The controversy over the ethics of abortion centers around the question of when human life begins. Abortion opponents, believing the fetus to be a human being from the moment of conception, regard abortion as murder. As the editors of Christianity Today write, "abortion is one of those monumental issues of justice that comes along once in a lifetime. It is violence against children, a hideous act of poisoning or dismembering tiny bodies, then dumping them in a landfill or garbage disposal."

Those who advocate legal abortion, on the other hand, argue that a fetus is only a potential human being. Therefore, they contend, the rights of the mother—including the right to choose whether she has a baby or not—supersede the rights of the fetus. John M. Swomley, professor of social ethics at the St. Paul School of Theology in Missouri, writes that "because the...