The abortion issue and where or when Life begins

The biggest issue in the debate over abortion is not just about women’s health, the right to choose, family planning, access to contraceptives, or even ‘privacy’ but rather, defining when or where does human life begin. To many, if not most Christians, the answer is obvious; but is it, really? I am not taking sides on the abortion issue between those camps of the PRO-LIFE or PRO-CHOICE; the reader will have to decide that for themselves. In this brief study I will start with the bedrock passage from the Bible on where all of this is centered, as below in the following:

Jeremiah 1: 5a

Before I formed you in the womb I knew

you, before you were born I set you apart;

NOTE: Sound pretty convincing, does it not? However, there is a little problem here that is often overlooked, the word “before.” It does not say I knew you at the moment of conception in the womb, or as you were being formed in the womb, but pre-existent to that. If indeed, Life begins “at” conception then clearly this verse cannot be used to support that position. This is a knowing that exists on a level in the mind of God (??) prior to human existence or biological conception.

The prophet Job seems to have some interesting things to say about being born while suffering in his despair and trial of afflictions.

Job 10: 18-19

Why did you bring me out from the womb?
Would that I had died before any eye had seen me
 and were as though I had not been,

carried from the womb to the grave.

NOTE: Is Job saying in the underlined portion that it would be better if he had been aborted?

Job 34: 4

The Spirit of God has made me,
and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Job 27: 3

As long as my breath is in me,
and the spirit of God is in my nostrils

NOTE: It appears that “life” has to do with receiving the breath/spirit of God, so does this happen prenatally in the womb or after emerging from it?

Now, let’s look at the first man (Adam).

Genesis 2: 7

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

NOTE: This is consistent because it is only “after” the breath of life was received from the Creator does one become a “living person/being/ or soul.” Again, when does this happen?

Job 3: 16

Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child, as infants who never see the light?

Ecclesiastes 6: 5a

Though a stillborn child does not see the sun and is not conscious (Ref. Holman Christian Standard Bible).

NOTE: If a stillborn baby is not conscious, then it would also be logical or rational to conclude that the embryo never was, and an indication of life, being alive or having “liveness” is to have sentience or conscious awareness.

CONCLUSION: There certainly is no sanction in the Bible for an abortion but at the same time, there is no passage in the Bible that definitively mentions that life, at least in the sense that humans experience or understand it, begins at conception in the womb. This does not mean that there are not some places in the Bible that strongly suggest that the practice or the closest modern equivalent was known in times past. The term used was typically “ripping open the pregnant women” (Cp. 2 Kings 8: 12; 2 Kings 15: 16; Hosea 13: 16; Amos 1: 13).

Robert Randle

776 Commerce St Apt 701

Tacoma, WA 98402

August 15, 2017

Randle51@yahoo.com