by Calum Miller, Premier Christianity
Abortion is the defining human rights issue of our time, says Dr Calum Miller. For the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury Dame Sarah Mullally to identify as ‘pro choice’ puts her at odds with Christ’s own teaching, he says
Much has been said about Mullally’s position on same-sex unions and (obviously) her sex. Less well-known is her position on abortion.
In a 2012 blog post, she said she would describe herself as “pro-choice rather than pro-life”, while noting that she would be pro-life for herself but pro-choice for others.
It is easy for Christians who don’t align with the most conservative wing of the Church to downplay the issue of abortion, seeing it as an annoying bugbear of the judgmental and patriarchal fundamentalists. In reality, it’s a focus on serving the most vulnerable – “the last, the least, and the lost” – that leads so many of us to a life of pro-life advocacy.
Jesus tells us that when we ignore those most in need, we ignore him and put ourselves at risk of “eternal fire” (Matthew 25:41). Those are the stakes when it comes to abortion. The New Testament word for hell is gehenna, referring to the Hinnom valley one can still stroll through outside the Old City of Jerusalem. But search hinnom in the Old Testament and you will see why it inspired the idea of hell: overwhelmingly, it was famous as the place where Israelites slaughtered their own children.
By contrast, Jesus said “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:14) The Greek word for children used at the beginning of the passage is brephos – the word for a tiny infant, used by Luke for both the unborn baby John the Baptist and the baby Jesus in a manger. Children matter to Jesus, even when they are at their smallest, weakest and most vulnerable in the womb and outside it. Their intentional killing was the best way Jesus could describe hell itself.