Can a woman who has an abortion go to jail?
2:06
(CNN) --
Both quote the same Bible.
They both follow the same Jesus.
And both speak of the sanctity of life.
And yet, the two are on opposite sides of the contentious abortion debate.
Trent Horn, author, speaker, and podcast host, is Roman Catholic and opposes abortion rights.
Laura Ellis supports legal abortion rights and is project director for Baptist Women in Ministry, a Baptist group that advocates for women in ministry.
Supreme Court ruling on abortion could open doors to reconsider equal marriage rights and contraceptives
Both personify the divisions over abortion in the church and show how complex the issue can be when two intelligent and well-informed people quote Scripture to support their point of view.
The United States Supreme Court addressed a momentous legal issue on Friday when the court's conservative majority overturned Roe v.
Wade, eliminating access to abortion throughout the country.
For the first time in nearly 50 years, Americans live in a country where abortion is not enshrined as a constitutional right.
But the debate will continue over abortion access, which is both a moral and a religious issue for many people of faith like Ellis and Horn.
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While much of the abortion debate has been filtered through angry protests and shouted slogans, CNN chose to interview these two Christians because each has written thoughtful public essays on the subject.
Trent Horn, left, and Laura Ellis.
Horn, author of "Persuasive Pro-life," wrote a recent essay, "Catholics Can't Be Pro-Abortion," in which he argued that all "reasonable" people should oppose legal abortion because it is taking a life.
“If the unborn are not human beings, then abortion is harmless surgery.
But if the unborn are growing, they must be alive,” he wrote.
Ellis is the author of a recent essay, "Why I'm a Pro-Abortion Christian and I Think You Should Be, Too."
One of her biggest criticisms of opponents of abortion rights is that "often these activists fail to support other political causes that preserve the life of the child after birth."
We asked Ellis and Horn the same four questions and received radically different answers.
Their responses have been edited for brevity.
How does your faith shape your position on abortion?
Horn:
My faith informs me that God created human beings in his image.
He loves human beings and wants us to share that same love and promote justice towards all other human beings.
Since my faith teaches me that every human being, every member of our species is equal in value and dignity, then my faith informs me that I must never directly kill an innocent member of our species just because he is unwanted.
My faith informs me that every human being, from the moment he is conceived to the moment he dies, deserves the same protection under the law.
Anti-abortion protesters pray as protesters gather outside City Hall in Houston, Texas, during a Bans Off Our Bodies rally on May 14, 2022.
Ellis:
I believe in the sanctity of human life and would love to see a world with fewer abortions.
But I also know that banning abortion will hit the people in society who are already truly marginalized the hardest, and wealthy white women will always be able to access safe and affordable abortion.
Making abortion illegal will disproportionately affect young women, women in poverty, women of color, women in rural areas, women who don't have a support system that some people are privileged to have.
These are the kind of people that Jesus always advocated for in his life and ministry.
First of all, I will always side with a living, breathing human woman and what is best for her and her family situation.
What passages of the Bible do you cite to justify your position?
Horn:
The Bible doesn't explicitly mention abortion, so it doesn't say abortion itself is wrong, but it also doesn't say infanticide is wrong or pedophilia is wrong.
Instead, I use the Scriptures to inform myself with general principles.
The Bible is clear in Exodus 23:7 and Proverbs 6:16-17 that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings.
Proverbs 6 says that God hates hands that shed innocent blood.
If the Bible says that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings, and science and sound reasoning tell us that human embryos and human fetuses are human beings, then the Bible informs me that it is wrong to kill them.
The Bible doesn't say it's wrong to lynch black people, but it's clearly wrong because the Bible says it's wrong to kill innocent human beings.
That would apply to all born and unborn human beings.
What is more relevant is that the Bible says that human life exists in the womb (Luke 1:41) and the Bible forbids killing innocent human beings (Exodus 20:13).
This prohibition would apply to abortion as to any other homicide.
Because the unborn are smaller, more dependent human beings, those differences do not override their inalienable right to life.
Abortion rights activists demonstrate outside the US Supreme Court on June 13, 2022.
Ellis:
We have to be very careful when we take a subject as complicated as abortion and try to justify or condemn it through a single verse or couple of verses that are taken out of context.
The Bible is an incredibly complicated book written by various people in different historical and social contexts.
It might be irresponsible to take a sentence or two out and relate them to 21st century America.
The Bible does not speak explicitly about abortion, for or against it in any way.
It just isn't there.
When I think about the kind of writing that people who are against abortion put out, it often refers to murder, sexual immorality, and blaming women.
They are so taken out of context.
I again base myself on the life and ministry of Christ.
Jesus truly advocated for women in a way that was beautiful and unique to the time period in which he lived.
Even by being with women and talking to them, he was honoring them and breaking social conventions.
Both in the time of Jesus and today, women's bodies are too often discarded.
I think Jesus would not approve of that.
There are biblical stories where Jesus advocated and empowered women.
In John 4:1-42, Jesus interacted with the woman at the well and empowered her to spread her teachings.
In Luke 8:43-48, Jesus dropped everything to speak to and help the woman who touched her cloak.
And in Matthew 28:1-20, Jesus confided the good news of his resurrection to the women.
What is the biggest myth people have about people who share your position?
Horn:
The biggest myth people have about my position on abortion is that it's simply a religious position.
There are many religious people who oppose abortion, just as there were many religious people who opposed racial segregation in America.
Opposition to racial segregation and opposition to abortion are not mere religious positions.
Rather, these are human rights issues because they are based on a basic truth that any reasonable person can arrive at, which is that we must afford all human beings the same respect and protection under the law.
Just as there are no morally relevant differences between blacks and whites to justify whites mistreating blacks, there are no morally relevant differences between born and unborn humans.
Unborn humans are smaller, less developed and more dependent than us, but newborns are also smaller, less developed than us and highly dependent.
But those reasons would not justify killing a born child and they do not justify saying that the unborn are not people and can be killed.
Gabriel Oliver, who opposes abortion rights, reads the Bible outside an abortion clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, on December 1, 2021.
Ellis:
I would like people to understand that you can be a Christian and not oppose abortion.
Just because someone is pro-choice doesn't mean he hates life, babies, the Bible, or God.
The power of the religious right is so strong that many Christians have a hard time conceiving that anyone could be on the other side of this issue.
But to echo Randall Balmer [a historian who is an authority on the religious right], the religious right was created to oppose desegregated schools.
The change of focus to being against abortion was carried out to gain political power.
People have very real commitments and moral beliefs on both sides.
So I'm not saying someone who is "pro-life" is corrupt and just seeking power, but that's how the religious right movement was founded.
It will always be contaminated by it.
Can a person who opposes your position on abortion legitimately call himself a Christian?
Horn:
There may be Christians who support legal abortion just as there were many Christians who supported legal slavery.
Being a Christian means that you have a valid baptism and believe in the core tenets of the Christian faith.
However, a Christian who supports legal slavery or legal abortion is in contradiction to the moral law that Christianity gives us.
So while they would be Christians, they would be in contradiction to the law that Christ has given us to protect the innocent, to protect the weak, and they will be judged for breaking that law as Christians.
People are free to hold any religious belief, including pro-choice Christian beliefs, but they are not always free to act on those beliefs.
Some religions teach that polygamy, slavery, female genital mutilation, or honor killings should be legal, but the law should protect all innocent human beings, both born and unborn, from all harm, including harm caused in the name of religion.
Ellis:
Obviously I don't agree with people who oppose abortion, but that doesn't mean they can't be Christians just because I personally don't agree with them.
Who am I to say who can or cannot be a Christian?
That's really just God's business.
I think we need to stop this intense surveillance that we have on Christianity, particularly when our surveillance is simply based on an issue like abortion that isn't talked about in the Bible.
When Jesus asked people to follow him, you didn't have to go through some kind of moral or political checklist first.
I grew up in West Texas in a very religious and very conservative environment.
I know many people who are against abortion because of their faith.
Obviously I don't agree with them personally because of my faith, but I don't think that means they're not good people, or that they're not good Christians, much less that they're not Christians at all.
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