This is a revised and edited version of something that I previously posted in a Christian forum, so the language is how I would approach my fellow Christians, not necessarily what I would write on a forum such as Kos. The important thing is to talk about “freedom of conscience” rather than “choice.” This change does no damage at all to the Progressive position, but it eliminates an emotional block for Christians who choke on the term “pro-choice.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Christians in the town of Berea were praised because they “searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so,” [Acts 17:11]. Their example tells Christians today that we should check out what the Bible says about any important topic of discussion. Abortion is obviously one of those topics.
As I have searched out this subject for myself, I have discovered that many things aren’t quite as I thought. For example, not all Evangelicals had the same opinion about it at first. When the decision in Roe v. Wade was announced, Southern Baptists praised it as a victory for religious liberty [The Baptist Standard, January 31, 1973]. Obviously that position has since changed, but I wondered why they started there. So I went to the Bible, using these principles of Bible interpretation:
1) The Bible is true, and is the sufficient rule for faith and practice.
2) It is to be understood according to the plain sense of the language.
Here are some conclusions I came to. Some people might come to different conclusions starting from the same facts, but I won’t say, as some commentators do, that those who disagree with me are disagreeing with God. I will simply leave it to the readers to decide whether or not they see what I see.
The first thing I found was that the Bible does not clearly define the moment when life begins. Psalm 139 is frequently cited, but the wording isn’t about when life begins, it is about God knowing events and people beforehand. So verse 16 says, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God knew everything about David even before he was conceived, not just while he was in the womb. Jeremiah 1:5 has exactly the same meaning. So these verses do not prove anything about when life actually begins.
Second, I remembered a basic Christian belief: a body alone is not a living person. A person consists of a body and a spirit. So it is written that Jesus “gave up His spirit” on the cross [John 19:30]. Usually when that happens, the heart also stops beating. But back then there was no medical technology that could keep a dead person’s heart beating. Today there is. So we talk about somebody on life support being “brain dead,” but we could just as accurately say that the body is still functioning, but the spirit has departed. The body is not really alive as a person, so “pulling the plug” is not murder.
So, could it be that a fetus is a body that is being prepared for a spirit which has not yet entered in? It seems to me that this conclusion is inescapable. Otherwise, you have to believe that a fertilized egg which dies goes to heaven.
But there is another clue. In Numbers 5:11-28 we read that God not only permits, He orders the inducing of a miscarriage. The whole passage may sound alien to modern ears, but the relevant part for the purpose of this discussion is that if a wife suspected of adultery is actually guilty, and if she happens to be pregnant, the fetus will surely miscarry as a result of what the High Priest is ordered to do. So there was a time when God did permit induced miscarriages under certain conditions. Since God never orders the death of an innocent person because of the guilt of another person (except in the case of Jesus), I have to conclude that a fetus is in some important way different from an innocent living person, and that differece must be that a spirit is not yet present.
So, when does the spirit enter? At viability? Maybe. At birth? It would be hard to argue for any later point, but it is hard to argue for any specific earlier point, because the Bible does not say. Which means that I cannot, either. So I end up believing that the Baptists had it right in 1973, when they concluded that each person should have the freedom of conscience to make their own decision. It is not right for me or anybody else to bind the conscience of another person if the Bible is silent.
And that is why I, as a Christian, have a clear conscience about leaving the decision up to the person who is actually carrying the fetus. I cannot speak where the Bible does not.
Evan