Good ol' Facebook. One never knows what will be found there. This time, it was a writing prompt. More on that later, first some history.
The National Life Rights vs Abortion Rights Debate
In March of 1970 a complaint was filed with the U.S District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which ultimately ended with the infamous 1973 Supreme Court decision in the Roe v Wade case. It was a case that made no one happy. Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a radical who is on-record for saying that the age of consent for sex should be as low as 12, was unhappy. She wanted abortion rights to be secured more gradually in multiple states and be based on women's rights rather than a vague 'right to privacy' because she felt the legal reasoning was so poor that the case might be overturned. (To be clear, Ginsberg was not a sitting judge at this time and did not become an Associate Supreme Court Justice until 20 years later, in 1993.) There is no explicit "right to privacy" in the Constitution. Justice Blackmun found it in the 'penumbra' (shadows). And on top of the faulty reasoning, the lawyers for the plaintiff had made up some of the circumstances surrounding the original case.
For those who are aware that there is a lying Accuser that opposes God, that should be the first clue: the court filing contained lies from the beginning. If it had not been this case, however, it would have been another. The feminists were actively looking for a test case to push death by abortion. And the abortion issue has been one of national debate ever since.
Progressive Thought of a Half-Century Ago and the 14th Amendment
Let's look at a transcript from the oral arguments of Roe v Wade:
Justice Stewart: Well, if it were
established that an unborn fetus is a person within the protection of the
Fourteenth Amendment, you would have almost an impossible case here, would you
not?
S. Weddington: I would have a very
difficult case. [laughter]
Justice Stewart: You certainly would
because you’d have the same kind of thing you’d have to say that this would be
the equivalent to after the child was born.
S. Weddington: That’s right.
Justice Stewart: If the mother thought that
it bothered her health having the child around, she could have it killed. Isn’t
that correct?
S. Weddington: That’s correct.
Weddington, the Plaintiff's attorney openly admitted that if the fetus is a person, that life is protected by the 14th Amendment.
I included that bit of history because the groundwork for Constitutional Legal Protection was set for "personhood," if an unborn fetus is a person. Biological science is clear that a new cell type is formed at the fusion of sperm and egg; conception. Immediately, the zygote begins a pattern of behaviors that are not found in either the sperm or egg. Both molecularly and behaviorally there is a new, living cell form. The "science" answer is that the zygote is undeniably a human life-form at its most basic stage. The question of personhood moves over to religion and philosophy.
Back to Present-Day Facebook
Earlier this week I came across a guy who was saying that a fetus is not a person. He justifies this claim by offering evidence that rabbis teach that a child receives his soul when he takes his first breath. Basically, he was taking the position that it is at the point of ensoulment that human life, be it embryo or baby, should be protected by the laws of society. That has a certain logic to it. If life were easily compartmentalized, I would even say it was good logic. But law involves morality; its lines get squishy, and we've made endangered species laws that award "rights" to nonperson life forms. Waiting until a child breathes on his own as a basis for "deserving" protection is highly problematic, even if we could be certain that the body housed no soul prior to first breath. Nevertheless, out of respect for the argument he posited, I will address his idea of breath activating the living soul first, and then later I will try to explain why the concept of "when" personhood happens has become less of an issue for me. So let's get started —
Across the spectrum of rabbis, Othodox, Reform, Conservative, Hasidic, Humanistic, Kabbalistic, and Messianic, coupled with cultural evolution of Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Mizrachi, and other subgroups, there is no 100% consensus that personhood begins at the first breath. Many believe that coming into personhood is a process that occurs over a period of forty days, beginning at conception.
Furthermore, some rabbis are just as likely to be as far off from their Talmudic base as some of the the mainline "Christian" denominations of today are far from the New Testament's teachings. For example, The Presbyterian Church USA and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are essentially pro-choice, and the United Methodist Church has released an official statement that "We recognize tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion, and in such cases we support the legal option..." These so-called Christian organizations have denied the Lord his place of sovereignty.
The point of the last two paragraphs is that experts disagree. So it is also good to resist blindly accepting a rabbi's claim without understanding his reasoning.
Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.This is the verse used most often to support the idea that the soul is imparted with breath. In the case of the Lord's original creation, that certainly seems to be true. The problem, of course, is that to completely nail down that idea, we really would have needed to see the "soul" breathed in to a body that already had a heartbeat¹ and functioning circulatory system such as a baby would, otherwise, we cannot rule out that this in-breathing may have been a special one-time-thing to kick-start the species.
~ Genesis 2:7
Adam, even if you consider him to be an archetypal metaphor rather than literal man, was a fully formed adult when he acquired his soul. Even metaphors must be consistent. Genesis 2:7 tells us very little about how and when the rest of us got a soul.
Doing a "word study" does not help much either, at least not for someone like me who is dependent on Strong's and online searches for Hebrew. There are five Hebrew words that are used to mean soul: nephesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah. Here are the Strong's numbers and the shades of meaning for soul.
1 Nephesh - Strong's Hebrew: 5315. נָ֫פֶשׁ - a soul, living, life force (also used for animals)
2 Ruach, - Strong's Hebrew: 7307. ר֫וּחַ - breath, wind, spirit (animates life)
3 Neshamah, - Strong's Hebrew: 5397. נְשָׁמָה - breath, as a blast; inspiration
4a Chayah, - Strong's Hebrew: 2421. חָיָה (verb) to live, but also to quicken, to revive
4b Chayyah - Strong's Hebrew: 2421b - (noun) living thing, beast, creature
5 Yechidah, - Strong's Hebrew: 3173. יָחִיד - only, as in irreplaceable
In Genesis 2:7, the word used for what-man-became is nephesh, a term which is also used for sentient, self-aware animals. So we know that ensoulment, receiving his soul, gave Adam the ability to be aware of the world around him. We know that babies in utero can hear and learn to recognize their mother's voice. If a "soul" allows a baby to perceive and choose responses to his environment, then he has this ability before taking a breath. This also conflicts with the rabbinic position posited by the guy on Facebook.
Preborn Life in Scripture
The few scripture references that unequivocally refer to the preborn also support the idea of a functioning soul. When John-the-future-baptist was still in Elizabeth's womb, he leapt in recognition of Jesus who was in the womb of Mary, who had just walked in and greeted her relative. cf Luke 1:41. If anyone wishes to take up the side of the debate that John was not behaving as his own person, independent of his mother, please have at! I would love to see how that logic is mangled. For me, this incident recorded in Luke not only demonstrates that John had personhood in utero, but it also reflects God's sovereign plan for the lives of these babies. Which segues nicely into the next scripture about the preborn:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart and appointed you a prophet to the nations.Once again, I am at the mercy of lexicons and commentaries, but there is a "preponderance" of agreement that the phrase 'I knew you' goes beyond simple foreknowledge. It includes God's choice, selection, and intent.
~ Jeremiah 1:5, Berean Study Bible
This place of cross-cultural conflict is the point at which the secular apologists write off people of faith as religious nutcases. Mismatched world views don't simply throw a wrench into rational argumentation; they dump out the tool box. When a secularist or atheist cannot suspend disbelief and accept the premise that a Creator could and does have plans for his creation, then they have lost the tools for building the argument that life has individualized purpose. No one in the Facebook group was going to "win" a debate with that guy because to him, a life that could not suck air on its own had not yet received purpose and value. Apparently, drawing life-supplies from an umbilical cord makes you a vegetable on life-support?
Purpose and Value
There are many opinions on When does a human life begin? When does ensoulment occur in the biomass? Over time, the concept of "when" has become less of an issue for me in regard to the abortion debate. The political argument is often framed by when does life begin. The Constitutional arguments and the Supreme court ruling was based on when personhood begins. These are similar, but different points.
But when I talk with real people and listen to what they say, more often they are making value judgments. The pro-abortion supporters don't think an unwanted baby has a purpose. They must defy the Creator to believe that.
Jeremiah 1:5, where God tells Jeremiah that before he was formed in the womb he'd been set apart to be a prophet to the nations, has already been mentioned. The scripture is filled with similar examples of prophecies and plans for children who had not yet been born, or in some cases conceived:
Isaac, Genesis 18:10
Jacob and Esau, Genesis 25:21-24
Samuel, 1 Samuel 1
Samson, Judges 13:3
David, Psalm 139:15-17
Isaiah, Isaiah 49:1-5
John, Luke 1:15
Paul, Galatians 1:15
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes it clear that those are not special cases, but that God has plans for everyone.
He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before Him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.Paul was not a Calvinist. You have a choice to accept those plans or reject them. God planned for you before the foundation of the world. That fact gives you value.
Ephesians 1:4-5
The Life is in the Blood
For the life of a creature is in the blood, Leviticus 17:11
This was the explanation for why atonement required a blood sacrifice—because that's where the life is. The New Testament picks it up in Hebrews 9:22, According to the Law, in fact, nearly everything must be purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. I am just going to leave it at this point: For the life of all flesh is its blood.
For those who have a hard time seeing how "modern" abortion relates to infant sacrifices to Molech, this is your starting point for making the connection. To destroy a God-planned God-imager² would surely be an affront to the Creator.
Footnotes
¹ heartbeat; The ancients, lacking fetal monitors, would have used "quickening" as this standard of measurement. Today, a heartbeat can be measured at weeks; quickening is often around 18 weeks. Either way, it is moot because Adam was not formed in a womb.
² God-imager; We are God-imagers. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:27
https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/04/when-does-life-begin-outside-the-christian-right-the-answer-is-over-time.html
http://www.reclaimingjudaism.org/teachings/when-does-life-begin-jewish-view
