Human embryo at 7 weeks

Growing up evangelical, I was taught that human fetuses (even embryos) are full human persons, and therefore abortion is the same as killing any other human: in rare cases justified, but most often murder.

When this is your frame of reference, nothing else really matters.

What is the plight of single parents raising children in poverty (or any other similarly tragic circumstance) compared to the murder of thousands upon thousands of human persons through abortion? It is most urgent that we stop this mass murder.

And who cares if we elect a godless and immoral president who enriches the rich and impoverishes the poor as long as he puts conservative judges on the supreme court to overturn Roe v. Wade? We’re talking about mass murder!

Within that frame of reference, this logic is pretty unassailable.

The basic premise of this view is that an unborn baby is a human life, or, as I’ve put it, “human fetuses are full human persons.” There are two ironies to this:

Irony #1: Evangelicals before the 1970s didn’t all agree on this.

Irony #2: This premise is, at best, biblically questionable.

Yes, the Bible a few times speaks of God “knowing” or “forming” someone in the womb. Psalm 139 is a beautiful, life-affirming passage. Jeremiah 1 and Galatians 1 are powerful, call-affirming passages. But in each instance this is a particular person who has grown up to be known by God, not a generic statement about God’s intimate relationship with every fetus. It says nothing about the fetus’ “human personhood.”

According to the Torah a fetus is not legally a full human person. Exodus 21:22-25 speaks of harm to an unborn child as harm to the pregnant woman, not harm to the child as person. It is thus worthy of a fine but not worthy of “life for life” retribution. The Jewish view—arising from this and other passages—is that a fetus is not a “soul” until birth.

The New Testament says nothing directly on the question of the personhood of a fetus. Jesus, in particular, says nothing on this.

All this to say, there are good reasons why Christians historically haven’t agreed on this most basic question of when full human personhood (the “soul”) develops. If there is a predominant Christian view historically, it is that the soul emerges  at the “quickening,” the first discernible fetal movements (that is, around 16-20 weeks).

Which means evangelicals have built a decades-long culture war and political agenda on a dubious foundation, the idea that all human fetuses (even embryos) are full human persons. The collateral damage of this dubiously founded war has been immeasurable.

Now, there are still very good Christian reasons for wanting to reduce abortions. It is a form of violence, as my denomination’s Confession of Faith puts it in its only reference to abortion.

Surgical abortion can be terribly traumatic for women. (Which puts the lie to the notion that most women who get such abortions are doing so casually.) Also, I suspect most people would join me in thinking of late-term fetuses as “unborn children,” and thus abortions at that stage as violence against human persons. (And yes, I recognize that late-term abortions are extremely rare, and really only happen when the life of the mother is at risk, and so no, I don’t have any desire to legislate what is a difficult medical and moral decision best decided between the pregnant person and their doctor.)

So, yes, I’m all for reducing abortions. But let’s reduce abortions by the one way which has actually been proven to work: reducing poverty, increasing educational opportunities and social supports, and providing good and comprehensive health care—including access to safe abortions.

P.S. None of this should be taken to imply that people who grieve the loss of an unborn child shouldn’t do so. When a person is carrying a child that is wanted and loved, it is a child they are carrying, not merely a fetus. May God’s peace be with you.

[Note: This has been lightly edited since originally being posted, to reflect a correction given by a family member who is a medical doctor.]

© Michael W. Pahl