A comprehensive dive into the Pro-Life Argument
“You brought my inner parts into being; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will praise you, for you made me with fear and wonder; marvelous are your works, and you know me completely.” (Psalm 139:13-14)
The intent of this particular blog is not to boast for the recent accomplishments of the Supreme Court, nor is it to guilt or shame. It is to properly lay out the arguments for the sanctity of human life. As well as to introduce you to the mercy and kindness of God that has been extended to us through his son. Using scripture, biology, and laws of logic, hopefully I (a clump of cells) can convey to you the reader (also a clump of cells) that the Christian worldview on this topic is not to try and capture some sort of authoritative control over individuals and what they do to their bodies, but it is that we are deeply concerned with the normalization of such immorality that leads to death of innocent human beings. Loving the unborn is not a stance against women. We as Christians are called to/have the privilege of treating all parties involved with dignity, love, and respect. Being Pro-Life is not a political stance, it means protecting any and all life by being actively engaged for the vulnerable around us and/or the ones who cannot yet speak for themselves. For we understand that every person born and unborn is an image bearer of God hence worthy of life, grace, and redemption
Life begins at conception. The beginning of life is not a subjective opinion. “At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life is has begun…the term embryo covers the several stages of early development from conception to the ninth or tenth week of life.” (Douglas Considine. Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia 5th Ed.) At the moment of conception a new distinct individual is made. This means an embryo, a zygote, a fetus (Latin for offspring) are all stages of human life such as adolescence and adulthood. To say that those early stages are not yet “human life” you would be tasked with explaining how they are neither human nor alive. If they are not human, then exactly what species are they? And if they are not alive, how can they develop? Whatever stage of development a human being is in at a particular moment in their life does not define whether they are a person or not. Whether you are inside of the womb or outside of the womb, your entire life is in constant stages of development. You develop feet in the womb just as you develop adult teeth outside of the womb. To say life begins when you exit the womb is to say that life is dependent on location. Where you are located physically at any given point has nothing to do with whether you are a distinct human life or not. Life also does not begin at the moment of viability apart from the mother. Even post-birth, the child is still directly dependent on nourishment from the mother (or another person.) Just because formula (a replacement) exists, does not then mean the child stops being its own distinct being. In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul is even able to briefly address how he was a distinct separate individual while in his mothers womb.
Unless there is an objectively true and distinct moment when life begins, the moment at which an equal protection of ones-self by the law is left to be determined by an array of arbitrary values. This is why we are starting to see an influx in legislation that seeks to protect the ‘Perinatal’ killing of the offspring. Perinatal meaning a period of time either before or even after birth up to a number of weeks.
In order to have full transparency and understanding, it is important that we decipher terminology you commonly see through this topic. For instance… murder is the unjust premeditated killing of a human by another. Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by means of the death of the embryo or fetus (human being.) This is not to be confused with ending an Ectopic pregnancy. An Ectopic pregnancy is when the unborn child is developing outside of the main cavity of the uterus, often in the fallopian tube. In order to treat an ectopic pregnancy, the goal is to save the mothers life, the unintended consequence of the treatment often results in the loss of the life of the child. Whereas in an abortion the intended goal of the procedure is to end the life of the child. There is an important distinction to be made between a “preterm delivery” and an “abortion.” “There is no medical reason why the life of the child must be directly and intentionally ended with an abortion procedure. There are in fact situations when the mothers life is truly in jeopardy and the pregnancy must end and the baby must be delivered. Such cases include mothers developing dangerously high blood pressure, heart disease, life threatening diabetes, and cancer to name a few. In these rare but unfortunate events the baby may need to be delivered before they are able to survive outside of the womb (22-24 weeks). Those situations are called “preterm delivery.””(Kendra Kolb, MD Neonatologist)
What about pregnancies that are the result of the morally repugnant, absolutely heinous act of rape? Should the mother have to carry the baby to term? “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” (Deuteronomy 24:16) The life of a child born through the consensual relations of its parents is equally as precious, distinct, and worthy of defending as that of a child born out of any immoral act. If you were to look at a picture of four different people, would you be able to tell which one was born as a result of rape, which one was a result of consensual relations within a marriage, which one was a result of consensual relations outside of marriage, and which was the result of a drunken one night stand? No. Although the actions in which the child has been conceived may be viewed as immoral or not, it does nothing at all to take away from the inherent value of that individual. What’s wrong with rape is in principle the same thing that is wrong with abortion. In both cases it is a violation of the dignity of another human being, doing things to another humans body without their permission, one person taking liberties with their bodies that they ought not take. In order to call rape ‘wrong’ one would have to borrow from the religious worldview. Labeling something immoral or not presupposes an objective moral standard of good and bad. From an atheistic worldview there is no objective moral standard, what one deems righteous or not is strictly subjective opinions. If that were the case, who is to say that one persons opinion on what is right and wrong trumps anyone else’s?
Prosecution of the mother after having an abortion is not something the Pro-Life Movement is advocating for. The goal is to convince women to make the moral choice to not have their unborn child killed, not to threaten them with punishment. Mens Rea or lack there of plays too large of a factor in this regard. Having the intent to commit a crime is much different than not knowing you are committing a wrongful action. Too many woman have been convinced that the ‘thing growing inside of them’ is not a human being, therefore lacking the requisite Mens Rea for a criminal charge. Consider how compassionately Jesus treated the woman at the well in John 4, or John 8 as he defends the woman caught in adulatory and says “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
The notable usage of phrases such as “Keep your religion out of/off my body” and “the Bible doesn’t say anything explicitly about abortion” needs to be addressed so that we can convey how misguided said quotations are. “Thou shall not murder.”(Exodus 20:13) While the text does not say anything explicitly about mixing your child’s baby formula with gasoline either, we are able to interpret daily situations as righteous or sinful by going back to the word of God as our anchor of morality and draw a verdict based on his moral guidelines. To say it is not morally justifiable to kill your child out of convenience is not an example of somebody trying to impose radical religious traditions onto someone who may not agree or be a part of that religious group. As we learned in past blogs from the Moral Argument, it is not societies that get to define what is objectively morally good or bad. This is the reason I used the term unjustified as opposed to unlawful earlier in my definition of murder. Just because something may be allowed lawfully at a given moment does not intrinsically make it morally just. For example; policy and laws that permitted/permit slavery, as well as the Nazi’s persecution of the Jews, at one point lawful, yet never morally right.
There is hope for those Mothers who feel as if they do not have the proper resources available to bring another life into this world, whether it be an unstable home life, financial needs, or even medical aid. The more localized you are able to seek help, the better. First you ought to lean on family for assistance. If that is not an option then humble yourself before the lord and lean on your congregation (your church family.) Find yourself one and be willing to help and seek help. As you see happen in the human body, when you injure an ankle, the compensation of the weight load is distributed to other members of the body in order to help maintain stability. Not that we seek out a congregation to exploit the goodness of others, we seek one because we want to give ourselves to something spiritually larger than oneself, while being grounded in a similar Agape. Another option you don’t hear enough of is Crisis Pregnancy Centers, of which there are over 2500 across the U.S. They are federally funded and provide free alternatives to abortion. Options exist other than the abortion mills which we know as Planned Parenthood, founded by the eugenicist Margret Sanger. “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the negro population.” A letter written 12/10/1939 from Margret Sanger to Dr. C.J Gamble. Although often uttered by those who support these abortion mills, whether their business consists of 3% (as they tend to claim) being abortions, it does not matter. Every small act such as giving away a condom is counted as 1 thing, so if they hand out 97 condoms in a day and preform 3 abortions, they get to claim that statistic. Although a baseball stadium may sell 1000 hot dogs in an evening, and only 1 baseball game occurs, they are still in the business of the sport.
Abortion epitomizes the wicked nature of mankind. We live in a fallen world and are in need of a savior to bear the burden of our iniquities in order to avoid the reality of hell. The second you repent and trust in Christ, you are born with a new heart, new desires, and are caused to walk in his statutes. We must dig into the philosophical roots to tell us why we are so sinful in nature. If there were a road that lead vehicles off of a cliff, the solution would not be to put a hospital at the bottom. The root of the cause is that at the fall (a blog to come later) the human heart became plagued with sin that will only lead to the destruction of society. Our goal is to guide others onto the path that will save them from damnation and have them be born into the kingdom of God. We must not let ourselves become complacent on these issues like that of the Laodicean Church; how they let themselves become self-indulgent and lead themselves to believe that they were in need of nothing when in reality they were in need of a revival.
“God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28)