand beside the woman, and make sure she and her child will not be alone.

“It’s her body. Religion has no place in this.”

It is her body, and her life, and her decision. My followers are free to tell her what they believe, as I told the rich man. They are not free to seize the choice from her. That is the line I drew with every person I ever met.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Mark 10:13–16 and John 8:1–11.

You will find: what I did with the children, and what I did with the woman.

Then read Genesis 2:7, Exodus 20:13 and Exodus 21:22–25, and notice what your Bible says, and what it leaves open.

The Short Version

• I never spoke of abortion. I will not put words in my own mouth.
• I took children in my arms, and I refused to condemn a woman others wanted dead.
• I told people what I believed and left them free to say no. I never forced a choice, and I stopped men from deciding a woman’s fate over her head.
• Your Bible has poems about life in the womb, and a first man who becomes a living soul when God breathes into him.
• The commandment does not say Thou shalt not kill. It says You shall not murder, and the same law set a fine, not life for life, when violence ended a pregnancy.
• The early church opposed abortion and the abandoning of babies. Teachers argued for centuries about when a person begins.
• Abortion became the central political issue for American evangelicals only in the late 1970s.
• Raising one issue I never mentioned above the poor, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner, which I named as the test of the nations, turns my teaching upside down.