What does the Bible say about contraceptives that are abortifacient?

The Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish high court, meeting to discuss important social and religious issues

By: Ateo

In discussions on the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, one major point of contention is the fact that some artificial contraceptive methods are considered by the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) as abortifacient.  Related to this is another assertion that life (and a human being's right to life) begins at conception, thus the use of abortifacient is considered as murder.  Existing Philippine laws do not consider the use of abortifacient contraception as murder, but this label heightens the emotional atmosphere of the debate. Because the RCC and other religious groups in the country holds the Bible as an authoritative source of guidance, let us examine what the Bible say about contraceptives that are abortifacient. 


Bible is silent except in one instance

While there could be many verses in the Bible about life and murder in general, there is virtually none that refers specifically on abortion except one.  And this one verse does not consider abortion as murder.

[Exodus 21:22-23, New Jerusalem Bible, the Catholic Bible]

If people, when brawling, hurt a pregnant woman and she suffers a miscarriage but no further harm is done, the person responsible will pay compensation as fixed by the woman’s master, paying as much as the judge decide.

If harm is done, however, you will award life for life.

Abortion is not murder

That biblical passage clearly showed that if the woman was killed as a result of an action, then the penalty is death, but if the action resulted only in the death of an unborn child than the penalty is not the same.  The value of the life of the woman is not the same as that of the unborn child.  Abortion was not considered as murder because if it was then death penalty would have been warranted.

Abortion was penalized by a fine under the discretion of the authorities

It is also clear in the passage that abortion was penalized only by a fine that was under the discretion of a human authority. Because there is a human discretion involved, it is conceivable for human authorities to set the fine at any level or remove it altogether.

This blog post did not argue yet if abortion is justifiable or not.  There will be such argument in future posts.  This post merely points out that there is in fact a biblical incident that describes an action that resulted to an abortion and its penal consequence.  As shown, the Bible does not consider abortion as murder and merely sets the penalty as a fine subject to the discretion of human authorities. 

There who are not happy with the above conclusion may reject this particular verse in the Bible by saying that the verse – and the entire OT – refer only to Jewish tribal practices. Such approach can be countered by the fact that Jesus reaffirmed the validity of the Law, which firmly includes this particular part of the Bible.  However, such debate is well outside of the purpose of this current blog post but could be covered in future posts.