The phrase “My body, my choice” is thrown around a lot these days. The intention is to simply claim that whatever I do with my body is my choice. Therefore, you’ve got no right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body. Is that true?
As this site is called Topical Bible Studies, then certainly we are going to see what the Bible has to say about “my body, my choice.” However, first, I want to analyze this saying from a logical, everyday perspective.
When Christians react to “my body, my choice,” they often say, “I agree, but…” However, I don’t agree. Don’t get me wrong; I think they respond with overall great points, so I’m not throwing out their entire arguments. Yet I think it’s not helpful to agree with the phrase “my body, my choice,” even on the smallest level, because you don’t always have a choice with what you do with your body.
Yes, your body should be respected and protected. And that’s why in most cases, if you use your body to attack another person, you will be restrained. In most cases, if you use your body to murder another person, you will be arrested. If you use your body to even harm itself, depending on the situation, you may also be subdued.
Every day, you and I are told what we can and cannot do with our bodies, and we’re okay with that. Where I live, it’s illegal to choose to inject heroin into your body. If you’re under a certain age, you do not have the choice to consume alcoholic beverages with your body. If you’re driving, and a police officer pulls you over for not wearing your seatbelt, “my body, my choice” will not get you out of a ticket. The authorities around us often assume the right to tell us what we can and cannot do with our bodies, and most of us benefit from their rules every day.
As I raise my children, I guide them in what is good, which sometimes regulates what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. Likely, that was also true of you and your parents while you were growing up.
It may be my body, but I don’t always have a choice with what I do with it.
Now, onto the biblical perspective. God created my body, and He has authority over it. So even when the laws of the land permit me to do something to or with my body, I should always ask how God speaks about the issue.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul labors for several chapters to convince the Christians to keep their bodies pure. Sometimes, he speaks of the church of Jesus as “the body.” In that case, the Bible is talking about Jesus’ metaphorical body, the church. But in some cases, Paul speaks of an individual Christian’s physical body. For example, in chapter 5, Paul addresses a man in Corinth who was sleeping with his father’s wife. Paul says God’s not okay with that! Brother, it may be your body, but you’ve got no choice in the matter—stop it! In chapter 6, Paul forbids Christians from joining their bodies with prostitutes. Here’s how he explains it:
Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:12–20
There’s a lot to unpack in this passage, and I encourage you to study it deeply. Ultimately, the Bible is telling you and me that God gave you a body, and He has authority to tell you what to do with it. Your body, God’s choice. Yet everything God tells you to do or not to do with your body is for your very best interests. It also protects the people around you. In the world, we recognize the wisdom of having laws and limits in place for regulating the body regarding driving, drugs, and other areas of life. How much more valuable are the regulations God gives us in Scripture for how to use our bodies to glorify God?
Regarding sexuality, God says in the following chapter that husbands and wives, in a sense, relinquish bodily autonomy when they become married.
Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
1 Corinthians 7:3–4
Really, the New Testament is teeming with beautiful regulations on what all disciples—both married and unmarried—should and should not do with their bodies. If you want to see another example, just read what is often called the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, where Jesus teaches about how to submit your body to the glory of God. You may want to lust, kill, commit adultery, and hate with your body, but Jesus says His disciples are not to indulge in any of these sins. Your body, His choice.
“But you’re a man,” a reader thinks. “You have no right to speak on this matter.” Huh? So far, we’ve been applying everything in this study to both men and women. Oh, I get it. I see where this is going. Abortion. Did you notice that was the first time I used the word abortion in this article? You see, “my body, my choice” is not just false for those desiring to terminate a pregnancy. Men, it may be your body, but you don’t always have a choice with what you do with it. Women, it may be your body, but you don’t always have a choice with what you do with it.
The first way to see this in the context of abortion is to remember that abortion takes place in what is called unwanted pregnancies. She may have (or may not have) chosen to have intercourse, but given that the pregnancy is unwanted, she is now surprised that she did not get the choice as to whether or not the baby began forming in her womb. Put another way, if people truly had full autonomy over their bodies, there would be no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy. When we are speaking of an unwanted pregnancy, by default we are talking about a woman who did not choose for the baby to develop in her womb.
When you hear the phrase “My body, my choice,” what do you think about? For me, I think of very vocal advocates for abortion rights. “My body, my choice” is the most common argument I have heard over the years for granting women the right to elective abortion. It’s a convenient, pithy statement that works well as a chant and fits nicely on a protest poster.
Although we have already seen how “my body, my choice” is destroyed by everyday life and logic in the lives of men, women, and children, let’s now look closer at how “my body, my choice” applies (or doesn’t apply) to abortion.
Inside a pregnant woman is a fetus who is growing. That fetus is completely dependent on the mother for life. Because the fetus is growing inside the mother’s body, some people believe it’s the mother’s choice whether or not she deliberately terminates the pregnancy.
In this case, the “my body, my choice” argument is destroyed even further. As we saw earlier, there are laws—both governmental and biblical—that regulate all people as to what they can and cannot do with their bodies. Just because you’re pregnant does not mean those laws don’t apply.
More importantly, however, the fetus is not the mother’s body. Yes, we can use the Bible to defend this point; however, let’s stick with scientific facts for a moment. If the fetus were the mother’s body, that would mean that the mother now has two brains, two hearts, four legs, and four arms. The baby is in the mother’s body, but not actually the mother’s body.
Arguments for “my body, my choice” often try to reduce a growing fetus to something like “potential life,” a “clump of cells,” or an organ. First, let us recognize that these all contradict each other. The phrase “clump of cells” tries to devalue the fetus, yet organs are valuable and are made up of cells that are alive. Yet if the fetus were only potential life, it could not grow, respond to stimuli, and so on. The fetus exhibits all traits of life. Couples who are overjoyed at the growth of their family prove such with their language. Do they host gender-reveal parties to find out if the organ is a boy or a girl?
If “my body, my choice” were reality, then how is it that the fetus can be a male? That’s right, in half of all pregnancies, the baby inside the mother is a different gender than she is. If she believes the baby is simply part of her body, is she part male and part female during the months of gestation?
By the way, I’m not going to use this space right now to discuss political agendas behind the differences between the words sex and gender. For all intents and purposes here, we will use them interchangeably. I have also been using fetus and baby interchangeably. Some pro-abortion activists, as well as some Christians, would have a problem with that. Often the word fetus is used to soften the conversation when it comes to ending the baby’s life. However, the word fētus in Latin means offspring. When speaking of human offspring, we are talking about children. So the human fetus is a baby, is a child.
The baby is not the mother’s body. One way to prove it is to take a blood test. Some of the time, the fetus’ blood type is different from the mother’s. If you were in need of an organ transplant, it would be vital that the donor have the same blood type as you. Otherwise, the transplant is guaranteed to fail. If the baby is just an organ, how can the mother grow an organ inside her body that has a different blood type or DNA from her own?
“My body, my choice” is a phrase people use to attempt to uphold an individual’s personal rights. But since the scientific evidence reveals that a fetus is not part of someone else’s body but an individual person with its own body, then to choose abortion is a gross violation of another person’s individual rights, namely the unborn’s. I may not be a woman; therefore, you may think I cannot discuss what women do with their bodies. However, I am a former child, and I believe all former children have the responsibility to speak up for the lives of innocent, dependent children and babies.
Dependency does not negate humanity. At all stages of life, someone may be dependent on other human beings. As an infant, of course. But also, when you’re ill as an adult, you may become dependent on doctors. If you become temporarily or permanently paralyzed, you will become dependent on others. Does that mean those you depend on should have a choice to end your life? What happens when you grow older and need the help of others? In your feebler moments, should your caretakers treat you as a choice or as a human? In this case, the Bible says that the children of aging parents should step up and provide for their parents—their parents who were created in the image of God.
But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
1 Timothy 5:8
If you’re looking for a pithy statement to accurately represent what’s going on with a baby in the womb, instead of “my body, my choice,” you could say, “my house, my responsibility.” When I bring children into my home, whether it’s my own children, or the neighborhood kids who have come to play, that doesn’t give me the right to abuse or kill them. Instead, I have the legal and moral obligation to provide for and protect them. When they enter my house, they become my responsibility. In 2 Corinthians 5, the Bible refers to the human body as a metaphorical tent, or as a house. When a mother is housing a child in her womb, the child becomes her responsibility, as well as the father’s.
One of the unexpected side effects of the “my body, my choice” argument is it has conditioned some men to falsely see an unwanted child as not just her body and her choice but, also, her “problem.” If she chooses to raise that child, if she believes in “my body, my choice,” it would be inconsistent for her to expect the father to be involved in raising or supporting the child. Of course, the father, from the moment of conception has equal responsibility for this child that his body was involved in conceiving.
What are we advocating for here? A few things. For one, intellectual integrity. It’s important that those who hear or use the phrase “my body, my choice,” know the fallacies of it. We are also advocating for life here. The pre-born baby inside the womb is an innocent human life, both five minutes and five months after conception. Finally, we are advocating for protection—protection for the baby, of course, but also protection for women who have been plunged into a world of chaos surrounding their bodies and their children.
If you are currently facing a surprise or unwanted pregnancy, please know that you’re not alone. Not only are there others in this world who are also facing this same situation, but there are also those who are willing to face this situation with you. You may not have chosen to be where you are right now, but you can choose the right thing moving forward. What will you do with your body? What will you do with your baby’s body? If you’re looking for support, please contact us.
If you’d like to study a well-rounded gentle approach to the topic of abortion, where we look deeper at more questions and objections, we recommend this article.