Do You Know What It Does?

The debate is almost always steered to one word: “person.” That word has no fixed meaning. People have tied it to reason, to feeling, to being wanted. Every one of those tests leaves someone out. That is what the word is used for.

So we will not argue on that ground. We stand on a plain fact instead. The child in the womb is a living human being. This is not just a Bible claim. It is biology.

In one large survey, 5,577 biologists were asked when a human life begins. 96% said it begins at fertilisation. Most of them were pro-choice. The people with every reason to say otherwise agreed with Scripture.

The Bible traces the person right back to conception. David said, “in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). Guilt belongs to a person, not to tissue. Job spoke of “the night that said, ‘A man is conceived’” (Job 3:3). Not a possible man. A man.

Sources: Psalm 139:13–16; Jeremiah 1:5; Psalm 51:5; Job 3:3. Steven Andrew Jacobs, “Biologists’ Consensus on ‘When Life Begins’” (University of Chicago, 2018).

Wherever the Bible speaks of God’s image in man, it ties that image to our nature. It is never tied to a skill. The Bible never says the image is intelligence, or strength, or being wanted. It just says man.

This matters. Your worth is not from what you can do. So it cannot be lost by what you cannot do. The newly conceived child, the disabled, the dying: each one bears God’s image, whole and entire. The image is not a trait we earn. It is a nature we are.

Two Bible passages are often raised against this. Neither says what people claim.

Exodus 21:22–25 describes a pregnant woman struck in a fight. It is used to say the unborn were worth only a fine. But the Hebrew word for the child coming out is yatsa, the normal word for a live birth. Hebrew has words for miscarriage, and Moses did not use them here. The law says: if the child is born early and both live, a fine; if either dies, “life for life.” This is the one place in the law where the unborn child is named directly. The penalty for his death is death. Calvin read it the same way. He called it “almost a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy.”

Numbers 5:11–31 is now called a God-commanded abortion. But there is no word for child, foetus, pregnancy, or miscarriage anywhere in it. Each of those has to be added by a translator. The passage is about fertility and barrenness, not the killing of a child. The simple answer is to ask the person to show you the word. It is not there.

Sources: Genesis 9:6; Exodus 21:22–25; Numbers 5:11–31; James 3:9. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, on Exodus 21:22.

When Mary was newly pregnant, she visited Elizabeth. The unborn John “leaped” in the womb. Elizabeth called Mary “the mother of my Lord” (Luke 1:41–43). The Lord she spoke of was only days old.

The Bible says Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every respect” (Hebrews 2:17). He was fully human from His conception. So are we from ours. To say the embryo is not truly one of us is not just a mistake about biology. It is a mistake about Christ.

See the pattern too. At the cross, the strong One gave His life for the weak, who could give Him nothing (Romans 5:6–8). That is the gospel. To take the life of the weak for our own comfort is that pattern reversed. One is the love of Christ. The other is the opposite of it.

Sources: Luke 1:35, 41–43; Hebrews 2:17; Romans 5:6–8.

The oldest Christian teaching outside the New Testament already forbade it. The Didache, written around AD 70 to 120, says plainly: “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.”

The Reformers taught the same. Calvin called the unborn child “already a human being.” Luther wrote that God “ordained that they should beget children and care for them… and they can be certain that God does not lie.” The Westminster Confession, which our own Presbyterian and Baptist forebears held, said marriage was ordained “for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue.”

Then the change came, and we can date it. In 1920 the bishops at the Lambeth Conference gave “an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception.” Ten years later, in 1930, the same conference reversed itself in Resolution 15. It passed by 193 votes to 67. A truth held for nearly two thousand years was set down in living memory. It fell against strong protest. Then it was quietly forgotten.

Sources: Didache 2:2; John Calvin, Harmony of the Law, on Exodus 21:22; Martin Luther, The Estate of Marriage (1522); Westminster Confession of Faith 24.2; Lambeth Conference 1920 (Resolution 68) and 1930 (Resolution 15, vote 193–67).

The change did not come from a laboratory. It came from a committee, and its own members wrote down their reasons.

In 1959, at a meeting run by the Planned Parenthood Federation and the Population Council, Dr Bent Boving argued for the shift. His reason was not scientific. He said “the social advantage of being considered to prevent conception rather than to destroy an established pregnancy could depend upon something so simple as a prudent habit of speech.”

Read that again. Not a discovery about the child. A “prudent habit of speech.”

In 1965 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists adopted the new meaning. “Conception” and “pregnancy” would now begin at implantation, six to twelve days after fertilisation. The child at day one was still exactly what he had always been. Only the label moved.

The effect was simple. Anything that ends a life in that first week can now be called “contraceptive” and not “abortifacient.” Not because no child dies, but because his death was defined out of the count before the argument begins. When you are told a method is “not an abortifacient,” this is often all it means.

Sources: Bent Boving, in Mechanisms Concerned with Conception (Pergamon Press, 1963); the redefinition is documented by the American College of Pediatricians, “When Human Life Begins.”

You do not have to take our word for it. Take theirs. This is written in the makers’ own licensed documents.

The official product information for Microgynon 30, a common UK pill, says it works by three actions. The third is “the rendering of the endometrium unreceptive to implantation.” That is their wording, not ours. “Unreceptive to implantation” means a conceived child cannot settle and live.

The hormonal coil (Mirena) lists the same kind of effect: “prevention of proliferation of the endometrium.” That is the very lining a child must attach to.

Now the clearest case of all: the copper coil, used as emergency contraception.

The copper coil is licensed to be fitted “up to 5 days” after sex. But a woman can conceive within a day of ovulation. If the coil goes in on day five, the child may already exist. So it cannot be stopping a conception that has already happened. The official UK guideline says what it does then, in plain words: “If fertilisation does occur, the local endometrial inflammatory reaction resulting from the presence of the Cu-IUD prevents implantation.”

That is the licence itself telling you: when a child is conceived, the device can stop him implanting. Even the International Planned Parenthood Federation admits this for the copper coil. If fertilisation has happened, they say, “copper ions… impair endometrial receptivity.”

We will be honest about the limits too. For the levonorgestrel morning-after pill, most bodies say it mainly delays ovulation, and they deny an effect after fertilisation. We do not hide that. But the makers of Plan B once printed that it “may also work… by preventing attachment (implantation).” That line was removed in 2022 after a review, not after any new study showing the effect does not happen. The words changed. The drug did not.

Here is the honest heart of it. Even the mainstream view says the copper coil prevents implantation only in a small share of cases. Small is not never. A method that ends a life only sometimes still ends a life every time it does. And no one is counting.

Sources: Microgynon 30 Summary of Product Characteristics (emc); Mirena Summary of Product Characteristics (emc); FSRH Emergency Contraception guideline (copper IUD licensed to 5 days; “prevents implantation” if fertilisation occurs); IPPF IMAP Statement on Emergency Contraception; Plan B One-Step FDA labelling history (implantation language removed 2022).

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists redefined “conception” in 1965. It is not a neutral referee. Its own policy calls abortion “an essential component of comprehensive health care” and works to overturn limits on it.

The World Health Organization promotes abortion access worldwide through its Abortion Care Guideline. Planned Parenthood, whose forerunner helped move the word, is the largest abortion provider on earth. It also supplies these devices. It performs the abortions, sells the contraceptives, and tells you the contraceptives are not abortifacient.

We are not saying their lab data is faked. How the drugs affect sperm may be measured correctly. We are saying something narrower. The choice of what to call the death of an embryo is not neutral. People with a large stake are making it.

And real doctors disagree. The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is one example. Its licensed specialists will not prescribe these methods, for these reasons. So this is not laypeople doubting experts. It is experts disagreeing. Ask the oldest fair question there is: who profits from the answer you are given?

The promise made for these methods also failed. In England and Wales contraception is free. Yet abortions reached 277,970 in 2023, the highest number since the Abortion Act began. The Guttmacher Institute is no enemy of contraception. Its research found about half of abortion patients had used contraception in the month they conceived.

Sources: ACOG, “Abortion Policy”; WHO, Abortion Care Guideline (2022); AAPLOG committee opinions; DHSC, “Abortion statistics for England and Wales: 2023” (published January 2026); Guttmacher Institute, “About Half of U.S. Abortion Patients Report Using Contraception in the Month They Became Pregnant” (2018, US data).

The law does not forbid the house or the roof. It commands one thing. Where a fall is possible and would kill, you build a guard rail. If you will not, and someone dies, the blood is on your house. Not because you pushed him. Because you saw the danger and would not guard against it.

Think about driving. We take a risk when we drive. But driving is guarded at every point. There are speed limits, and lower ones near schools. There is a licence, a test, insurance, a seatbelt, a brake. A person sits at the wheel, awake, able to stop. And if a death happens, it is investigated, and someone answers for it.

The hidden child has none of this. No speed limit. No brake. No one at the wheel. Once the drug is taken or the coil is fitted, nothing stands between the mechanism and the child. There is no test for his death, no record, no name. And he did not choose the risk. He cannot see it, cannot cry out, cannot escape. He carries all of the danger and gets none of the benefit.

So “the odds are small” is not the answer it feels like. Small odds for one woman still add up to large numbers across millions of users. And rarity answers the wrong question. It tells you how often, not whether. The harm here is the death of a child. The only guard is to choose a method with no such mechanism. The parapet law gives its verdict. You do not leave the roof open because falls are uncommon. You build the wall.

Sources: Deuteronomy 22:8; the negligence reading in the standard commentaries (Keil & Delitzsch; Matthew Henry).

The Bible never treats a child as a problem to be prevented. It treats a child as a reward to be received. Spurgeon put it plainly: “To have many children is the next blessing to much grace.” Luther said God “ordained that they should beget children.” Calvin said “Adam with his wife was formed for the production of offspring.”

This is a call to trust God’s sovereignty. He is the one who gives life and holds our days. We do not need to seize control of the womb by a method that may end a child. We can receive what God gives, and trust Him with our family, our future, and our fears.

This is not a new law to crush you. Some couples carry real grief through infertility or loss, and God is tender with them. And there are seasons where spacing children is wise. The question is the posture of the heart. Do we treat our fertility as a danger to shut down for years? Or as a gift from a good God?

Where there is a genuine need to wait, there are ways that do not risk a conceived child. Natural or fertility-awareness methods work with the way God made the body. They do not carry the third mechanism. They also call a husband and wife to patience, honesty, and self-control. These are gifts of the Spirit, not losses.

The heart of it is simple. Welcome children. Trust the God who gives them. Do not let the fear of the world set the size of a Christian home.

Sources: Genesis 1:28; Psalm 127:3; 1 Samuel 1:5; Genesis 30:2. C. H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, on Psalm 127:3; Martin Luther, The Estate of Marriage (1522); John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, on Genesis 1:28.

You did not know. That matters, and it matters to God. He does not deal with the ignorant as He deals with the defiant. If you were never told, the failure to tell you is not laid at your door.

And even where there is real, known guilt, the news is still good. The blood of Jesus cleanses “all sin.” Not most sin. Not only the respectable sins. All of it. There is no ended life His blood cannot cover.

Look at how Jesus did this. When they brought Him the woman caught in sin, He did not pretend the sin was nothing. He also did not crush her. He gave grace first: “Neither do I condemn you.” Then truth: “go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11). Grace first, then truth that sets you walking free.

So do not despair. That is not why this was written. If there is grief, bring the grief to Christ. He is gentle with the grieving. Receive the forgiveness that is fully yours in Him. Then walk in the light you now have, and choose life from here on. Many who wept hardest over this have become its kindest and strongest voices. That, and not despair, is where God means this to end.

Sources: 1 John 1:7; Romans 8:1; 1 Timothy 1:13; John 8:11.

There is a sin in this that is easy to miss. It is the sin of not caring. We have grown calm about the killing of the innocent because it is hidden and because everyone else is calm. God is not calm about it. Neither should we be.

So repent of the apathy. Repent of the silence. Turn from any part in this, known or unknown, and turn to Christ, who forgives fully and makes clean.

Then do something. Look into this for yourself; do not just take our word. Check the sources above. Talk with your husband or wife. Come off any method that carries this mechanism. Tell other Christians the truth, gently and clearly. Support mothers under pressure. Raise your children to love life. Pray for a change so deep that this becomes unthinkable again.

You would want someone to act for you, if it were your own life hidden in that unnamed week. Act for these children in the same way.

Sources: Proverbs 24:11–12; Isaiah 1:17; Mark 1:15.

Do not let anyone tell you this is new, or a Roman Catholic idea. The whole church held it for nineteen centuries, and the Reformers with it. The thing that is new is our silence.

When you speak, set the grace beside the weight. Have gentle, private care ready before this is ever taught, so no one meets the truth alone. Prepare the women’s ministry. Prepare yourself. Told tenderly, by a shepherd who loves them, this is not an accusation. It is a rescue.

Some will grieve. Meet them with the gospel, not a lecture. But weigh the other path honestly. If you stay silent, they carry on unknowing. Or they hear it one day from someone far less kind, with no shepherd beside them. Truth told in love, by a man who loves them, is the only form of this news with Christ attached.

Sources: Acts 20:26–27; Ezekiel 3:18–19; James 3:1; Hebrews 13:17.