If you’ve ever attended a pro-life rally or an abortion protest you’ve heard fellow Christians talking about the unborn’s “right to life.” But is this a phrase that Christians should use? Does it have a biblical basis? Can Christians claim a right to life, or for that matter, any rights at all?
Rights vs. wishes
It all depends on what you mean by the term “rights.” We’ll sometimes hear special interest groups claim a “right” to healthcare or a “right” to a free college education but that’s a trivialization of the term. They are using it in a way that is really no different than claiming a “right” to pepperoni pizza, or a “right” to free parking. These are items some might want at taxpayer expense, but describing your wishlist as rights does not make them so.
Rights are better understood as that which it is wicked to deny. So, for example, if a government doesn’t provide free college tuition, we aren’t going to hold tribunals to investigate their human rights abuses – it is not a monstrous evil to deny citizens a tax-funded post-secondary experience. But if governments violate their citizens’ right to property, then there should be an outcry because we recognize that the right to property is one that governments would be wicked to deny – this is a fundamental right.
Rights before God?
When it comes to the pro-life movement’s “right to life” slogan, I’ve run across some Christians who object to the term. Since we are sinful creatures, wholly dependent on God’s grace, they argue that God doesn’t owe us anything. Are we in any position to make demands of our Maker, to make any claims of “rights” before Him? Clearly not.
But as Stephen Pidgeon explains in this article, just because we have no rights before God doesn’t mean we don’t have rights given by God. In the Ten Commandments God spells out a number of prohibitions, and it is from these prohibitions that our rights spring. God has said, “Thou shall not murder” so from that we all have a God-given right to life. No man, no group, no government has the right to murder us because God has forbidden it. Since this right comes from a God-given prohibition, no authority on Earth may take this right from us. Individuals and governments can violate the right to life – they can and regularly do murder, ending the lives of one-quarter of all citizens here in the United States and Canada before they are even born. But even as they violate the right to life, and deny the unborn’s claim to it, the right remains nonetheless. Governments and individuals did not award this right, so they cannot take it away.
Of course, God can rightfully take our life – we are his, and He can do with us as He pleases. We have no rights before God. But we do have God-given rights that we can hold to before Man.
And, made in His Image (Genesis 1:26-27, 9:6), the unborn, too, can claim a God-given right to life. And we can pray for the day when our governments start to recognize, honor, and protect that right.
