abortion

A fetus is alive.  That is indisputable.  A fetus is human.  That is indisputable.  Put those two facts together and you find that a fetus is a human life. 

Everyone agrees that at some point a fetus has human worth.  Everyone has a magic line beyond which you can no longer kill.  Prolife people consistently believe that line to be conception because at conception we now have a human life. 

Proabortion people say, “No, that magic line lies elsewhere.”  They may not know exactly where that line is, and those who propose such a line certainly disagree amongst themselves over where that line is, but everyone draws a line somewhere.  No morally sane person believes you can go around killing newborns just for the convenience of the mother.  At some point we all agree:  this is now a human being.  You can’t kill him. 

The question then is this:  where is that line?  At what point do we have a human being?

I want to take this blog to discuss various proabortion answers to that question.  Where is the line beyond which you can no longer kill?

Some argue that birth is that line.  This means that the line varies from pregnancy to pregnancy.  Most children are born close to nine months gestation, but some come early and others late.  If birth is the line, then a child born at six months is protected more than a child with greater development but still in the womb.  The latter child has more ability but, unfortunately, he hasn’t been born yet.  Birth changes the location of the child but not the essence of the child.  This makes birth somewhat arbitrary to use as a line.  Is the definition of a human being based on his location or his essence?  If essence, then birth is irrelevant.  The child in the womb twenty minutes ago is no different in essence from the child out of the womb now. 

But some say that birth is not arbitrary.  They sometimes argue that a necessary part of being human is social interaction, and until you are born, you have no social interaction.  Let me ask some questions.  Does this mean that the hermit in the mountains is not human?  Does this mean that if we discovered that the fetus could have primitive social interaction (maybe learn and respond to a human voice), that he would then be human?  Does this mean that twins could be human but single births can’t?  Does this mean that someone in a coma is not human?  Define social interaction in a way that is not ad hoc.  And why is that a necessary criterion?

Some claim that the line is not at birth but at a certain level of development. 

And where is that level?  Six months gestation?  Eight months?  Nine months?  And why did you pick the level you did?  If you pick nine months, does this mean that a preemie born at seven months is not a human but the more developed baby at nine months is a human even though he is not yet born?  Does this mean that two babies at seven months gestation are the same when one is born and one is not?  If they are both human at seven months, then the one in utero must be human and you can’t abort him.  If they are not human, then the one that is born must not be human, and you can kill it.  This is a big problem with relying on a developmental stage to define who is and isn’t a human. 

Some claim that the line is viability.  But viability is incredibly elastic.  If viability is the line, then a child born in Dallas, Texas is a human at seven months, but a child born in rural Sudan is not a human until nine months.  If viability is the line, then in the 1700s babies were human at nine months, but now they are human at seven months.  And in another 100 years maybe they will be human at five months.  Could we one day have the technology to have babies survive outside the womb from conception on?  If so, then those future babies would be human at conception, but ours are not human until seven months.  Viability changes with technology.  Does the definition of a human also change with technology? 

These are some problems inherent in the proabortion position.  When you ask proabortion people where their line is and why, they cannot be consistent.  Whatever criteria they use for excluding the fetus from humanity produces consequences they don’t want, and they end up picking and choosing what they want in an ad hoc way.

I have been discussing where proabortion people draw their line, but where they draw their line is tied up with what they think a person is. 

A fetus is alive, and a fetus is human.  A fetus is, thus, a human life.  Many proabortion people will admit this much.  They look at the science, at the continuity of the organism, at the photos, and at the feelings we all have, and admit that a fetus is a human life, but they do not admit that a fetus is a person.  Peter Singer is a good example of this.  Singer is a philosophy professor at Princeton, a proabortion thinker, and perhaps the best-known popularizer of this distinction between a human and a person.  If you were to ask Singer if the fetus is human, he would say, “yes.”  He realizes that the fetus must be human for the scientific and logical reasons already given.  But he wishes to make a distinction between a human and a person.  All beings with human mothers and fathers, human DNA, human body parts, etc are humans.  But not all humans are persons.  To Singer, persons must have consciousness, rational reflection, and autonomy, the ability to make decisions.[1]

He concludes that the fetus does not have these features and, thus, is not entitled to life. 

I have two enormous problems with Singer’s definition.  First, I find it disturbing for us to decide which humans are persons and which humans are not.  Singer’s position requires that we make this distinction, but the moment we make it, we put ourselves in the position of God.  We then say, “These humans deserve life.  Those humans don’t . . . These humans are real people.  Those are not.”  This stance is chilling.  This stance is what the Nazis did.  This stance is how you justify genocide and slavery.  And apparently abortion as well. 

Second.  Singer argues that no human is a person unless he has self-awareness, rational reflection and autonomy.  Newborns do not yet have those features.  People with Alzheimer’s, people in comas, people in vegetative states – all such people do not have those features.  I have a cousin who suffered brain damage in an auto accident, and after the accident, to the best of my knowledge, she had no self-awareness at all.  Was she a real person?  This is a huge problem with the position that a person must have certain abilities to be a real person.  In order to be consistent, Singer must allow for infanticide and for the killing of certain segments of the population. 

Surprisingly, Singer allows for such and argues on behalf of infanticide.  He writes:

I do not regard the conflict between the position I have taken and widely accepted views about the sanctity of infant life as a ground for abandoning my position.  These widely accepted views need to be challenged.[2]

Stop.  Go back and read that again. 

Singer admits that infants do not have self-awareness, rational reflection or autonomy and that they are, thus, not real people.  Singer thus admits that it is morally allowable to kill them.  Most proabortion people will not go that far because most proabortion people are not consistent.  Singer understands that if he is to be consistent, infanticide is a morally viable option. 

If your criteria for personhood requires abilities like self-awareness, rational reflection, and autonomy, then when exactly does a person become a person?  A year after birth?  A year and a half?  Three years?  When?  If you rely on vague categories like these, you can’t draw a line at which a person becomes a person.  You can’t draw it.  But the line comes after birth, and the line moves, and the line is subject to the interpretations of those who have power.  This, too, is chilling. 

Singer’s conclusions are my criticism of Singer’s ideas.  Singer’s conclusions are why I protest at vague criteria for personhood like self-awareness, rational reflection and autonomy.  I do not believe it is morally justifiable to kill infants.  Or people with Alzheimer’s.  Or people with severe Down’s Syndrome.  This thinking is heinous. 

But this thinking is the logical conclusion of the proabortion idea that a person is not a person unless he is self-aware, rational, and autonomous.  For those who believe this idea, I am glad most of you do not favor infanticide.  I am glad you are inconsistent in your thinking, but please understand that I am pointing out your inconsistency as evidence that your position is flawed. 

The fetus is a human.  All humans are persons.  Period. 

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[1] Singer, Peter.  Practical Ethics. 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 169, 171, 188.

[2] Singer, Peter.  Writings on an Ethical Life.  London: Fourth Estate, 2000. p. 161.

In previous blogs I have stated why I am prolife.  I now want to address arguments you will hear from the proabortion side. 

Choice

A woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body.  This is the main argument the proabortion side gives.  My body, my choice.  You’ll hear this a million times in the media.  And, of course, I support the sentiment as a general statement.  In general, everyone should have the right to do what they want with their own bodies.  No complaints there.

But we recognize exceptions to the principle.  We know that if what you do with your body harms someone else’s body, then you do not have the right to do anything you want. In fact, we even have laws preventing people from harming their own bodies.  You can’t put heroin in your body without going against the law, even if that heroin affects no one else’s body.  You can’t enroll in school without putting certain vaccines in your body, even if you don’t want them.  A new mom can be prosecuted for harming her child if she does drugs or alcohol while pregnant.  Many governments codified COVID restrictions (masks, vaccines) and shut down businesses.  Their rationale was the opposite of bodily autonomy.  They said they can force people to do with their bodies what those people might not want to do.  Why?  It might help save other people’s bodies. 

Whether you agree or disagree with the specific laws above, you understand the rationale.

Bodily autonomy has limits, and everyone knows it.  The difference between the prolife and proabortion positions then is that the prolife position says a child in the womb is a special case that limits autonomy, but the proabortion position says it is not.  So even when we talk about the central argument of the proabortion position, we come back to this question:  is a pregnant woman carrying a human life? 

If she is carrying a human life, then she does not have the choice to kill him, even if she does not want the pregnancy.  If she is carrying a human life, then she does not have complete bodily autonomy, for what she does with her body affects someone else’s body.  If she aborts, the consequence is not mild.  It is death.  One hundred per cent of the time.[i]  If, however, she is not carrying a human life, then the morality of abortion becomes more difficult to discern. 

In 100% of pregnancies, we have more than one human life.  This fact limits bodily autonomy, and most pregnant mothers know this.  Most pregnant mothers change their habits while pregnant precisely because they know they are caring for another human being, and they want to take care of that little one.  In fact, we would consider a mom morally deficient if she did not care about the little one inside her. 

This is the first problem with the choice argument.  It does not recognize the harm that the mother’s choice brings to another human being. 

The second problem with the choice argument is that it turns out to be starkly one-sided.  The woman has a choice.  The child does not.  Ironically, this sounds like the thinking of the proslavery Confederacy.   Choice or freedom was a central argument the southern aristocracy used to justify slavery.  “You live your way; let us live ours.  We want the right to choose for ourselves how to live.”  This thinking was central to the Confederate psyche.  Today we recognize such thinking to be bankrupt because the South’s appeal to freedom ignored the freedom of millions of black men and women.  The freedom of choice the southern aristocracy spoke about was only for them.  If you were a slave, you had no choice, no freedom.  The proabortion position is just as narrow in who gets to choose.  The child has no choice.  She has the same choice a slave in Louisiana had in 1844. 

This is why the appeal to choice rings hollow.  It is an appeal to the choice of only one person in a decision that ultimately takes the life of another person.  No one has a legitimate choice to do that. 

Special cases  

The proabortion side talks profusely about special circumstances that it says change the moral equation on abortion.  Let’s discuss some of these.

Life of the mother:  Statistically speaking, cases in which a pregnancy threatens the life of the mother are so rare that they round off to zero.  Authorities on all sides, from Alan Guttmacher[ii] to C. Everett Koop acknowledge that in the United States, “abortion as a necessity to save the life of the mother is so rare as to be nonexistent.”[iii]

But let’s say one of these rarest of rare cases happens.  We must now make hard choices.  In these situations, we are now comparing one life to another.  We can save the mother or the baby, but not both.  If we can save the mother only by taking the life of the baby, then it is morally justifiable to take that life.  In fact, in most of these cases, if the mother dies, the baby dies too, and we lose two lives.

If, however, we have other medical options, we should pursue them first.  Abortion is a last resort. 

Rape or incest:  This argument states that anyone who would force a woman who has been raped to have a child is utterly callous to the woman’s feelings.  The woman did nothing wrong.  The woman does not want the child.  The woman suffers enormous emotional pain as it is.  Let her abort and move on.

I want to say several things to this. 

The first is that obviously rape and incest are tragedies, and the mothers who experienced them need our love and compassion.  They need a shoulder to cry on.  They need friends to help them through their crisis.  They may need counseling or financial help.  They need prayer.  They need to know they did nothing wrong.  They need to see justice done to the rapist.  They need people to come around them and love them.  These are some of the things they need, and prolife people are not callous to those needs.  Healing will not be easy or quick. 

But what a woman does not need is an abortion.  There is no such thing as abort and move on.  That thinking is naïve.  Research does not show that abortion helps women mentally or emotionally.  Priscilla Coleman reviewed 22 studies on the effects of abortion.  This entailed more than 870,000 participants.  These studies show that women who have abortions have an increased rate of mental illness of all sorts – suicide, depression, substance abuse, anxiety and more – and that a significant portion of that increase can be directly attributable to abortion.[iv]

In addition, Coleman unequivocally states that the putative benefits of abortion have no empirical basis.[v] 

Abortion does not seem to make traumatic events better.  If anything, it makes them harder to deal with.  Abortion may seem like an easy way out, but in the long run, it appears to be detrimental to a woman’s flourishing. 

Having the baby, however, seems to help.  In those same research studies, the comparison groups were women who carried to term and women with unintended pregnancies who carried to term, and in both instances, mental health was better for women who had their babies than for women who had abortions.[vi]  This is common sense.  So many times when a woman has a baby, the baby helps bring her healing.  The baby gives her purpose.  The baby gives her hope.  The baby helps her love again.  The baby brings her joy.  The circumstances behind the baby may be horrible, but the baby is not horrible.

Second, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute, rape and incest combined account for less than 1.5% of all abortions.[vii]  Roughly 99% of all abortions are for some reason other than the life of the mother, rape and incest.  Let’s suppose then, for the sake of argument, that I say to my proabortion friend that I will allow abortion for these 1% of abortions if he will grant that we prohibit the other 99%.  No one on the proabortion side is willing to do this, which tells me that rape and incest are not the real issues for them.  If we are going to deal with the proabortion position, we must focus somewhere else.  Proabortion people don’t consider these issues central. 

Rape and incest get disproportionate press in this debate.  As often as these issues come up, one might think that they are common reasons for abortion.  They aren’t. 

Third, we come back to the issue of whether the pregnant woman is carrying a human being.  If she is, then we do not resolve a rape by killing a human being.  One tragedy does not solve another.  It simply produces two tragedies instead of one.  If a pregnant woman isn’t carrying a human being, however, we can look at abortion as a possible solution.   

Fourth, rape involves all sorts of evil and wrongdoing, but the baby has done nothing wrong.  The person who needs to be punished is the rapist, not the baby.  Condemning the baby to death does no good.

Financial/Social/Emotional/Career Reasons:  The proabortion argument says that many women in crisis pregnancies are not ready to care for a baby.  They may live in poverty or be immature or have no husband or want to pursue a career.  I’m going to lump these reasons together, not because I believe they are identical but because the reasoning behind them is much the same.  The mother is in an especially difficult situation, having a child makes the situation harder, and my proabortion friend says I don’t care about her.  If I cared, I would let her abort.  My proabortion friend sees abortion as a solution to the mother’s problems. I don’t.    

I agree with my proabortion friend that many situations exist in which the mother is not ready to have a baby.  I disagree that the solution is to kill the baby.  My proabortion friend insists that the mother is not killing a baby, that she does not have a human being inside her.  And here we are again.  We come around to the central issue.  We can’t escape it.  Every argument, every case my proabortion friend brings up stands only if pregnant women are not carrying humans.  If, however, pregnancy involves more than one human, then my proabortion friend is fatally wrong and blatantly denies basic human rights to real human beings.  Everything hinges on this issue.

If a woman in a crisis pregnancy does not want a baby, she does have a viable alternative to abortion.  She can put her child up for adoption.  My wife was adopted as a newborn and grew up in a loving home.  I’m grateful that her birth mom chose to have her.  My life is much richer because a woman I never met decided to have a child she didn’t want.  If I could meet my wife’s birth mom, I would say thank you.  A thousand times over. 

Couples who want babies are waiting in line to adopt them.  Thus, a pregnant mom in a difficult situation can provide a good home for her child, even if that home is not her own.  And she can still be free to pursue her career.  If she wants to see the child as he grows up, she can.  If she does not want to, she does not have to.  Adoption provides a viable alternative to raising a child or to taking her life.  You don’t have to do either.

In a crisis pregnancy, a woman needs people to come around her and help her.  She needs to know she is not alone, and my proabortion friend wants to know what prolife people are doing for the mother.  To him, the prolife position cares only about babies and nothing for mothers.  This accusation gets flung around again and again, but I don’t find that it has much substance. 

What do Christian people do for pregnant moms? 

Let’s for a moment set aside every hospital, clinic, and shelter called St. so-and-so, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, New Life, Resurrection or some other such name.  If you removed those sources of help for pregnant women, you would be removing an enormous swath of the American medical system.  But let’s not talk about those.   Let’s talk instead about the thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across the nation whose sole focus is to help women in these very pregnancies that prolife people are accused of ignoring.  These centers provide medical care, financial aid, counseling, support, classes, diapers, bottles, formula, baby clothes, car seats, and more.  And they provide these things with little to no government support and with volunteer staff.  In other words, I see prolife people giving their lives and money, and I see them working at the street level with women in difficult pregnancies.  I’d like to see my proabortion friends do something like this without government funding.  Give sacrificially of their own money and their own time to care for women in difficult pregnancies.  That’s what prolife people are doing. 

Can you still criticize prolife people for not caring for mothers?  Some will.  There is always more that can be done, and there are prolife people who do little.  But if you choose to criticize because you see more that can be done, please look in the mirror and go start doing something about it.  And if you are not doing what the prolife groups are already doing, you might want to reserve your criticism for someone else.  This idea that prolife people care only for babies and not for mothers is hollow and bankrupt. 

Fetal deformities:  The child has Down’s Syndrome.  The child has a deformed heart.  The child does not have two legs.  When a mother learns that her child has something like this, it is emotionally straining.  The proabortion position says we can save the parents the difficulty of having to raise such a child, and we can save the child from having to live such a life . . . if only we abort. 

By now, you know what we come back to.  Is the pregnant woman carrying a human being?  If she is, then she has a human with Down’s Syndrome.  We do not kill humans just because they have Down’s Syndrome.  Or one leg.  Or a deformed heart. 

It may be true that this child will be more difficult to raise than a normal child, and it may also be true that this child will experience a more difficult life than a fully healthy person, but avoiding difficulty is not what life is about. 

We say we help the child by aborting, but are we really helping?  Can people with Down’s Syndrome live meaningful lives?  Chris Nikic?  How about people in wheelchairs?  Joni Eareckson Tada?  Or the blind?  Helen Keller?  Nick Vujicic was born with no arms and no legs.  He now travels the world giving motivational speeches and hope to millions.[viii]  His life was not easy, but ask him if someone in his condition can live a meaningful life. Often the most meaningful lives are the most difficult. When we say that people with abnormalities cannot live fulfilled lives, we are making an assumption about their life that we have no right to make. Many people with abnormalities have lived meaningful lives.  And what is just as important, millions of them, whose names you have never heard, have brought joy and meaning to their parents. 

These special cases often bring up the phenomenon of an unwanted pregnancy, and unwanted pregnancies are central to the proabortion position.  Proabortion people genuinely want most women to have their babies because most women actually want to have their babies.  But this creates an odd tension in proabortion thought.

Most proabortion people talk as if the fetus is a baby . . . IF the mother wants the baby.  If, however, the mother does not want the baby, proabortion people will tell her “it’s just a clump of cells.”  The fetus has human value if the mother wants him but no value if the mother does not want him.  The humanity of the fetus then seems to depend on the desires of the mother.  This thinking is utter nonsense.  Our desires are irrelevant to the facts.  If the fetus is a baby, he is a baby whether you want him or not.  If the fetus is not a baby, it is not a baby whether you want one or not.  You can’t have it both ways.  The American emphasis on freedom and choice sometimes gets this absurd.  We think we can shape reality to our desires.  We can’t.  

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[i] Statistically speaking.

[ii] Guttmacher, Alan. “Abortion Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” The Case for Legalized Abortion Now (Berkeley, California: Diablo Books), 1967, page 3.

[iii] Koop, C. Everett, M.D. “How Often is Abortion Necessary to ‘Save the Life of the Mother’?” October 19, 2012, at https://www.nrlc.org/archive/abortion/pba/HowOften AbortionNecessarySaveMother.pdf.

[iv] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/abortion-and-mental-health-quantitative-synthesis-and-analysis-of-research-published-19952009/E8D556AAE1C1D2F0F8B060B28BEE6C3D

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Op cit. www.guttmacher.org

[viii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJnJ_fTYofQ

Up to this point, in my discussion on abortion, I have said nothing about religion.  I do not believe you need religion to know that a pregnant woman is carrying a human life. 

But I want to shift and now talk directly to the Christian who honors the Bible as holy.  So to the Christian:

Christians do not abort their children.

All humans are created in the image of God (Gen 1:27).  This doctrine is the foundation for human rights, and human rights belong to all humans. Here are some Scriptures that speak of the unborn as humans or having human capacities.

The unborn can be filled with the Holy Spirit:  For he will be great before the Lord.  And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb (Lk 1:15).

The unborn can rejoice:  And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy (Lk 1:41-4)

God knows and calls the unborn to serve Him:  Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations (Jer 1:5)

The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name . . . And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant . . . (Is 49:1, 5)

But when he who had set me apart before I was born . . . (Gal 1:15)

God is the God of the unborn:  Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.  On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God (Ps 22:9-10).

God knows the unborn and is with them.  Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there!  If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.  If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.  For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.  My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them (Ps 139:7-16).

In this psalm, David speaks of God forming him, knowing him and making him within his mother’s womb.  The idea is that God is with David even there.  The flow of ideas runs like this.  Where can I go to escape God?  If I go to heaven, God is there.  If I go to hell, God is there.  If I go to the other side of the sea, God is there.  Darkness can’t hide me from God (Psalm 139:7-12).  Why, God was with me even in my mother’s womb (Ps 139: 13-6).

Unborn twins can struggle together:  The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?”  So she went to inquire of the Lord.  And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided . . .”(Gen 25:22-3).

Scripture says that children are a gift of God (Ps 127:3).  Abortion destroys that gift.  You cannot say that a child is a gift from God and then abort her.

Scripture commands the human race to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28).  Abortion negates that command. 

The Bible considers the unborn to be people.  It describes them experiencing things only people experience – the filling of the Holy Spirit, joy, struggle, being called to be a servant or a prophet.  It refers to them as babies and children, and the pronouns it uses are personal: I, me, he.

Biblically, a fetus is a human being.

The Early Church

Early church tradition also is quite uniform in opposition to abortion.  Here are a few quotes on abortion from early church fathers.

The Didache (1^st cent): “You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” [i]

Barnabas (late 1^st/early 2^nd cent): “Never do away with an unborn child, nor destroy it after its birth.”[ii]

Athenagoras (2^nd cent): Athenagoras is writing to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and senator Lucius Aurelius Commodus.  Here he is defending Christians against the charge that they are murderers.

“Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles.  How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it . . .[iii]

Tertullian (2^nd cent): “In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed.”[iv]

We could continue and quote Clement of Alexandria (2^nd century), Mark Minicius Felix (late 2^nd century), Hippolytus (early 3^rd), Cyprian (3^rd), and Basil, Ambrose, Jerome, John Chrysostom, and the Apostolic Constitution (all from the 4^th).  The early church was united in its strong opposition to abortion.  And the church didn’t stop.  Throughout history, Christian opposition continued through Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, John Piper, and a host of others. 

If you respect the Bible, the unborn is a human being.  If you respect the teaching of the early church fathers, abortion is a sin. 

As a human being I oppose abortion because it kills human beings.  As a Christian, I oppose abortion for the same reason, but as a Christian, I have extra reasons for doing so, namely Scripture and the historic church teachings. 

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[i] “The Didache.”  http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html, chapter 2.

[ii] “The Epistle of Barnabas,” Early Christian Writings.  New York: Penguin Books, 1981, p. 217.

[iii] Athenagoras.  “A Plea For Christians.”  https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/early-church-fathers/ante-nicene/vol-2-second-century/writings-of-athenagoras/a-plea-christians.html, chapter 35.

[iv] Tertullian. Apology. Ch 9.  https://carm.org/tertullian/tertullian-the-apology-chapters-1-to-23/

In my previous blog I argued from science that a fetus is a distinct human life. I now want to appeal to something entirely different.  I propose that we humans intuitively know that a fetus is a human is a baby is a child.  Our language and our emotions give us away.  Let me tell a story.

When I taught English, I gave my students each year a persuasive essay assignment in which they could write on any topic they chose.  Abortion was by far the most popular topic, and every year I found myself reading scads of essays on abortion – pro and con.  And every year I had multiple students who took a proabortion stance and argued for “aborting the baby” or “aborting the child.”  It’s just the way they talked. 

I would point out to these students that their language hurt their argument, for if the fetus is (as they admit) a baby, then abortion kills a baby, but if the fetus is not human, you can do with it as you please.  This “baby” language was so common that it often made it into my generic comments to the class on common errors or weaknesses I found across many essays. 

One year I was pointing out this pattern to the class and told them that if you want to take a proabortion stance, you weaken your argument by referring to the baby.  Babies are human.  Babies are children.

When I had finished, a young man in the front row (who did not write on abortion) replied, “Of course it’s a baby!  What else could it be?”  He then went on to say that he believed a woman should be able to abort that baby.  I was stunned not at the gross contradiction in his moral reasoning but at how confidently he stated it and how strongly he believed it.  He was utterly convinced that pregnant women carry babies.  He had no doubt that a fetus is a baby.

You can write off that young man as being a high school kid who simply hadn’t thought through the issue, and you certainly would be correct.  But that’s precisely my point.  When we are at the dinner table describing what a pregnant woman is carrying, “baby” is the normal word we use.  And we don’t think twice about it.  It’s just natural.  I’ve never heard anyone address a pregnant woman and say, “How’s the fetus today?”  No.  You greet your pregnant friend and say, “How are you and the baby doing?”  The mother tells her husband, “I felt the baby kick today.”  Or she says, “The baby is hungry today.”  Or “we heard the baby’s heartbeat today.”  Or they see the ultrasound and say, “It’s a girl!”

We talk this way all the time, and our language says something about what we think.  We intuitively know that a pregnant woman is carrying a baby.  Or a boy.  Or a girl.  Or a child.  Those are the words we use.  And when we use those words, we don’t mean baby dog or baby fish or baby bird.  We mean baby human. 

That young man in my class is not alone.  What he intuitively understood is what most people intuitively understand.  The overwhelming majority of pregnant women intuitively know they are carrying a baby.  They don’t need scientific arguments.  Just ask them what they are carrying.  Or try this.  Try telling a pregnant woman that she is not carrying a baby and see how that goes. 

And here’s the thing.  Most proabortion people talk this way.  They may avoid “baby” language in formal arguments, but in personal settings they still revert to it.  I’ve heard this with my ears.  Our language communicates something about what we believe deep down.

But so do our emotions. Recently, a woman I work with announced that she was pregnant.  We all rejoiced.  We congratulated her.  We high fived.  And this reaction is the normal human reaction to a pregnancy.  Why?  We are not rejoicing over a clump of cells.  We are rejoicing over a human life.  And proabortion people do the same rejoicing in most situations. 

But our emotions don’t have to be joyful to betray us. Even when we face a crisis pregnancy – an unwed mother, a rape – and our emotions may be sad at the situation or we may feel a sense of loss, these emotions also suggest that the mother is carrying something more than a clump of cells.  If the fetus is just a clump of cells, why do we feel a sense of loss?  Our emotions need not get entangled with a clump of cells.  We have no reason to be sad over a clump of cells.  The mother has an easy way out.  What is in her body is no more special than a wart.  Just remove it and move on. 

But that’s not how we feel.  There’s no tragedy in having a clump of cells that you can easily remove with no harm done.  The fact that we consider crisis pregnancies tragic betrays the fact that deep down, we know we are dealing with more than just a clump of cells.  Deep down, whether we are happy or sad, we know what a pregnant woman is carrying. 

A fetus is a human is a baby is a child.  This is the intuition most of us have.  Now I understand that intuitions are not formal arguments.  Intuitions can be wrong.  But neither are they nothing.  Intuitions do push us in a certain direction, and that direction is toward the humanity of the fetus.  If you want to say that the fetus is not human, you must argue against the way most people naturally think and feel.  In other words, the burden of proof is on you. 

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.

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[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