Monday, June 11, 2007

When does Life begin? The Christian anti-abortionists are dead wrong.

When does Life begin? The Christian anti-abortionists are dead wrong.

The Bible says life begins with the first breath. I have included 11 scriptures in the body of this essay that show my assertion. We'll take a look at Philosophers, the Church of Rome, the law and medical science. July 2007 finds us to a great degree, understanding the fertilized ovum and its stages of development. But that doesn't seem to have helped much. Now regardless of our freedom of religion or from religion, we are still divided into three hostile camps. Life begins at conception or at birth or somewhere in the messy gray area.

Since the early 1800s western society has been settling issues in the struggle to define a balance of civil rights. By the end of the 1950s in the U.S. women were enjoying the right to have their own bank account and cast their own vote, but at the same time, reproduction rights had slipped clear away. All abortion was outlawed in the U.S. accept to save a woman's life. An unprecedented control of a woman's reproduction rights in this country's short history. Even in the dark ages, the church allowed abortion before the quickening, an idea that seems to have taken its first official breath in Athens. Aristotle, 384-322 b.c., taught the delayed ensoulment theory. A fetus is animated with a human soul 40 days after conception for a male and 90 days for a female. Both having a vegetable soul before then, and birth was the rational stage. This was the excepted philosophy in the western world, including the Church of Rome for many centuries. Of course there were dissenters and argument back and forth by men like St. John Chrysostom, calling abortion, “murder before birth,” but then he also called women a “necessary evil.” Even Jerome wrote that,”The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and abortion does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired their external appearance and their limbs.” (epistle 121,4). The Apostolic Constitutions (380 ace) disallowed it only after the fetus took on a “human shape.”

Aurelius Augustine born 11-13-354 A.D. was a sincere and passionate scholar of philosophy, and after converting to Christianity in his fifties became one of the church's most respected writers of doctrine. Building on Aristotle's theme, he was the one to introduce the term “the Quickening,” and his clear distinction between the animate and inanimate state of a fetus became Cannon Law in 1140. Decretum Magistri Gratiani 2. 32.2.7 to 2.32.2.10, in Corpus Juris Canonic 1122,1123 (A.Friedburg, 2nd ed.1879) There were a few brief exceptions, such as Pope Sixtus V in 1588 made all abortions illegal, but was reversed again by Pope

Gregory X1V, codifying abortions at up to 16 ½ weeks as “not equivalent to the killing of a human being, as no soul was present.” Then Pope Innocent 111 in the early 1200s ruled that the fetus had no soul until it was “animated” Thus the Church of Rome including all of its Prodestant offshoots has influenced western law on abortion to this day, coming to America by adoption from the English Common Law of the Quickening concept. This began changing in 1803 with a series of changes in English statutory law. England's first criminal abortion statute. It made abortion of a quickened fetus a capitol crime, but a misdemeanor for abortions done before “quickening.” By 1840, eight American states had statutes of their own dealing with abortion. Meanwhile the Church of Rome in 1869 under Pope Plus 1X declared all abortion to be homicide and finally by 1983 all distinction between “Fetus Animatus” and “Fetus Inanimatus” were purged from Cannon Law.

After the Civil war, legislation in the U.S. continued to replace English Common Law, dealing severely with abortion after quickening, but remaining lenient with it before quickening, so retaining the quickening concept, clear through the 1940s. The opponents to abortion gained a great deal of power in the 1950s and by the late 50s, the criminalization of all abortion, except to save a woman's life, left Americans deeply divided. Debates raged, record numbers of births happened, (the baby boom) and women died in back alleys. The debate finally made its way to the Supreme Court who, after much grappling with the philosophy of when life begins, decided as written by Mr. Justice Blackman, “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins, when those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the Judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” And so they looked to the constitution to resolve this issue within the narrow definition of legal rights. After deep consideration of the constitution the Supreme Court concluded that the use of the word “person” is such that it has application only postnatally. “None indicates, with any assurance that it has any possible pre-natal application, and so the word person as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” They also concluded that the right of privacy,is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

Thus women were given back their right to choose. So here we are still in 2007 fighting over when life begins. In all fairness to the philosophical acumen of Aristotle and Augustine and even Thomas Aquinas, in their day, it was the excepted belief that the world was flat.

Furthermore the printing press was a thing of the future, 1454, and the Holy Bible wasn't to be assembled and distributed by King James until 1611. So the church doctrines were created from logic and philosophical Reason. therefore any person who is not a catholic does not have the religious obligation to defer to St. Augustine, or Canon Law. The dilemma wouldn't be so disturbing if we weren't grappling with the question of, is it murder or not murder. The morality of murder goes even a step further if you're a Christian and becomes not only immoral, but also a sin against God, thus condemning a murderer to Hell,”A lake which burneth with fire.” Yipes! No wonder the debate is so strident. But Christians take heart, we have an advantage over Aristotle and Augustine. We have the word of God to guide us as to his will. I got out my Strong's Exhaustive concordance and explored the subject and you won't believe what I discovered! But you are exhorted to study it. 2 Timothy 3:16, stay with me, this bit is worth slogging through.

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Isaiah 42:5 Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:

Ezekiel 37:5 Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: &10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

Job 33:4 The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.

Acts 17:25 he giveth to all, life and breath, and all things.

Genesis 6:17 And behold I, even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

Genesis 7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

Psalm 104:29 Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.

Jeremiah 10:14 ?.every founder is confounded by the graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.

1 Kings 17: 17 and it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him.

&21 And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again. &23?..and Elijah said, see, thy son liveth.

Job 9:18 He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule. The Bible tells us in Luke 1:41-44 that John the Baptist leaped in the womb for joy when he heard that Jesus had been conceived. So not only was Mr. Baptist aware of the whole sacrificial lamb plan from fetus hood, he also had extraordinary under water hearing. However he was able to know as a fetus, he was definitely the exception. Just like Elijah who was so Holy he got to by pass death and go to heaven in a chariot of fire. All the rest of us have to live and die by the rules, which clearly are breath or no breath, according to the Bible.

Christians however do not own the exclusive rights to morality. In this 21st century there is a growing culture who have come to embrace morality as a human imperative that stands alone outside of any religious doctrine or dictate. Much like Socrates, if we are not looking to God to dictate our morality, then we must reason with ourselves. But we have another advantage over Aristotle. Modern science shows us how human procreation takes place. It mostly happens inside a woman's uterus. Her body creates an ovum. Once it is fully formed in about 28 days, it is released to reside in the uterus. Even though modern science has proven that the ovum is truly alive, it will not grow into a

person unless it is fertilized. Because the ovum alone and by itself cannot grow into a person, some assert that life begins at the time of fertilization or conception. But is it truly a person?

Or does it remain just as dependent on many more processes of development, just as fully alive as an unfertilized ovum but equally as not yet a person until all of the developmental stages are completed and it emerges into the world and begins to live and breath on its own. I assert that the ovum is not any more a person the moment after it is fertilized, than it is the moment before it is fertilized, and not any less alive the moment before fertilization, than the moment after. Conception is only just one step in the nine month process. And so I'm going to have to agree with God on this debate, we become a living Soul or a person, when we breath that first breath

into our “nostrils” at birth. So I plead with all people of reason. Let us stop the eroding of our bill of Rights. Let us leave the responsibility of the breath of life in the hands of God, and the private choice to host or not to host, right where it is now, the responsibility of women, who bear the entire consequences on their health and body.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

Francis Holland said...

We come at this from different analytical perspectives, but our conclusion is the same. To the extent that there is a moral imperative regarding abortion, it is the individuals who engage in sex - men and women - who must take individual responsibility for determining how to confront the risk of abortion, through prevention and, when that fails, as if sometimes does, taking responsibility as individuals for deciding what to do about it.

Unknown said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

I felt the first post needed to be re-posted. No other words need be said.

Unknown said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

Unknown said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

Unknown said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

Unknown said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

Unknown said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

Unknown said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

Unknown said...

"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."

Jeremiah 1:5

Sounds pretty ProLife to me.

Jude McCarney said...

Berore I formed you in the womb, I knew you.... speaks to the the omnipresent feature of "Gods" personality ie he exists outside of time so he sees events inside of time all at once. he sees you before you are formed when you're born, as you live when you die etc. That scripture was speaking directly to the prophet, and does not address the question of when or at what point does a person become a living soul.

Hidden One said...

"The Bible says life begins with the first breath."

No it doesn't. For one thing, it's a basic law of biology that living matter comes from living matter - with the possible exception of the beginning of the theory of evolution, but that's tangential. But aside from your gross misuse of terminology:

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. (All references will be KJV or stated otherwise)

Original sin hardly applies to something that is not human.

Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Hard to sanctify a nonperson.

Incidentally, James 2:26 states that the body without the spirit is dead: whatever an unborn child is, dead is not the word for it!

"Even in the dark ages, the church allowed abortion before the quickening, an idea that seems to have taken its first official breath in Athens."

After that quote, you go on to cite a nice long list of people saying that killing a fetus up to a certain point was not murder, but you make two logical errors. Please, allow me to correct them:

"The conception of the male finishes on the fortieth day and that of the woman on the ninetieth, as Aristotle says in the IX Book of the Animals" (Aquinas, Commentary on III Sentences 3:5:2).

St. Thomas Aquinas, foremost of the delayed-ensoulment theologians, believed that ensoulment happened at conception, his science was simply wrong as to when that conception occurred.

And both St. Augustine and St. Thomas, as well as Pope Gregory XIV ( - and every other Catholic - considered early abortion a sin: while the penalties were at tiems lesser than those for post-birth murder, this was due to scientific confusion, NOT moral confusion. There is no such scientific confusion anymore.

Oh, and here is a nice list of Christians proving paragraph 2271 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.)

The Didache


"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child" (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).



The Letter of Barnabas


"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born" (Letter of Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).



The Apocalypse of Peter


"And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and there sat women. . . . And over against them many children who were born to them out of due time sat crying. And there came forth from them rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes. And these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion" (The Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D. 137]).



Athenagoras


"What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our character, that we are murderers?
. . . [W]hen 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; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it" (A Plea for the Christians 35 [A.D. 177]).



Tertullian


"In our case, a 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 the 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 birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed" (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).

"Among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.

"There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of course was alive. . . .

"[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive" (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).

"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does" (ibid., 27).

"The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22–24]" (ibid., 37).

Minucius Felix
"There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth. And these things assuredly come down from the teaching of your [false] gods. . . . To us [Christians] it is not lawful either to see or hear of homicide" (Octavius 30 [A.D. 226]).

Hippolytus
"Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what was being conceived, since they would not, on account of relatives and excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!" (Refutation of All Heresies [A.D. 228]).


Council of Ancyra
"Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees" (canon 21 [A.D. 314]).

Basil the Great
"Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’ penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not" (First Canonical Letter, canon 2 [A.D. 374]).

"He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense, when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it dies upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees" (ibid., canon 8).

John Chrysostom
"Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication. . . . Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?—where there are many efforts at abortion?—where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution, prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine" (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).

Jerome
"I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).

The Apostolic Constitutions
"Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for he says, ‘You shall not suffer a witch to live’ [Ex. 22:18]. Thou shall not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten. . . . [I]f it be slain, [it] shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed" (Apostolic Constitutions 7:3 [A.D. 400]).

(Source for those few quotes: http://www.catholic.com/library/Abortion.asp)

"Furthermore the printing press was a thing of the future, 1454, and the Holy Bible wasn't to be assembled and distributed by King James until 1611. So the church doctrines were created from logic and philosophical Reason. therefore any person who is not a catholic does not have the religious obligation to defer to St. Augustine, or Canon Law."

That Bible bit is completely and wholly inaccurate betraying a complete lack of knowledge of the history of the Bible (and also of the development of Christian doctrine). I honestly do not know where to start, so I will just refer you to an old book readable legally at http://www.geocities.com/militantis/biblecontents.html and you can verify what it says on your own time. The author quotes Protestants extensively, for the record, using more Protestant sources than Catholic ones, if you are concerned about a possible historical bias.

"Even though modern science has proven that the ovum is truly alive, it will not grow into a person unless it is fertilized."

I quote this just as more proof of you having used atrociously inaccurate terminology near the beginning for your post.

In conclusion, I have demonstrated that the Christian Church throguh the ages and the Bible both point to the immorality of abortion, and that you have misunderstood certain documents and persons: I do not fault you but rather your sources.

Sincerely in Christ,
Hidden One

Jude McCarney said...

ok hidden one, you can out quote me. I give. But logically really, life doesn't really begin at conception. Conception happens because of life. The sperm and the ovum are both alive. conception can't happen without life already being alive. A person becomes a living soul when God breathes the breath of life into his nostrils gen.2 So to upgrade my statement, life is present all along the process, but we become living souls at first breath. Jude

Jude McCarney said...

ps rough attitude dude.

katie harnisch said...

when human being are alive, they have a heart beat and brain waves. how do we know when a human is dead? most of the time, we officially call someone dead when their heart stops beating or they no longer have brain waves. if this is true, then babies in the womb must be alive! this is because once a baby has been in the womb for two weeks it has a heart beat, and after 43 days in the womb it has detectable brain waves. if babies are in fact alive when they are in the womb, then the act of abortion must be murder, because we are killing an innocent living human being.

Jude McCarney said...

thank you everyone for your comments, I do admit that to say life begins with breath is clumsy. A way better way to arrange the idea is to say that one becomes a living soul when one receives the breath of life, according to Gen. 2 Yes clearly there is life all along the process, even before conception. My main motive for this post is to talk about the fact that the Bible connects life(or living soul) to breath, both to begin it and to end it. It appears to be the general rule as to where the line is drawn. Of course a fetus is not dead, it just is not a living soul yet, until it receives the breath of life, according to 11 scriptures. Jude