When I was in the army, a young sergeant in my unit worked as secretary for the central office of my company. She was pregnant and grew large so that her time to deliver was upon her. One day she did not show up for work and remained absent for maybe a week. When she finally did show up again, she was not pregnant, and when I saw her, I was so happy for her that I said, “Sergeant so-and-so! Congratulations! You had your baby!”
“Actually,” she said. “I had an abortion.”
I did not know what to say. I had been so deeply and genuinely happy for her, and one second later I was numb. The swing of my emotions was extreme and instant. I don’t remember what I said to her, but I do remember going into my office, closing the door, and weeping.
If you’ve seen the news lately, you’ve seen that the United States Supreme Court recently overturned Roe v. Wade in the case Dobbs v. Jackson. For those of you who are not Americans, this decision is an earthquake to American culture. I never thought I would live to see this day because I never thought the Supreme Court would have the guts to make this decision. The major networks, news outlets, magazines, and newspapers are up in arms and overwhelmingly in opposition to Dobbs. They make no secret about it. They don’t pretend to be neutral and are working overtime and doing everything in their power to discredit this decision and the court that made it.
But as a Christian, I stand with the justices who voted to overturn Roe. The Dobbs decision is a step in the right direction and a reason to rejoice. Abortion is America’s greatest social justice issue today. In this blog, I want to explain why.
But before I do so, I am aware that abortion stokes people’s emotions. On both sides. Given this fact, it is difficult to have an intelligent discussion about the topic. But I actually want to have an intelligent discussion. I believe that an intelligent, reasoned discussion will be more fruitful than name-calling and social media sound bites. This does not mean that I wish to abandon my convictions in the name of reason. Instead, I wish to explain my convictions in a reasonable way.
Let’s begin with some facts. According to the research wing of Planned Parenthood, in 2020, there were over 930,000 abortions in America. That number is an increase of about 8% from 2017, when there were about 862,000.[i] Since Roe v. Wade, there have been more than 63 million abortions in America.[ii] Sixty-three million.
This means that if a fetus is a living human being, we have chosen to kill 63 million human beings since Roe v. Wade. Those are not numbers to shrug off. Those numbers are a Holocaust. If a fetus is a living human being, then the results of abortion on demand have been horrifying, and abortion is the greatest social justice issue of our day.
But that’s only if a fetus is a living human being. If a fetus is not a living human being, then we’ve killed 63 million nonhumans, and the Holocaust comparison is unfair.
Thus, you have to decide whether a pregnant woman is carrying a human being. In simplest terms, that is what the abortion question comes down to. It’s not about difficult cases like rape, incest or poverty. I can acknowledge the difficulty of every special case but still end up opposing abortion – if the fetus is human. If the fetus is a human being, then abortion kills a human being. If a pregnant woman is carrying a human life, then the sanctity of that human life trumps those special cases, for we all know that we can’t go around killing human beings just to get ourselves out of a tough spot.
Please hear me. I am not saying this to minimize the tragedy of crisis pregnancies. I am well aware of the tragedies. And the mothers in those tragedies need our help and compassion. But if a pregnant woman is carrying a human life, then abortion is also a tragedy, and we must weigh tragedy against tragedy.
If you see this, then you see why the central issue in abortion is the question of whether the fetus is a human being. Therefore, I want to focus on this central issue. Is a pregnant woman carrying a human life? In answering this question, I will say nothing new or original, but I hope I will be kind, simple, and clear.
Yes. A pregnant woman is carrying a distinct human life.
Life
The fetus is alive. From the moment of conception, from zygote to embryo to fetus, we see life. We see constant growth. We see cell multiplication. We see movement of arms and legs. We see a heartbeat, blood flowing, brain waves. This is not merely potential life. This is life. Abortion, thus, kills life. This is a fact, and it is not debatable.
Human Life
But does it kill human life? Yes. It does. The DNA is human. The mother is human. The father is human. What else could their offspring be? The body parts are the body parts of a human. The eyes are human eyes. The fingers human fingers. The toes human toes. The heart a human heart. The blood human blood. The fingerprints human fingerprints. The fetus learns, dreams, has emotions, feels pain, and has a unique personality.[iii]
If the fetus is not human, what is she? She is not some kind of plant. She is not some kind of dog, cow, bird or monkey. She is not just cellular bacteria multiplying. Scientifically, everything points to the fetus being human. If the fetus is not human, I don’t know what she is.
Distinct Human Life
The fetus is distinct from his mother. He is not a mere extension of the mother’s body but is unique and distinct. A fetus is a separate person from his mother. Science tells us that the fetus has a different DNA from his mother. He often has a different blood type from his mother, and about 50% of the time, the fetus is a different gender from his mother. The fetus has two distinct eyes and ears, and they are not the eyes and ears of the mother. Two distinct arms and legs, not those of the mother. A separate heartbeat and a separate breathing rate from those of the mother. When a woman is pregnant, we do not have merely one body but two distinct bodies. We do not have one person but two people. The mother is responsible not merely for her own body but for another unique body inside her.
Thus, a pregnant woman is carrying a unique, living human being distinct from herself.
Please note that so far, I have made no religious argument to conclude this. I’m appealing to science, and I believe science is real. This, thus, means that abortion kills a unique, living human being. This is why I am prolife.
And sixty three million human lives later is why abortion is the greatest social justice issue of our day.
[i] https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2022/06/long-term-decline-us-abortions-reverses-showing-rising-need-abortion-supreme-court
[ii] http://www.numberofabortions.com/; https://christianliferesources.com/2021/01/19/u-s-abortion-statistics-by-year-1973-current/
[iii] https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/probing-question-can-babies-learn-utero/; https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199809/fetal-psychology
