What follows is a discussion between Scott Klusendorf and a progressive friend (and former pastor) on the topic of abortion. Scott’s friend initially posted his thoughts on abortion and invited Scott to publicly respond. The exchange that follows is direct, but models what civil disagreement should look like. There is no post-exchange commentary from either participant. Readers can weigh for themselves the strength of each case presented.
Tom Writes:
Abortion is one of the toughest political issues Christians wrestle with.
Are conservatives right to claim murder? Or are liberals right to prioritize mothers over their unborn children?
What makes it difficult is that there are exactly zero Bible verses specifically about abortion. Verses like “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” and “before I formed you in the womb I knew you” teach us that fetuses are not mere tissue, but they don’t give any info on when abortion is OK.
Most people make an exception if the mother’s life is threatened. But how threatened does she need to be? Who decides? What proof is needed? Does her opinion matter? Does God consider other extenuating circumstances? “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
The rhetoric on both sides is dehumanizing. The left does it with the “tissue” label. The right does it with the “murderer” label.
Having stood with Hilary through several life-threatening miscarriages, an unsuccessful round of IVF, and the miracle of 5 successful births, I’m familiar with the moral / ethical complexities and also the intensity of in-the-moment, heart-rending, life-and-death decisions that must be made.
Labeling all abortions “murder” erodes authority and responsibility from where it belongs — with women and their doctors. They are the ones who will stand before Jesus to account for their decisions. Do we really know what is murder and what is a life-saving rescue in someone else’s desperate situation? Based on first-hand, gut-wrenching experience, I can report it’s not always easy to tell the difference. Jesus stands with parents in these circumstances… He is not automatically against them, standing ready with a murder verdict.
Many Christians focus on the plight of the unborn, which is commendable, but not at the expense of the mother’s life. Did you know that maternal mortality rates are 62% worse in states where restrictive abortion laws disempower women and their doctors? When doctors fear prosecution, hesitating when action is needed, mothers die.
So think and pray and vote the best you can. But for the love of Jesus, please don’t believe that fetuses are mere tissue, and don’t insinuate that everyone who votes differently than you (or has faced a traumatic pregnancy and made an impossible decision) is automatically a murderer.It may seem like you have to pick a side — the mother or the baby. Don’t. It won’t make voting easy. But it’ll keep your heart closer to Jesus’.
Scott Replies:
Tom,
Thank you for the kind invite to share my take. You raised several points, I will limit my remarks to the major ones.
I agree: Scripture nowhere specifically condemns abortion and nowhere directly states the unborn are human. I will concede both points and still argue that abortion is not justified biblically.
First, when people justify abortion with an appeal to silence, the hidden and undefended premises is that whatever the Bible does not specifically condemn, it allows. But why should we believe that? For example, where in the Bible is gay bashing specifically condemned or, for that matter, torturing toddlers for fun? Neither get a specific reference, but we can easily draw inferences from other passages to know that these things are wrong. The same applies to abortion. Second, we know from multiple passages that the shedding of innocent blood represents a preeminent moral crisis and is particularly egregious to God. To cite a few:
• Proverbs 6:16-19—
“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.”
• Psalm 106:37-41-
“They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. Thus they became unclean by their acts, and played the whore in their deeds. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he abhorred his heritage; he gave them into the hand of the nations, so that those who hated them ruled over them.”
• Isaiah. 1:15-16-
“When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen, your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil…”
• Isaiah 59: 7-
“Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways.”
That of course, raises the question: Is abortion the shedding of innocent blood? Yes, if the unborn are human.Science, philosophy, and theology support the pro-life argument, which is stated formally as follows:
Premise 1: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being
Premise 2: Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.
Therefore,
Conclusion: Abortion is morally wrong.
Pro-life advocates support their formal argument with science and philosophy. They argue from the science of embryology that the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. You didn’t come from an embryo. You once were an embryo. Keith L. Moore, T.V.N. Persaud, and Mark G. Torchia, in the 2020 edition of The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, write: “Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell (capable of giving rise to any cell type) marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”
They argue from philosophy that there is no essential difference between you the embryo and you the adult that justifies intentionally killing you at that earlier stage of development. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying you had no right to life then but you do now. Stephen Schwarz suggests the acronym SLED as a helpful reminder of these non-essential differences:
Size: You were smaller as an embryo, but since when does your body size determine value? Large humans are not more valuable than small humans.
Level of Development: True, you were less developed as an embryo, but toddlers are less developed than teenagers both physically and mentally, but we don’t think we can intentionally kill them.
Environment: Where you are has no bearing on what you are. How does a journey of eight inches down the birth canal suddenly change the essential nature of the unborn from a being we can kill to one we can’t?
Degree of Dependency: Sure, you depended on your mother for survival, but since when does dependence on another human mean we can kill you? (Consider conjoined twins, for example.)
In short, humans are equal by nature not function. Although they differ immensely in their respective degrees of development, they are nonetheless equal because they share a common human nature which as Christians we know bears the image of God – and they had that human nature from the moment they began to exist.
To sum up, the Biblical case against abortion goes like this:
P1. All humans have value because they bear the image of God (Gen 1: James 3)
P2: Because humans bear the image of God, the shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden (Ex. 23:7; Prov. 6:16-19, and other Scriptures as noted above).
P3: The unborn are human from conception (See case above.)
Therefore,
C: The commands against shedding innocent blood apply to the unborn as they do every other image bearer. Thus, even if Scripture does not specifically condemn abortion, we can still know that it is wrong by drawing clear inferences from the text.
There are, however, rare cases where the pregnancy does pose a serious threat to the mother’s life. ectopic pregnancy (EP) is a case in point. With EP, the developing human implants on the inner wall of the fallopian tube instead of the uterine wall where it belongs. As the embryo grows inside that narrow tube, the threat to the mother is real: If the tube bursts, the risk of internal hemorrhaging and subsequent death is great. While a good physician will do what he or she can to closely monitor the situation and treat both embryo and mother as patients, in most cases, the threat to the mother is too extreme. The accepted medical protocols are to end the pregnancy.
Suppose you are a pro-life physician confronted with an ectopic pregnancy. Despite doing your best to manage the threat in a way that treats both mother and child as worthy of your care, the mother is in real trouble. If you do not end the pregnancy, she almost certainly will die. Meanwhile, there is nothing you can do to save her child given its location and stage of development. The only life you can save is the mother’s. Hence, the choice in front of you: Should you do nothing and let two humans die or should you act in such a way that you save one life even though the unintended, but foreseen, result is the death of the embryo?
You should act to save the mother. Given the hand you were dealt, it was the greatest moral good you could achieve.
Suppose a critic calls you out for being inconsistent for allegedly performing an abortion. “You’re a hypocrite!”
But are you?
This is why having a formal syllogism is so important. Let’s go back to it:
P1: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.
P2: Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.
Therefore,
C: Abortion is wrong.
When you, as a doctor, performed surgery to save the mother’s life, did you intentionally kill her unborn offspring? No. Your intention was to save the mother and you had a morally serious reason to proceed: She would die if you didn’t. True, you could foresee the death of her offspring, but you did not intend it. If you had a means to save him, you would do it. Given the situation confronting you, saving the mother was the best objective moral good you could hope for.
In short, you didn’t perform an abortion because you did not intentionally kill her child. Like a general in a just war, you could foresee the death of an innocent human being, but you did not intend it. With abortion, we both foresee the death of the developing human AND intend it.
Blessings to you and your family.
Questions to consider:
1) Is the question, What is the unborn? something we can answer objectively or is it a mere article of faith?
2) If it is answerable, which discipline should we turn to to answer it?
3) Does each and every human being have an equal right to life or do only some have it?
4) If you agree that each and every human has an equal right to life, if I can demonstrate from the science of embryology that the unborn are human beings, do you agree that they, too, should have an equal right to life?
5) If it is wrong to hurt people because of their body size or gender, why is it okay to hurt them based on their level of development or degree of dependency?
6) If all humans have an equal right to life, and the unborn are human, why shouldn’t they have the same right to life as other humans?
Tom Replies:
Thanks for your valuable insights and contribution to the conversation and to the Kingdom through your ministry.
My concern is that there are many situations that are more gray than an ectopic pregnancy. From my perspective, the pro-life movement would be improved by adding greater nuance around many of these gray areas. Your logic doesn’t provide any flexibility for IVF or rape or incest or situation that are dangerous but not 100% for sure deadly for the mother (ie water breaking early in pregnancy, etc).
By the logic you’ve laid out, a mother who chooses abortion in these dire situations is guilty of murder. Is the only thing that can justify a woman’s choice if she has absolute proof that she would die? Would God not consider other circumstances? Can we find verses that indicate that God does indeed often make such considerations?
“Forgive them for they know not what they do…”
My concern is that too many Christians resort to overheated, oversimplified rhetoric like abortion = murder that doesn’t help produce a body politic that’s capable of carefully considering and producing sensible legislation that will support women and their babies through the dangerous and complex realities of pregnancy.
My even greater concern is that when we approach women with unplanned pregnancies primarily as a political issue, we miss a huge opportunity to minister to them as Jesus would.
Scott Replies:
Thank you for your reply, brother, and the continued invite to discuss these matters. I appreciate you, even more so as you tolerate this lengthy reply in 5 parts. You raised many issues that warrant a response and I will do my best to address your larger concerns without getting too much into the weeds.
1) Regarding abortion having a lot of “gray” areas, I think it’s easy for us to confuse psychological complexity with moral complexity. One issue that you raised–pregnancy resulting from rape–is a case in point. Any person with a heart will feel terribly burdened for any woman who suffers this injustice. Indeed, pro-lifers with a high regard for the unborn will nevertheless feel a troubling psychological tension between wanting to protect her unborn offspring and doing everything possible to make the victim’s pain go away. Moreover, every pro-lifer that I know will concede that not only has the mother suffered a terrible injustice, her child may indeed trigger painful memories, should she give birth and raise him. How do we resolve this apparent impasse?
First, an observation: Psychological complexity does not entail moral complexity. Just because something is psychologically troubling does not mean there are no right answers. The question to start with is not morally complex, but really quite simple: How many humans are involved in a pregnancy resulting from rape, two or three?
If we reply two, meaning only the rapist and the mother, we must answer a predicate question—namely, why is her unborn offspring not one of us? Put simply, how can two human parents create offspring that isn’t human but later becomes so? That must be argued for, not merely asserted or assumed.
If we reply that there are three humans involved (the correct answer, I contend, based on the case I presented in my earlier post), then we must ask, How should we treat each of them? Should we execute the rapist for his crime? Nearly everyone says no. Should we execute the mother? Only a moral monster would say yes. That leaves the child. Should we execute him for the crime of his father? It seems barbaric to suggest that of the three humans involved, the only one we can intentionally kill is the child, who had no say in the circumstances surrounding his conception.
At bottom, we’re asking how a civil society should treat innocent human beings who remind us of a painful event. Is it morally permissible to intentionally kill them so we can feel better? Does hardship justify homicide?
The answer is clear if we resolve a prior question: What is the unborn?
Problem is, many people simply assume the unborn are not human without arguing for that proposition. For example, no one with a functioning conscience suggests that we can kill toddlers who remind us of something painful, only the unborn. Nor does anyone suggest that the question of killing toddlers is morally complex. But if the unborn are in fact human (as the case I presented previously indicates) why is it morally complex to say that, like other innocent human beings, they should not be killed for the sins of their fathers?
Admittedly, and I wish it was not so, the choice for the pregnant mother in this case is binary. The situation is such that she will either suffer injustice or inflict it on her unborn offspring. That is precisely why the issue is psychologically complex. But morally, it is not. When stated expressly as a justification for intentionally killing innocent human beings, hardship does not justify treating fellow human beings horribly so we can feel better.
Regarding life-threatening pregnancies, when you, as a doctor, performed surgery to save the mother’s life, did you intentionally kill her unborn offspring? No. Your intention was to save the mother and you had a morally serious reason to proceed: She would die if you didn’t. True, you could foresee the death of her offspring, but you did not intend it. If you had a means to save him, you would do it. Given the situation confronting you, saving the mother was the best objective moral good you could hope for. In short, you didn’t perform an abortion because you did not intentionally kill her child. Like a general in a just war, you could foresee the death of an innocent human being, but you did not intend it. With abortion, we both foresee the death of the developing human AND intend it.
You write: “Your logic doesn’t provide any flexibility for IVF or rape or incest or situation that are dangerous but not 100% for sure deadly for the mother (ie water breaking early in pregnancy, etc.).”
Actually, I think it does provide flexibility for life-threatening cases as indicated in my previous reply where I distinguished foreseeing versus intention. But here, again, I think we are starting with the wrong question. The question is not, “Is my position flexible? but is it biblical and moral?
That is, does Scripture teach that all humans have value because they bear the image of God (Gen.1, James 3) and thus the shedding of innocent blood is forbidden or not (Exodus 23:7; Proverbs 6:16-19 etc.)? If so, given the humanity of the unborn (established in my earlier reply), the commands against the shedding of innocent blood apply to the unborn like they do everybody else. Hence, abortion is morally and biblically wrong.
I realize that making an objective claim of that nature has become highly controversial, even offensive to some. But the question for the Christian is whether the Bible teaches it. If the Bible does not teach it, or if we no longer believe it, let us say so openly and make the case why the pro-life position is biblically mistaken. But if the Bible does teach what I argued for above, flexibility is not our concern; biblical fidelity is.
For example, we both agree that Acts 4:10-12 is not flexible for religious pluralists who deny that Jesus is the only way to salvation, but Scripture clearly teaches it. We agree further that calling sinners to repent and believe the Gospel is not flexible for those who want to remain in their sins, but Scripture is clear they must believe or remain under the wrath of God (John 3: 36).
As for IVF, I think it’s helpful to distinguish intrinsic evils from contingent ones. An intrinsic evil is wrong on the face of it and must always be opposed—for example, rape, murder, torturing toddlers for fun are intrinsic evils. Contingent evils may be wrong or perhaps not, depending on circumstances. War, for example, falls into this category. Wars can be just or unjust, depending on sufficient cause, steps taken to limit civilian casualties, etc. I place Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) in that second category. The procedures themselves may not be intrinsically evil, but how we treat the resulting human embryos may be. My position on ARTs is that Christians can use them provided they do so within biblical fence posts:
• No human embryos should be destroyed or donated for research.
• Parents must take personal responsibility for each embryo created. Each has a right to be born.
• In any given treatment cycle, parents should only implant the number of embryos the mother’s body can reasonably sustain. (Admittedly, this is hugely expensive, but embryo “reduction” (destruction) is not morally permissible. This means they will use treatments that reduce the risk of multiples.
• Procreation happens within the marriage of one man and one woman. This is the biblical model in both the Old and New Testaments.
• Children should not be created for the express purpose of giving them up to someone else. (As distinct from adoption, where we rescue a child who already exists and needs parents).
You write: “By the logic you’ve laid out, a mother who chooses abortion in these dire situations is guilty of murder.” Suppose that were true. How does it follow that the unborn are not human or that intentionally killing them is morally permissible? Imagine saying to a minority suffering discrimination, “We will protect you as long as society approves and bigots are not convicted as racists.” No, humans deserve equal protection under the law because justice demands it, regardless of the legal consequences that follow. As more than one abortion-choice advocate has pointed out, the fact that restricting abortion has undesirable side-effects does not, in itself, show that the restrictions are unjustified, because unjust killing is wrong regardless of the consequences of forbidding it.
However, I do not think your “murder” conclusion follows. To review, I defined abortion in my original syllogism above as “the intentional killing of an innocent human being.” I can make the case that abortion is morally wrong without accusing an individual woman of “murder,” which is primarily a legal term. As you correctly point out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” often applies here. To convict for first degree murder, you’d have to prove they do know. That’s a tall order. That said, there is nothing wrong with saying that if you intentionally kill an innocent human being, there should be consequences. But what those consequences should be turns on a number of factors that may not entail a murder charge or classification. Indeed, outside a few fringe abolitionist types, pro-life lawmakers have historically put forward legislation that protects unborn humans, but also protects aborting mothers from a murder conviction. As historian Marvin Olasky points out, lawmakers recognized that most women seeking abortions were either abandoned by the men who impregnated them or had otherwise fallen through the cracks of society. Thus, they wrote legislation aimed at punishing abortionists, not desperate women, who were viewed as a second victim.
Moreover legislators knew that to convict a women of murder the same as the abortionist, you had to prove a “meeting of the minds.” That is, in order to prove criminal conspiracy, you had to prove conclusively that the aborting mother’s understanding of the act matched exactly the abortionist’s understanding. That is a near impossible hurdle to clear. True, the mother and the abortionist “meet their minds” on agreeing to the procedure, but after that her understanding seldom matches his. For example, Dr. Warren Hern, author of Abortion Practice (the medical teaching text on abortion procedures) writes that during abortion procedures, the ultrasound machine should be turned toward the operator, not the patient. In addition, he writes that whenever a doppler is used to detect fetal heartbeat, it should be inaudible to the patient. Moreover, if prosecutors want to convict the abortionist, they are going to need the testimony of the aborting mother. They won’t get it if she gets the same conviction as he does. And the hurdles just keep on coming. There’s not a D.A. or jury in the country, even in Red States, that is going to convict a woman of “murder” after 50 years of Roe telling them that abortion was a positive moral good. Thus, for these and other prudential reasons, a charge less than “murder” is appropriate. I suggest a charge of “Solicitation of an Illegal Act.” That is a much easier (and kinder) conviction, given 50 years of cultural conditioning from Roe than first degree murder.
You write: “Is the only thing that can justify a woman’s choice if she has absolute proof that she would die?”
I do not make that claim and neither does any other pro-lifer I know. I checked with a board-certified OBGYN on this, and the medical standard in play would be “reasonable” certainty of threat to the mother’s life, not “absolute” certainty. (Can you cite any state laws currently protecting the unborn that do not allow for women to get life-saving treatment while pregnant?)
5) You write: “My concern is that too many Christians resort to overheated, oversimplified rhetoric like abortion = murder that doesn’t help produce a body politic that’s capable of carefully considering and producing sensible legislation that will support women and their babies through the dangerous and complex realities of pregnancy.” Instead of others you may have encountered, I welcome you to point where my specific case is marred by “overheated’ or ‘oversimplified rhetoric.” I am not trying to be combative here, only make my case stronger. In the Socratic quest for truth, I am open to correcting my case if my logic has erred. Can you show me where it has?
6) You write: “My even greater concern is that when we approach women with unplanned pregnancies primarily as a political issue, we miss a huge opportunity to minister to them as Jesus would.”
I agree abortion is not merely a political issue. As I stated on Rick’s thread, it’s a biblical issue with political obligations. Moreover, you are correct to say that we should minister to people as Jesus would. Jesus calls us sinners. He then said he came to save sinners. The kindest thing we can do for post-abortion men and women is tell the truth about abortion—namely, that it’s a sin of shedding innocent blood—then point them to the Savior who can heal and forgive it. As a colleague of mine points out, “Forgiveness for the shedding of innocent blood requires the shedding of innocent blood”—namely, that of Christ Jesus who came to save sinners, among which I am chief, by standing in our place condemned. We can tell the truth about abortion and present the cure at the same time. That’s what a biblical Gospel looks like.
Again, thank you for inviting me to participate on your thread. You’ve been most kind to do so. It would be fun to meet and chat sometime over coffee or a meal.
One final note: There is a great deal of deception out there regarding women allegedly dying from pro-life laws restricting abortion. The linked article below addresses many of those, but the logic in play from abortion- advocates is fallacious. While pro-lifers certainly grieve the death of any woman from an abortion–legal or illegal–the claim that women die as the result of pro-life laws is not only false, it is question-begging. That is, it assumes the unborn are not human (which is the very point under dispute in the abortion debate). Otherwise, their objection amounts to this: “Because some humans may die or be harmed attempting to intentionally kill innocent human beings, we should make it safe and legal for them to do so.” But why should the law be faulted for making it more risky for one human to intentionally kill another completely innocent one? As more than one pro-abortion philosopher has pointed out, the appeal to the dangers of illegal abortion is one of the weakest arguments in favor of the practice because unjustified killing is wrong even if consequences forbidding it have undesirable results for those doing the killing. We don’t, for example, legalize spousal abuse so men can do it safely and legally. In short, when people say abortion should be “safe,” the question is, “Safe for whom?” Is it safe for the unborn? Again, unless one assumes the unborn are not human, the argument is absurd. Meanwhile, here in GA, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller did not die because of pro-life laws, they died after taking abortion drugs obtained through the mail without physician oversight. It was pro-abortion activists that killed them, not pro-lifers. https://aaplog.org/an-open-letter-to-acog-regarding…/ and here: https://aaplog.org/amber-thurmans-tragic-death-was-caused-by-legal-abortion-drugs/
Tom Replies:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Scott. You’re definitely not over-heated. Very well thought-out and communicated. Most people I know (including me!) could take a lesson!! It’s fantastic how you’re able to communicate difficult and controversial ideas without coming across as arrogant or judgmental. Thank you for modeling for us how to have civil, productive conversations!
The argument in your “final note” was the strongest, from my perspective.
“We don’t, for example, legalize spousal abuse so men can do it safely and legally.”
Touché!! Great point. I’ll have more to say… but as a good friend of mine says (looking at you Jordan!), I’ll have to put that in the ol’ crockpot and let it simmer for a bit.
Thanks again…
Scott Replies:
no problem, brother. I appreciate you pondering these matters
Tom Replies:
Hi Scott. As I mentioned, your responses give a lot of food for thought. My favorite part is how gracious you are. Thank you again for modeling such civility.
There are many points I’d want to respond to, but I’ll just pick a couple.
It seems much of your argument rests on the claim that embryos are fully human. You assert the claim is supported both by science and philosophy. But the support on both fronts is thin.
Science – You say that embryos are human because they later become human. This is circular reasoning. Besides, plenty of animals and plants have been cloned from individual cells. This could theoretically be done with human cells too. If an individual cell could later become a human, does that make it a human? Of course not. Embryos are no different. The real question is when God puts a soul into a body — which science can’t answer.
Philosophy – Throughout your defense, the reader is personified as an embryo, for example, “You were smaller as an embryo…” This framing presupposes the conclusion you are trying to assert (I.e. the embryo is a “you” rather than just an embryo). This is rhetoric, not philosophy.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the Church has never had any consistent, universally agreed-upon doctrine of “ensoulment” (I.e. when fetal life is granted a soul and becomes fully human). As we’ve already agreed, there are no Bible verses to settle the matter, so any assertion is merely a guess.
Theologians through the ages have taken many guesses. Many have pinned it at conception (as you do). Lots put it at 40 days. Still others put it at “quickening” (I.e. when the baby starts moving). And plenty have put it at birth (when the baby takes its first breath… like Adam in the beginning). Space doesn’t allow, but there are philosophical and biblical underpinnings for why each of these other guesses were made (just like you have some rationale for the guess you made).
While the Bible is clear that God values fetal life, and while Christians through the ages have agreed that abortion is generally a sin, there has been nothing close to universal agreement that abortion always is murder.
Another issue is who is doing the killing. In your framework, it’s always “we.” For example you write, “How does a journey of eight inches down the birth canal suddenly change the essential nature of the unborn from a being we can kill to one we can’t?”
“We” aren’t killing. “We” are voting. We’re voting about who should be empowered to make life and death decisions.
On the other end of life, when a dying person is on life support, we empower their closest family members to make such decisions. If they choose to pull the plug, we don’t call it murder, and we certainly don’t imply that those who empowered them to make the decision are accessories to murder.
How nearly-dead does a person need to be and for how long before it’s OK to pull the plug? It’s a judgement call.
The judgement these family members must make is similar to the one a mother and her doctor must make if abortion is being considered. In other words, the question of when an embryo becomes a human is similar to the question of when a dying person ceases to be human (and becomes a breathing corpse).
In both instances, the beliefs of those empowered to make the decision must be respected. They should not be shamed or forced to make a decision that goes against their convictions.
That said, it’s not a free-for-all. Doctors and families can’t withdraw life-saving support unless certain criteria are met. What criteria should be considered with abortion? Fetal viability outside the womb? Whether the fetus can feel the pain of being aborted? In my opinion, medically verifiable criteria like these should be considered.
What about money? A rich family may keep a loved one on life support longer than a poor family. Is the poor family guilty of murderer if they pull the plug sooner?
Of course not! But it’s interesting that we are more comfortable having grace for financial hardship at the end of life than we are at the beginning.
Indeed, the main reason women get abortions is because they can’t afford to have a child. If a woman can’t afford food and shelter for her baby and feels forced by poverty to make a tragic decision, we cruelly call this a “convenience” abortion. Has she sinned? Likely. Have we as Christians sinned if we have not done all we can to provide her with support? Yes. Is she (or are we) guilty of the moral equivalent of murder? I’m not going to cast that stone, nor do I think the Bible asks us to.
If we want to reduce the number of abortions, our focus should be on providing financial support to women with unplanned pregnancies. This is what other nations around the world do that have far lower incidence of abortion than the U.S. does. This approach seems to me to be more in line with our call to overcome evil with good.
It’s important to keep in mind what we’re voting for. It’s not about killing. It’s about who is empowered to make life and death decisions and under what circumstances. Pro-life advocates say they are the authority on the subject. They claim such confidence about when embryos become fully human, that they take it upon themselves to override the convictions of mothers and their religious and medical advisors.
The framework you’ve laid out is consistent, but it’s inflexible. It provides zero consideration for different theological / philosophical positions, rape, incest, IVF (as it’s commonly practiced) or other dire circumstances (I.e. if a woman cannot afford food or shelter for herself much less a baby).
I don’t want to call myself pro-choice because I am not pro-abortion. But I think a humbler approach is better. We don’t know when embryos become human. But we do know God makes each person the sole sovereign over their own bodies. Since He has chosen to put embryos inside women, we must defer to those women and encourage them to reach out to their families and spiritual leaders as they think and pray and agonize over what is best given their own beliefs and circumstances.
If we as Christians put all the time, energy, and money we’ve put toward outlawing abortion into supporting women with unplanned pregnancies, my guess is our nation and the Church would be in a much better place… and many fewer abortions would have happened.
Scott Replies:
Hey, my friend, I apologize in advance for yet another long reply which follows in four parts. I appreciate you raising a number of important questions and want to be thorough in my responses, so thanks in advance for bearing with me.
(1) You are correct: The moral question of abortion does indeed turn on the status of the unborn. Try as we might, we cannot settle the question, “Can we kill the unborn?” without resolving a predicate question—namely, “What is the unborn?” Put directly, if the unborn are human, the arguments used to justify killing them must be as persuasive as those used to justify killing any other human being. Failure to recognize this basic truth is why our elected officials miss the mark when they speak of “choice,” “privacy,” “trusting women,” and “not forcing one’s moral views,” etc, all of which miss the point entirely. For example, no one with a functioning conscience puts those reasons forward as justifications for killing toddlers, only fetuses. Thus, each justification is question-begging, that is, it assumes (without argument) that the unborn are not human. And yet, the status of the unborn is precisely the question under dispute in the abortion debate.
As I often remind abortion-choice advocates, I agree there should be no laws restricting abortion. I agree that pro-lifers like me should butt out of the decision completely. I agree the procedure should be legal at any point in gestation, including pre-birth. I agree that using embryos for destructive medical research is morally permissible. In short, I agree completely…IF. If what? If the unborn are not human. Indeed, I am vigorously pro-choice on women choosing their own doctors, choosing their own careers, choosing their own husbands, choosing the colleges they wish to attend, and choosing the cars they wish to drive (unless it’s a Prius 🙂 ), to name a few. But some choices are wrong, like intentionally killing innocent human beings simply because they are in the way of something we want. Thus, the issue that divides me from abortion-choice advocates is not that they love women and I hate them, but that I am persuaded the unborn are members of the human family while abortion-choice advocates are not. The moral debate over abortion is about one question: What is the unborn? I like how my colleague Greg Koukl puts it; “If the unborn are not human, no justification for abortion is necessary. But if they are human, no justification is adequate.”
(2) How should we answer the question, What is the unborn? It won’t work to punt to relativism. The fact that people disagree does not mean there are not right answers. People once disagreed on slavery and women having a right to vote; it did not follow there was no morally correct position. As Hadley Arkes points out, “The absence of consensus does not mean an absence of truth.” Indeed, if mere disagreement means no truth, the relativist’s own position is falsified because non-relativists like me (and I suspect, you) disagree with it! Moral questions are, by their very nature, outside the realm of likes and dislikes, which is why the popular cliché, “Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one!” is a non-starter. Imagine, for example, me saying that “I personally oppose spousal abuse, but what you do with your wife is your business” or, “I personally oppose slavery, but if you want to own one, who am I to judge?” If I advanced either of those claims, you’d rightly conclude that I did not understand the nature of moral reasoning.
Nor will it work to dismiss the question as inherently “religious.” Arguments are valid or invalid, sound or unsound. Calling an argument “religious” is a dismissal, not a refutation. It’s a category error like asking “how tall is the number 5? The same goes for your claim that my argument is not flexible. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but as I pointed out previously, arguments stand or fall on their merits (that is, are they sound or unsound, valid or invalid?), not our dislike for where the logic may lead. I personally dislike the argument that Jesus is the only way to salvation and that all other world religions are false. I want more flexibility. After all, I have many non-Christian friends who I want to see in Heaven. Still, I cannot escape the clear logic of Scripture that Jesus is our only rescue from the wrath of God against sin.
The only non-question begging path forward is to resolve the question on the basis of the best scientific evidence available, and that evidence is stubborn. Contra your reply, I’ve nowhere argued that “embryos are human because they later become human.” Rather, I argued that the unborn are actual human beings from the earliest stages of development and can never be anything but human. Leading embryology textbooks affirm this. Keith L. More, T.V.N. Persaud, and Mark G. Torchia in The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology write that:
“Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell (capable of giving rise to any cell type) marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”
Embryologists Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller write: “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.”
Another text, T. W. Sadler’s Langman’s Embryology, states, “The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”
We’ve known these basic scientific facts for years. Prior to advocating abortion, former Planned Parenthood president Dr. Alan Guttmacher was perplexed that anyone, much less a medical doctor, would question them. “This all seems so simple and evident that it is difficult to picture a time when it wasn’t part of the common knowledge,” he wrote in his 1933 book Life in the Making.
As early as 1868, Dr. Horatio Storer, the head of the American Medical Association’s Committee on Criminal Abortion, along with coauthor Franklin F. Heard, confidently stated, “Physicians have now arrived at the unanimous opinion that the foetus in utero is alive from the very moment of conception. . . . [T]he willful killing of a human being at any stage of its existence is murder.” In 1981, a U.S. Senate judiciary subcommittee heard expert testimony on when human life begins. Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth of Harvard University Medical School told the subcommittee, “It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive. . . . It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.” Dr. Watson A. Bowes of the University of Colorado Medical School stated, “The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception.” The subcommittee report concludes, “Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.”
(3) In short, you didn’t come from an embryo. You once were an embryo. At no point in your prenatal development did you undergo a substantial change or change of nature. You began as a human being and will remain so until death. As I inquired earlier, how can two human parents create offspring that isn’t human but later becomes so? Biogenesis forecloses on that possibility. Living things do not start off as one kind of thing then undergo a substantial change of nature and become something else. Rather, they develop according to their inner natures (or, their souls, more on that below.) Their outer forms may change, but the kind of thing they are remains the same. For example, while an acorn is not an oak tree, it is an oak, the same enduring oak at the sapling stage as the larger form it will one day become. Likewise, Tom Morgan the adult is identical to the embryo that he once was. His outer form changed as he grew and matured, but he remained himself, the very same substantial entity, through each of those changes.
You reply that my evidence for this is thin. I am open to being proven mistaken, but I need you to present an argument for why it is thin. As I mentioned in a previous reply, you still must answer two questions: 1) How can two human parents create offspring that isn’t human but later becomes so? And 2) What empirical evidence supports the claim that embryos start off as one kind of thing, but become something else?
You reply with a half-truth, namely, that “plenty of animals and plants have been cloned from individual cells and that this could theoretically be done with human cells too. If an individual cell could later become a human, does that make it a human? Of course not. Embryos are no different.” This is mistaken biology that confuses parts with wholes. The difference in kind between each of our cells and a human embryo is clear: An individual cell’s functions are subordinated to the survival of the larger organism of which it is merely a part. The human embryo, however, is already a whole human entity. True, it’s an immature human, as is an infant, but it’s a whole human organism nonetheless.
That is to say, although you are correct that a somatic cell contains a complete genetic code, left alone it will never develop itself to the mature stage of a human. If you plant it in a uterus or a test tube, it remains what it is—a bodily cell. Even in a cloning process, it must be acted upon externally so its constituents can be merged with an enucleated ovum, thus forming a new living organism. In that sense, each of our cells is analogous to sperm and egg, not to a whole human embryo. Just as sperm and egg contribute genetic material that becomes a human being, so adult cells, through cloning, can contribute material used to form a new human. An organism, on the other hand, only needs a proper environment and adequate nutrition and it will grow through its various stages.
It makes no sense to say that you were once a sperm or somatic cell. However, the science of embryology is clear that you were once a human embryo. My colleagues Patrick Lee and Robert P. George say it well: “Somatic cells are not, and embryonic human beings are, distinct, self-integrating organisms capable of directing their own maturation as members of the human species.”
Nor are embryos mere clumps of cells. Imagine a Halloween visit to the local morgue—alone. Inside are dozens of bodies with living cells, but no one offers you candy (thankfully). Why do we call the occupants dead and you living?
Strictly speaking, the biological differences aren’t that great between a person five minutes before death and five minutes after. Immediately after death, cells remain alive and, for a time, function normally. Yet something has clearly changed. What is it?
Dr. Maureen Condic, assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah, states that “death occurs when the body ceases to act in a coordinated manner to support the continued healthy function of all bodily organs. Cellular life may continue for some time following the loss of integrated bodily function, but once the ability to act in a coordinated manner has been lost, ‘life’ cannot be restored to a corpse—no matter how ‘alive’ the cells composing the body may yet be.”
Condic goes on to say that embryos are nothing like a corpse, which merely contains clumps of cells. Rather, they are living human beings because “they possess the single defining feature of human life that is lost in the moment of death—the ability to function as a coordinated organism rather than merely as a group of living human cells. . . . It is precisely this ability that breaks down at the moment of death, however death might occur. Dead bodies may have plenty of live cells, but their cells no longer function together in a coordinated manner.”
In other words, it’s mistaken to claim that embryos are no different in kind from ordinary body cells. As Condic points out, from conception forward, human embryos clearly function as whole living organisms. They are not mere collections of cells like those on a corpse but are “living creatures with all the properties that define any organism as distinct from a group of cells; embryos are capable of growing, maturing, maintaining a physiologic balance between various organ systems, adapting to changing circumstances, and repairing injury. Mere groups of human cells do nothing like this under any circumstances.”
You write, “As I’m sure you’re aware, the Church has never had any consistent, universally agreed-upon doctrine of “ensoulment” (I.e., when fetal life is granted a soul and becomes fully human). As we’ve already agreed, there are no Bible verses to settle the matter, so any assertion is merely a guess.”
No, it is not a mere guess. As I’ve argued above, the absence of consensus does not mean an absence of truth. We don’t need Scripture to say abortion is wrong before we can know it is wrong. (See my biblical case for the pro-life view in a previous reply). Nor do we need Scripture to say the unborn are human before we can know they are human. Biological truths are sufficient to lead us to the correct conclusion. For example, where in the Bible does it say that Americans are human? Or, that the French are? The answer, of course, is nowhere. But it hardly follows we should question the humanity of either. However, if it’s mistaken to question one’s humanity based on longitude or latitude, why should we question it based on being inside or outside the womb? Location either matters to one’s ontological status or it doesn’t. In short, how does a change of location from inside the womb to outside change the essential nature of the unborn? You need to argue for that, but huge episodic problems await you. For example, during fetal surgery, the fetus may be removed from the womb, fixed, then placed back in his mother’s body to be born naturally weeks later. Press reports on these types of surgeries speak of “babies who are born twice.” Dr. Michael Harrison at U.C. San Francisco has perfected this technology. In such cases, does the fetus go from being non-human prior to surgery, to briefly being human during, then back to being non-human during recovery in the womb?
As for ensoulment as a basis for skepticism, I’ m not sure why this is relevant to the foundational questions, 1) What is the unborn? Or, 2) Can we kill them? True, science can’t tell us if humans have souls—that’s a philosophical question. But the science of embryology can tell us when individual humans come to be, and the evidence there is clear and to the point: From the earliest stages, human embryos are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Moreover, we don’t need to decide if embryos have souls to determine if they are worthy of protection. For example, the law doesn’t take a position on whether 35-year-olds have souls, but it still forbids intentionally killing them. Likewise, we don’t need to posit a soul to say that embryos are distinct, living, and whole human beings.
At bottom, appeals to ensoulment seem to assume some form of Body-Self Dualism (BSD), which asserts that the real you (your identity) is not tied to your physical body in any meaningful way. Rather, according to BSD, the real “you” is your thoughts, aims, desires, capacity for relationships, and other immediately exercisable traits associated with higher cognitive function. Before you gain (or, after you lose) these traits, your physical body exists, but you do not. Body-self dualism is counterintuitive. You are forced to say things like, “My body existed before I did,” or “I was mere matter until my conscious self showed up.” As Christopher Kaczor points out, you also must admit that you’ve never hugged your mother, since one cannot hug desires, thoughts, and aims. And if you’re a psychologist, don’t even think of curing multiple personality disorders. That would entail mass murder, given multiple personalities — each with separate aims, desires, and thoughts — are intentionally destroyed in treatment. At bottom, BSD cannot explain simple statements like “you see.” Sensory acts like seeing involve bodily acts (via the eyes) and intellectual acts (via the mind). Both are inextricably wound up in human nature.
Scripture nowhere associates the image of God in man with arbitrarily selected traits that none of us share equally and that may come and go in the course of our lifetimes. Rather, it simply says that all humans have value because they bear the image of God. Thus, if the unborn are human, they, too are image bearers. Finally, if we don’t know if the unborn are human, that is an excellent reason not to kill them because we stand the risk of killing an innocent human being. For example, if you are out hunting and you see a bush rustling in front of you and you are unsure if it is that 12 point Buck you are after or your best friend, do you open fire? Not unless you are Dick Cheney, right? 🙂
Forgive me—I have 5 replies, not 4. You are a most patient discussion partner, and assuming I have not killed you off with all my words, I promise to buy the coffee or meal if we get a chance to meet up. I will conclude with this post. You appeal to “choice” by linking abortion ethics to end of life ethics, specifically about decisions related to “pulling the plug.” But are the two analogous? I think not.
First, a reminder: The pro-life position does not entail that we must always resist death. It is simply that it is always wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. For the pro-life Christian, death is indeed an enemy, but it’s a conquered enemy. The resurrection of Jesus Christ secures a resurrected and perfected body for every believer (1 Cor. 15).
Because death is a conquered enemy, it must not always be resisted. In cases where further treatment is futile or burdensome to the dying patient, death can be welcomed as the doorway to eternity. Earthly life, while good, is not our ultimate good. Eternal fellowship was God is. Allowing natural death to run its course does not violate the sanctity of human life. However, we must never forget that terminally ill patients—like all humans—bear God’s image. Thus, we are never to intentionally kill them via euthanasia or doctor-assisted suicide. We are obligated to always care and never harm, and that may indeed mean withdrawing treatment that no longer benefits the patient.
However, intent (aim) matters! Are we withdrawing treatment from a dying patient because we intend to kill him or because it no longer benefits him? Agneta Sutton makes a great point: A truly medical (as opposed to quality of life) decision to withdraw treatment is based on the belief that the treatment is valueless (futile), not that the patient is so. So, while doctors are indeed qualified to determine if a treatment is futile, they are no more qualified than anyone else to determine that an individual life is futile. Food and water should only be withdrawn in the final stages when they no longer benefit the patient and will only cause additional suffering. On this understanding, the withdrawing of treatment is not intended to kill, only to avoid prolonged and excessive agony for the patient. True, death will come, but it comes as the result of the illness not my direct action. Gilbert Meilaender puts it well: “The fact that we ought not aim at death for ourselves for another does not mean that we must always do everything possible to oppose it.” Thus, rejecting a treatment that is burdensome is not a refusal of life. But here the physician must be both careful and honest. Instead of asking, “Is the patient’s life a benefit to him?” the physician should inquire “What, if anything, can we do that will benefit the life that he has? Our task, writes Meilaender, “is not to judge the worth of this person’s life relative to other possible or actual lives. Our task is to care for the life he has as best we can.”
The same ethic applies to morphine treatments aimed at pain control where we must draw careful distinctions between euthanasia and sufficient pain relief to dying patients. Put differently, Meilaender says we must distinguish between an act’s aim (intent) and its foreseen results. A patient in the final stages of terminal cancer may request increasingly large doses of morphine to control pain even though the increase might (though not necessarily) hasten death. In this particular case, the intent of the physician is to relieve pain and provide the best care possible given the circumstances. True, he can foresee a possible result—death may come slightly sooner—but he does not intend that. He simply intends to relieve pain and make the patient as comfortable as possible. Thus, instead of intentionally killing the patient with a heavy overdose, he provides a carefully calibrated increase in morphine aimed at controlling pain, not bringing about a quicker death. As Scott Rae points out, “it’s acceptable for dying patients to sleep before they die.” Though death is foreseen, it is not intended. In the end, the patient dies from his underlying illness, not because the doctor intentionally kills him.
Second, when we speak of “pulling the plug,” what do we mean? Do we mean intentionally withholding nutrition from those in a persistent comatose state (thus, starving them to death) or do we mean withdrawing life support from a brain dead person? The latter is clinically dead, having suffered an irreversible loss of all coordinated bodily function, including brain function. There is no going back. Disconnect him from life support and his body will begin decomposing immediately. He is “no more.” Families should be given the choice to make that decision.
But is this analogous to abortion in a morally relevant way? I think not.
First, it is not analogous ontologically. That is, the brain dead corpse is in the category of “no more” while the embryo is in the category of “not yet.” The difference between the two is profound. An embryo, unlike more mature humans, does “not yet” need a brain to live. Something else integrates the various bodily systems so the early human functions as a coordinated whole. Later, as the embryo continues growing and directing its own internal development, the brain will take over that task. Ramesh Ponnuru writes: “We don’t treat brain-dead people as dead because they are living human organisms who are no longer persons. We treat them as dead because they are no longer organisms capable of directing their own internal functioning.”
Second, disconnecting the brain- dead individual does not kill him. It merely allows the body to decompose as a result of injury or disease. With abortion, we intentionally kill an innocent human being. Allowing the body to decompose is not a moral evil. Intentionally killing an innocent human being is one.
Tom Replies:
Hi Scott. Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I wish I had time to respond to every point… as it is, I hope it’s ok to paint with broad strokes.
In your desire to value the unborn, it seems you devalue women. Your logic is dismissive of perspectives they may have about their situation that don’t align with your formula. I’ve provided some examples, but you brush them aside.
For example, if a woman does not believe that an embryo has a soul, you say it doesn’t matter. But it certainly matters to her!
You’ve suggested this is punting to relativism. Since you are convinced that your perspective is the absolute truth, I understand why you’d say this. However I don’t think it’s accurate.
Acknowledging an issue is complex and trying to understand and appreciate various biblically grounded and historically significant perspectives is a long way from relativism. It’s simply prioritizing Christian unity and open-mindedness over a wholesale embrace of one perspective.
More importantly, it’s choosing to value the perspective of the person in whose care God has placed a growing life. Forcing her to carry a pregnancy against her own beliefs and will creates its own moral dilemmas. But you dismiss all that by saying facts are facts.
Rape? Incest? IVF? Doesn’t matter. It’s murder. Outlaw all killing of embryos under all circumstances (except the life of the mother) because her moral reasoning isn’t relevant. You’re so confident in your argument that you claim the right to violate her sovereignty over her own body and will.
But where is this confidence coming from? It’s not the Bible. You say it’s science. But science isn’t great at helping sort out ethical dilemmas. Your approach avoids the problem by ignoring the facts of the situation and the dilemmas women face.
Let’s bring it back to the life-support analogy, but shift the picture to make it clearer. Let’s say I allowed someone with failed kidneys to temporarily hook up to my blood stream while they wait for a donor. In other words, they’re relying on my kidneys for life support.
Would it be murder if I detach? Shouldn’t I be free to make my own judgement of what I do with my own body?
Now what if that person were connected to me illegally? Like their healthy spouse kidnapped and drugged me and connected their dying partner to me while I was out? I’m thinking of this as an analogy to someone who ends up pregnant due to rape or incest. The spouse is the guilty party. The embryo is like the person with the failed kidneys.
What if I was required to be connected for 9 months, and I’d have to take time off of work, or possibly lose my job, and then after they finally detached 9 months later, I would end up legally and financially responsible for this person for the next 18 years, regardless of what other responsibilities I have. What if I have other kids who are starving and I fear for their wellbeing?
What if there were people who were supposed to share the responsibility with me, but who dropped the ball (I.e. the father, the family, the Church, or society at large)? Do I become solely responsible? Are they murders also? Or is it just me?
Let’s touch on ensoulment again. You’ve suggested it doesn’t matter. But I wonder if you feel that way because it’s a weak spot of your argument? As you’ve said, if the unborn are not human, then your argument falls apart.
What are some problems with the idea that ensoulment occurs at conception?
If embryos DO have souls, Christian theology struggles to answer whether they go to heaven or hell if they are aborted or miscarried. Delayed ensoulment is a solution some traditions embrace. Then they baptize babies ASAP following birth.
More commonly in Protestant circles is a theology of God’s grace for the innocent. But this doesn’t show up in the Bible. It’s a theological guess.
2. If embryos have souls, then it seems the majority of heaven’s population will be people who were never born.
Since the average sexually active woman will have more miscarriages than live births in her lifetime (most miscarriages happen without the woman even knowing about it), if we hold to ensoulment at conception, and we believe they all end up in heaven, then heaven will be populated with hundreds of billions of people who never took a breath. While this is certainly possible, it seems odd that there isn’t any mention of it anywhere in Scripture.
If miscarried embryos end up in heaven, why doesn’t the Bible provide this comforting info to parents?
Parents have been dealing with the tragedy of miscarriage since the beginning. They all wonder if they’ll see their child again. If this was part of God’s plan, why wouldn’t He say so?
To be clear, I’m not actually arguing that embryos don’t have souls. Since my wife and I have had lots of miscarriages, I hope they do! If someone believes differently than I do, I certainly wouldn’t call them a heretic.
You’re right to be wary of dualism. But there are theological problems on all sides of any position that’s taken. At some level, we must be comfortable saying it’s a mystery and we simply don’t know. So your argument is built on a shaky foundation of stuff we don’t really know and isn’t central to our faith.
It’s problematic that this nebulous doctrine has become the main thing Christians are known for in our culture. We’ve ended up in this predicament not because the Bible is so clear about it but rather because the topic of abortion (and the fear of being labeled a murderer) has been used as a cudgel to keep Christians voting as a bloc.
Scott Replies:
Hello, my friend. Broad strokes indeed. You’ve raised many issues, so forgive yet again a lengthy reply. But before jumping in, I was saddened to read in your previous posts that you and Hillary have suffered the pain of miscarriage not once, but many times. Those are tough losses and I wish it had turned out differently for you. May God comfort you in full measure.
(1) Suppose that I do in fact “devalue” women as you suggest. Well, maybe I do and maybe I don’t. (I don’t—more on that below.) Either way, how does that lamentable character flaw prove that my argument for the humanity of the unborn is mistaken? Bad people can still make good arguments. To review, I presented the following syllogism:
P1: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.
P2: Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.
Therefore,
C: Abortion is morally wrong.
I defended that syllogism two ways. First, I argued from the science of embryology that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. True, they have yet to mature, but they are whole human beings nevertheless. I cited four embryology texts to support that empirical claim, none of which you’ve replied to. Second, I argued from philosophy that there is no relevant difference between embryos and adults that justify killing the former. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying humans could be killed then but not now. You did not present any argument for why those differences matter.
So, how exactly is that formal argument refuted by your claim that I devalue women? Could my argument still be good even if I am a bad person? Again, arguments stand or fall apart from the person making them. In short, why isn’t your claim an example of the ad-hominem fallacy that attacks the person, rather than the argument presented?
At bottom, your skepticism about the status of the unborn is unwarranted. First, merely doubting something does not mean you’ve refuted it. As Tim Keller points out in The Reason for God, doubts are alternate beliefs that must be justified. You cannot doubt position ‘A’ except from position ‘B.’ I’ve already argued in a previous post why the abortion issue is not morally complex and why we have good reasons to believe the unborn are human. You doubt both my scientific and philosophical arguments not from a position of neutrality, but from the abortion-choice position, which you hold. That position must be argued for as much as my position must be argued for. Second, let’s be honest: The humanity of the unborn is not legitimately in dispute by anyone willing to look at the evidence. We’ve known this for years. As early as 1970, an editorial in California Medicine (a peer-reviewed journal supportive of abortion) conceded that abortion kills a living human being and that claiming otherwise was intellectually dishonest:
“Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra-or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected.”
(2) How does valuing the unborn entail devaluing women? My argument all along has been that both are intrinsically valuable in virtue of what they are—creatures who bear the image of their Maker. Put differently, how does valuing women mean that we look the other way while they intentionally kill an innocent human being, in this case, their own offspring? For example, suppose we had a culture that did not value born children, say an Aztec or Canaanite one that sacrificed them to pagan deities. If moral reformers tell those parents, “you can’t do that! It’s a moral evil to intentionally kill your own kids,” would any objective person say, “In your desire to value these born kids, it seems you are devaluing their parents?” If you reply the two are not the same, given the unborn are not human while born kids in the Aztec and Canaanite cultures clearly are, you arrive at the major flaw in your claim—namely, that it’s question-begging, it assumes the unborn are not human, a point you must argue for not merely presuppose. As mentioned in my previous reply, we cannot escape the question, What is the unborn?
I hope you will reconsider your claim that I devalue women, but I think you are right about one thing: If the unborn are not members of the human family, I am indeed unfairly imposing my views on women. However, if each and every human being has an equal right to life, and the unborn is one of us, can you see things my way? That is, if you shared my position that abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being, wouldn’t you do everything you could to stop it? Wouldn’t you want unborn humans protected by law just like everyone else? Of course, I realize you don’t share my position, so my point here is really quite modest: The issue that separates us is not that I devalue women and you value them. What separates us is that I believe the unborn are members of the human family and you don’t. That’s the singular question I hope we can resolve before going any further.
(3) What do you mean by a woman’s perspective on abortion? Do you mean pro-life women? Pro-abortion women? Indeed, even among feminists who support abortion, there is no single perspective. For example, feminist Naomi Wolf admits that abortion involves “a real death” of an actual human being and to claim otherwise cheapens our view of human life. Feminist Camille Paglia, is equally direct. She writes in Salon piece that the term “pro-choice” is intellectually dishonest. “Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.” On the opposite spectrum, feminist Katha Pollitt asserts that abortion is morally no different than vacuuming out your house!
So, why is Pollitt’s perspective woman-valuing while that of Wolfe and Paglia is not? Far from devaluing a class of humans, pro-life advocates contend that no human being, regardless of size, level of development, environment, degree of dependency, race, gender, or place of residence, should be excluded from the human family. In other words, our view of humanity is inclusive, indeed wide-open to all, especially those who are small, vulnerable, and defenseless.
(4) How does a woman believing that an embryo is not human, make it not human? That is, how does her believing something is so make it so? A man who’s convinced he’s a Rhino is not one in virtue of his beliefs. Truth corresponds to reality independent of my beliefs. And the way we discover truth is to advance arguments and test them by the dictates of evidence and sound reason. In short, arguments are not dismissive, they’re either valid or invalid, sound or unsound. Submitting my arguments to an objective standard—that of logical inquiry—forecloses on any claim that I’m arrogant or dismissive. Since, by their nature, objective truth claims can be evaluated for their validity and soundness, when you make them, you are submitting to the individual(s) in front of you that you could be wrong. That’s a humble posture, which frees you to be curious about your opponent’s view and to invite them to consider your argument. This is precisely the posture we should aim at in this conversation. The relativist is not humble. He or she is closed-minded: “I have my perspective and how dare you challenge it!” as if challenging ideas constitutes an assault on human dignity. I treat all humans as equally valid. I reject the claim that all ideas are equally so.
You write: “Your logic is dismissive of perspectives [women] may have about their situation that don’t align with your formula. I’ve provided some examples, but you brush them aside.” Can you show me where I’ve dismissed or “brushed aside” claims as opposed to challenging them? Was it your empirical claim about somatic cells and embryos being ontologically the same? I answered that with empirical evidence you have not acknowledged or refuted. Was it your theological claim that the Bible is silent on abortion? I addressed that claim directly and presented a clear biblical case which you’ve yet to enjoin. Was it your philosophical claim that because people disagree, truth on the status of the unborn cannot be known? In response, I replied that an absence of consensus doe not mean an absence of truth and cited historical examples of slavery and women voting. Was it your ethical claim that abortion is morally complex? I explained why psychological complexity does not entail moral complexity. In short, in each of those cases, I presented reasons for not being persuaded by your claims, which is very different from dismissing them. Yes, it’s possible my refutations did not pass the test of reason and, to repeat, I humbly remain open to adjusting my position if it can be shown precisely where my arguments fail the test of reason.
(6) You write: “Acknowledging an issue is complex and trying to understand and appreciate various biblically grounded and historically significant perspectives is a long way from relativism. It’s simply prioritizing Christian unity and open-mindedness over a wholesale embrace of one perspective.”
What “biblically grounded” arguments in support of abortion do you have in mind and why do you think they are persuasive? What Scriptures support them? As for unity, count me in, but never at the expense of truth. Historically, when professing Christians disagreed on weighty matters like the bodily resurrection of Christ, the deity of Christ, etc. they advanced arguments and weighed evidence until they reached a consensus; they did not settle on mystery. I reject your claim that the status of the unborn is unknowable. Abortion kills something that’s alive. (After all, dead things don’t grow.) So what kind of living thing is the unborn? To answer that empirical question, we do not turn to theology, but to the science of embryology. Why should we doubt that science?
(7) You write: “You’re so confident in your argument that you claim the right to violate her sovereignty over her own body and will. Let’s bring it back to the life-support analogy, but shift the picture to make it clearer. Let’s say I allowed someone with failed kidneys to temporarily hook up to my blood stream while they wait for a donor. In other words, they’re relying on my kidneys for life support. Would it be murder if I detach? Shouldn’t I be free to make my own judgement of what I do with my own body?”
Short answer: It is one thing to withhold support. It is quite another to slit your victim’s throat in the name of withholding support. As abortion-choice philosophers Kate Greasley, Marry Anne Warren, and others who hold your position point out, you cannot get from a right to withhold support to a right to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Greasley in particular insists that the abortion debate does indeed turn on the status of the unborn, not the bodily autonomy of the mother. “Try as they might, abortion defenders cannot dodge the personhood question. If the unborn are indeed persons, abortion is a serious moral wrong and ought to be illegal in nearly all cases. Bodily rights arguments, while interesting, fail to overcome the moral weight of killing an innocent person.” Baylor Philosopher Francis J. Beckwith sums up the problem with your claim as follows: “Calling abortion merely the withholding of support is kind of like suffocating someone with a pillow and calling it the withdrawing of oxygen.”
Permit me a few additional questions to tease out your bodily rights claim:
Question: Is it fair to liken pregnancy to kidnapping and being forcibly hooked up to a person with kidney failure? That is, other than the case of rape, don’t most women willingly engage in an act that is ordered toward procreation? Thus, if your argument works at all, it only works to justify abortion in cases of rape, not for any reason the woman wants.
Question: Why should anyone accept that a mother has no more duty to her own child than she does a total stranger (or intruder) that is unnaturally hooked up to her?
Suppose a pregnant woman has intractable nausea and vomiting and insists on taking thalidomide to help her symptoms. Her doctor tells her she can’t do that given the horrific birth defects that follow from using the drug while pregnant. Nevertheless, she still insists on taking it based on the fact that the fetus has no right to her body anyway. Thus, when her physician refuses to provide the drug, she obtains it on the black market and takes it. Five months later, her child is born with stubs instead of arms. Do you believe that she did anything wrong?
Allow me to strengthen your claim with an example from my friend Steve Wagner. Even then, I still think it comes up short. Imagine that a new mother is kidnapped while sleeping and taken to a remote cabin where she awakens to find that she is snowed in. A note on the counter informs her that she will be there six weeks, but she is safe, her child is safe, and there is plenty of food and water. Given she is a new mother, she frantically tears through the cabin looking for her infant son. Instead, she finds an infant girl roughly the same age as her son. Pulling herself together, she goes to the kitchen and finds a three-month supply of formula. The baby girl is hungry and begins to cry. The new mother ignores the cries. Six weeks later, the police show up and rescue her. They ask if there is anyone else inside. The new mom quietly replies, “there was.” The police find the dead infant on a bed. The coroner confirms the infant died from starvation. Do you agree that a mother who did this was morally wrong, even though she never consented to the kidnapping or to sustaining the child in the first place?
I suspect that we’d both agree that the kidnapped woman was 1) a temporary “defacto guardian” for the infant whether she voluntarily assumed that role or not, 2) that her obligation was to feed the child even if she had to use her own body to do it and 3) that obligation persists even if the note had stipulated that if the child died, she would be rescued immediately.
If parents have no special duties to their dependent offspring in virtue of biology unless they voluntarily assume them, what kind of morality are we left with? Well, deadbeat dads are off the hook. If mothers have no special duties to their children in virtue of a biological relationship, then neither do fathers. That is, deserting dads do not owe child support to women they impregnate and abandon — unless they voluntarily consent to provide that support. However, no man has ever avoided child support by claiming, “I consented to sex, not being a dad! It’s not my fault the condom broke!” Even if a man stipulates ahead of time that he won’t care for a resulting child, the law still holds him responsible.
(8 You write: “Let’s touch on ensoulment again. You’ve suggested it doesn’t matter. But I wonder if you feel that way because it’s a weak spot of your argument? As you’ve said, if the unborn are not human, then your argument falls apart.”
Actually, I did not say that it did not matter. I said it did not matter in terms of two specific questions: 1) determining empirically what kind of living thing the unborn is, and 2) determining whether or not it was morally permissible to kill the unborn (Recall my 35 year olds example.) My claim is that the ensoulment question doesn’t prove the unborn are not human or that abortion is permissible. As Clinton Wilcox points out, “What is often overlooked is that Christians still opposed abortion at all points during pregnancy just in case they were wrong about the point at which the soul is present in the body. The ancient Christians were relying on the science of the time and ancient Greek ideas about how the body comes about. The science of embryology did not show that human life actually begins at fertilization until the nineteenth century. If Aquinas, for example, had known about nineteenth-century embryology, he certainly would have agreed that the soul is present in the body at fertilization.”
(9) You write: “If embryos DO have souls, Christian theology struggles to answer whether they go to heaven or hell if they are aborted or miscarried.”
How is that an argument against the humanity of the unborn or a justification for killing them? To see the logical problem with the claim, let’s state it formally:
P1: You cannot posit a soul unless you know the eternal destiny of the entity in question.
P2: Only entities known to have souls have a right to life.
P2: The eternal destiny of embryos and fetuses is unknown.
Therefore,
C. Embryos and fetuses do not have souls and thus have no right to life.
By that logic, A stranger that I meet on the street does not have a right to life if his eternal destiny is unknown to me. Absurd.
You further write: “If embryos have souls, then it seems the majority of heaven’s population will be people who were never born.” I fear here that you’ve been reading too much Kevin M. Deyoung on X.
What follows? Nothing follows in terms of the status of the unborn. Let’s again state your claim formally:
P1: If embryos have souls, the majority of people in Heaven were never born.
P2: A majority of people in Heaven will have been born
Therefore,
C: The unborn do not have souls and thus are not human.
The conclusion clearly does not follow from the premises. The argument is invalid in its structure. And like Deyoung, you present no argument for why P1 can’t be true while leaving undefended the hidden premise, P2. How do we know P2 is true?
You write: “If miscarried embryos end up in heaven, why doesn’t the Bible provide this comforting info to parents.” As for why the Bible doesn’t provide specific comfort for miscarried embryos or stillborn infants, I can add two thoughts. First, when dealing with personal pain, I try to reason from what I do know to what I don’t. True, I don’t know why God allows some humans to die prematurely. However, I do know that this is the same world where God raised Jesus from the dead. And if He did that to secure my greatest good—my salvation—I have good reason to trust Him in the things I cannot explain. So, in that sense, I think the Bible does provide some comfort for miscarriage.
Second, the bible leaves many questions unanswered. That shouldn’t surprise us. We should remember that the Bible as a whole is not a comprehensive code of ethics; rather, the Bible is the story of God’s redemption of His people. In other words, the biblical writers, under guidance from the Holy Spirit, selectively discussed topics relevant to their intended audiences while leaving many other topics unstated. Take the topic of abortion. As biblical historian Michael J. Gorman points out, the best explanation for the Bible’s silence on abortion is not that its authors condoned the practice, but that a discussion of the issue was unnecessary. Unlike the surrounding pagan cultures, The audiences to whom the text was written were not inclined to kill their children before birth.
Regarding the high number of miscarriages, I agree this is both common and heartbreaking. However, how does it follow that because nature spontaneously triggers miscarriages, that a) the embryos in question are not living human beings, or b) I may intentionally kill them? This is a non-sequitur. Many third-world countries have high infant mortality rates. Are we to conclude that those infants who die sooner rather than later were never whole human beings and lacked souls? Admittedly, these miscarriages are tragic. But as journalist Andrew Sullivan points out, earthquakes kill thousands in 3rd world countries, but that does not justify mass murder. All of us will die sooner or later. Do those who will die later have the right to intentionally kill those who will die sooner?
You write: “It’s problematic that this nebulous doctrine has become the main thing Christians are known for in our culture. We’ve ended up in this predicament not because the Bible is so clear about it but rather because the topic of abortion (and the fear of being labeled a murderer) has been used as a cudgel to keep Christians voting as a bloc.”
Why isn’t this an example of the genetic fallacy—that is, faulting an idea based on its origins rather than its merits? The reason we’re in “this predicament,” as you put it, has little to do with the motives of pro-life Christians and politicians. Rather it has everything to do with our culture having a huge argument over two fundamental questions that impact all of us. 1) Do the unborn count as one of us? 2) Is moral truth real and knowable or is it a mere preference like choosing chocolate over vanilla.
Again, forgive me for spilling a ton of ink replying. I did not want to ignore your points. That said, take all the time you want choosing what to engage. I am not viewing this a a “gotcha’ debate, only an iron-sharpening iron exchange between friends who differ. I appreciate you.
Tom Replies:
Hi Scott… I count myself blessed by our budding friendship and by this conversation. Like you, I don’t consider agreement the goal. Many might look at our conversation and call it a debate. They might be missing the point. Jesus’ greatest commands are to love God with all our heart and mind and then to love our neighbors as ourselves. Many of us work hard to love God with all our hearts. As we sing and pray and study the Scriptures, we’re rightly asking God to bring our hearts into alignment with His own. But it’s a process and sometimes it’s complex. We often need to bring others into the process. There are many heart-issues we sort through over years or decades. However, fewer of us even consider the assignment to love God with our minds in a similar manner. In fact, many of us feel threatened by anything other than simple answers. “God said it, I believe it, so that settles it” is not a Bible verse. That trite phrase strikes me as the antithesis of loving God with all our minds. When we start trying to love our neighbor as ourselves, it gets even more complicated! To love my neighbor, I must respect and honor them as an equal image-bearer, then I must try to understand where they’re coming from. Talk about mind-bending work! I am grateful and honored by your willingness to go with me into this very difficult topic. I believe we are engaging this conversation as part of our worship unto Him.
Thanks for your compassion for the heartaches Hilary and I have suffered. God’s comfort is astounding. Our grief coupled with His comfort has expanded our capacity for both hope and pain. It turns out that He indeed is good. I’m glad we serve a God who welcomes and honors our questions and doubts and patiently walks with us through the valley but never loses sight of the feast He’s leading us toward.