Basic HTML Version
The phrase "in thy book all my
members were written" at the very
least shows tha t God takes notice of
the individuality of the fetus, and
we certainly cannot categorically
rule out the possibility that God
does indeed ascribe a personality to
the fetus, a personal individuality
which God remembers (possibly in
His "book"?). And since we cannot
rule this out, it inva lidates the pro–
abortion a rgument that the aborted
fetus could not be human because it
could not be resurrected.
Jeremiah's case is perhaps less po–
etic, more straightforward. He wrote
that God told him: " Before
1
formed thee in the belly
I
knew
thee; and before thou camest forth
out of the womb
1
sanctified
thee ..." (Jer. l :5).
The imputation of personality to
the fetus of Jeremiah in this passage
is clear, and there is no way of prov–
ing that God did not begin to as–
cribe such personality from the
moment of conception.
Isaiah said that "from the womb, .
from the body of my mother he
[God] named my name" (Jsa.
49 :1 ,
RSV). Again, God treats a fetus as a
separa te, distinct personality, even
with its own name, before birth.
In chapters
25
and
38
of Genesis,
unborn children, in each case twins,
are ascribed individua l differences
so much that they already, before
birth, symbolize character traits in
the various na tions which would
eventually become their progeny.
And Ecclesiastes
11 :5
is particu–
larly interesting.
The Living Bible
translates the passage: "God's ways
are as mysterious as the pathway of
the wind, and as the manner in
which a human spirit is infused into
the little body of a baby while it is
yet in its mother's womb." Wbile
this seems to be a definit ive anti–
abortion scripture,
it
could be ar–
gued that
The Living Bible
is far too
loose in its tran slation. The Revised
Standard Version, staying much
closer to the original, renders Eccle–
siastes
11:5:
"As you do not know
how the spirit comes to the bones in
the womb of a woman with child, so
you do not know the work of God
who makes everything."
This rendering indicates, though
not as explicitly as one might wish,
that
the
biblical criterion for a
32
human being- the spirit in man- is
present in the fetus. But even if the
wording is ultimately deemed too
vague to be conclusive, there is one
thing which is conclusive: We, as
human beings with our finite knowl–
edge, cannot absolutely determine
when a fetus (or embryo, or a "glob
of cells"- take your pick) has the
spirit in man.
And because of the very stringent
biblical condemnation of infanti–
cide, we must not take chances. lf
we indeed do not know whether a
fetus has the spirit in man, then we
could
be committing murder if we
practice abortion.
Separate Human Belng?
While most scriptural passages in–
dicate that the fetus is a separate
human being, there is one passage
which might seem to show other–
wise, and therefore bears exam–
ination.
Tra nsla t ed literally, Exodus
21:22-24
states: "And when mcn
contend and they strike a pregnant
woman and ber child goes forth,
and injury is not, he shall surely be
fined as the husband of the woman
may put upon him, and he shall
give with the judges. [The sense is
"according to what the j udges deter–
mine."] And if injury is, thou shalt
give soul for soul, eye for eye, tooth
for tooth, hand for hand." (Each
word is taken from the
Interlinear
Hebrew-English 0/d Testament
by
George Ricker Berry.)
The pro-abortionist argues that
since the person who strikes the
woman does not pay with his life
for the accident, the Bible does not
count the fetus as a separa t e
life.
Logically, however, we cannot
come to so definitive a statement.
Consider the following:
The accident could have taken
place at any tim e during the
woman's pregnancy, even as late as
the eighth or ninth month. In such a
case, it is not at all clear whether the
net effect of the ·whole affair would
have been to precipitate a live pre–
mature birth, with no harm coming
to the baby. In such a case, the of-·
fender would simply be paying for
the inconvenience caused to the
woman and her husband for having
altered the na tural timetable. The
verse does not specify the condition
in which "her child goes forth." We
therefore cannot necessarily assume
that the offending party would even
be causing the death of the fetus.
l f indeed he did cause the death
of the fetus, it would bave been acci–
dental, and fall into the legal cate–
gory of manslaughter. Why then
does not the verse say anything
about the offender fteeing to the city
of refuge (Num.
35:ll- 15),
as was
normally the case
in
manslaughter?
The answer is that the ftight to the
ci ty of refuge was not a
punishment
for manslaughter, but a humane
provision in the Mosaic sys tem to
protect the offender from being exe–
cuted by vengeful relativcs and was
the custom in the region at the time
(and still is to this day among sorne
peoples). We cannot absolutely
claim that such an offender might
not have availed himself of the city
of refuge in such cases as described
in Exodus
21:22.
Furthermore, the
offended husband and wife are rec–
ompensed, much the same way as
when a person who causes acci–
dental death is sued for a rather
large sum of money by the victim's
rela tives.
Hearts and Mlnds
At this point pro-abortion a rgu–
ments become emotiona l issues
concentrating on tbe often heart–
breaking situations where abortion
does, on the surface, seem the best
way to alleviate clea r human suffer–
ing. This
is
where abstract logical
analysis meets reftexive human
emotion. We
see
the great potential
for suffering for a woman who can' t
really afford to have the child she is
carrying, but we must exercise men–
tal discipline and logical abstract
thinking to realize that she might
indeed be committ ing murder by
aborting, and that (excluding abor–
tion to save the mothcr's life) even
the
possibility
of murder is the
greater evil.
Murder is murder, and to commit
it would be a worse evil than endur–
ing even great amounts of suffer–
ing- a fact we recognize when we
are talking about children or adults
whose very existence causes incon–
venience or suffering. There is no
other logical choice than to con–
elude that abortion
is
wrong.
o
The
PLAIN TRUTH August-September 1977