Murder They Wrote: How Conversations On Abortion Became Derailed

Amazing how life is fashioned
even in the first trimester.

I can remember a time when you could still have civil debates among people of faith over the issue of abortion. I believe this was partly because most people recognized a lack of consensus in both the scientific and the religious community over complex questions concerning the beginning of human life and human personhood. 

Then almost overnight, largely through concerted efforts by elements of the political right, the issue became framed in a way that brought about a sharp and seemingly unreconcilable divide. On one side were those who still felt the science was unclear and that theologians still had work to do in determining beginning of life questions. On the other side were those who insisted that any termination of any pregnancy at any stage was equal to cold blooded murder.

Yes, murder. Once that word became associated with even the use of an IUD as a means of birth control, or the use of a morning after pill in the case of rape or incest, for many the debate was over. Case closed. Either you were for preserving all life from the very moment of conception or you become an accomplice to killing babies.

For some background, there was a time when there was an earnest debate by theologians over how soon after conception “ensoulment” happened. Many believed it was somewhere after day 40 but there was no definitive word concerning an exact time. The Catholic Church, however, believed in erring on the conservative side in case that date were actually earlier rather than later. For theologians the question was important, among other reasons, for determining when and whether a prenatal human life was under the condemnation of original sin and required baptism in order to enter heaven.

Meanwhile, most Jewish and some Protestant communities saw human life, while physically beginning at conception, as not being fully ‘ensouled’ until birth. Religious scholars sometimes focused on the Creation account in Genesis, in which the Spirit/Wind/Breath of God hovered over the cosmos, impregnating it with life. Then in the special moment of human creation, God carefully fashioned adamah (dust) into God’s own image, then breathed into it the breath of divine life, at which point the human being became a living soul, or person, and was given the name Adam. He and his wife Eve were to be stewards and caretakers of God’s beautiful and newly created heavens and newly habitable earth.

Based on this kind of understanding of humanity as being first beautifully formed from clay then wonderfully endowed with the divine breath of life, most human societies, communities and faiths have made some distinctions between the existence of a human body and the God-breathed life of the human soul, or person, each a priceless gift from God. Questions have always remained about how or when human personhood begins or is defined, and people of faith have not always agreed on when a humanly conceived life became an eternally living soul.

In other words, for millennia there was the recognition that neither religion or science had yet arrived at a definitive answer, and that to insist on there being a simple one was to risk being mistaken. Meanwhile, for better or for worse, the following distinctions have continued to be made at a practical level, such as:

1. Almost universally, the naming, dedicating, blessing, christening and in some traditions, baptizing or circumcising of infants has been only after an actual birth has taken place. A name might be chosen before birth, but not officially confirmed until afterward. As a rare exception, some Catholic priests centuries ago used a syringe to baptize/christen a baby prenatally just to make sure they could be deemed ready for heaven, according to this source: <http://www.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Forum/abortion/background/judaism1.html>

2. Faith communities have not normally held memorial or burial services in cases of a natural abortion (miscarriage) of an embryo or fetus, nor published obituaries with date of conception, date of miscarriage, etc. Not that there hasn’t been the recognition of a need to grieve the loss of the unfulfilled dream of a life that never came to fruition, but no grave markers have generally been erected to permanently memorialize prenatal life.

3. In terms of census taking, no community, family or nation I know of has ever counted a woman pregnant with a baby as more than one person. Only after she is delivered is the resulting birth added to the census and counted as a citizen.

I raise all of these points simply to acknowledge the obvious complexity associated with this issue. And to humbly ask whether we would be better off sometimes stepping out of our dogmatic boxes and simply agreeing that neither science nor religion have yet come up an absolutely definitive answer as to when a human life in formation becomes a human person. 

Meanwhile, I unequivocally side with those who seek to preserve all forms of human life at all stages (remember that first amazing sonogram of a future child or grandchild?), but I will also side with, and show empathy and support for, those who face gut wrenching beginning-of-life as well as end-of-life decisions for which I for one may have no easy answers.

Likewise, I will renew my efforts at having men take full responsibility for the pregnancies they cause, and will do all I possibly can to relieve the suffering of all innocent men, women and children (including unborn ones) who are facing unbelievable hardships in the face of famine, war and other forms of violence and destruction.

May God have mercy on us all.

Here's a link to a conversation with my friend Dr. Roman Miller in which he offers some very helpful perspectives: 

http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2015/04/all-life-is-precious-conversation-with.html

And here's a link to information on emerging Mennonite and other evangelical perspectives:

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2016/10/until-recently-evangelicals-condoned.html