Brief Christian commentary on abortion...

[Prof]

Part of a preview of a booklet on the value of human life...

Is Human Life Special?

Abortion

In most Western countries, it is legal for a pregnant mother to get an abortion if she does not want the baby. Some countries have extreme abortion laws which allow abortion past the time of viability, even up to the time of birth if it is believed that the mother’s emotional well-being or health is at stake. This is despite the testimony of many doctors that there is no medical scenario where the abortion of a viable child is necessary to save the life of the mother.

Biologically, it is an indisputable fact that from conception the growing baby is a distinct living organism. The baby will be dependent on the mother’s womb to survive and grow throughout the pregnancy, but this does not detract from the fact that the unborn baby is an independent living being.

With the development of ultrasound technology, it is impossible to argue that the unborn child is less than fully human—and the abortionists know this. One abortionist who kills babies as late as six months along said, “Am I killing? Yes, I am. I know that.”1

We can now see the baby’s heartbeat just six weeks after conception. A baby only a few months after conception can be seen kicking and sucking his or her thumb. And horrifyingly, ultrasound also shows that pre-born babies struggle to try to get away from the implements of the abortionist and scream silently as they are dismembered.

But so much of this evidence is withheld from the public and the many women considering abortions, so they often do not make fully informed decisions.

So, many people today still think that abortion is just removing a ‘lump of cells’ or that the baby is less than fully human.3

Because it is impossible in this age to argue that the child is less than human, the debate in recent years has shifted towards ‘personhood’. Abortion advocates will say that because the child is undeveloped he or she is not yet a ‘person’ with rights, or at least any rights the child has cannot overrule a mother who decides she does not want to be pregnant.

However, the Bible treats the unborn child as human from conception on. The word that the Bible uses for the child in the womb is the same as it uses for an infant outside the womb. And the Bible never separates the concepts of ‘human’ and ‘person’. So if a baby is a living human being (which he or she demonstrably is from the moment of conception) in the biblical view, he or she is a person whom God the Creator commands us not to murder.

This argument about personhood is also very dangerous ground to tread because one could twist such views to apply to children who are a few months to a few years old!

And in fact, some people have done this; Peter Singer, the infamous Australian ‘ethicist’, has advocated for parents to be able to kill their new baby up to 28 days after birth.4