Saturday, February 17, 2007
Abortion
I've been having a lot of conversations lately on the abortion topic. As an evangelical Christian, I'm supposed to be violently pro-life, to preserve the millions of human lives which are destroyed in this procedure every year. I have some doubts about the ramifications of this particular belief. However, if it is indeed a commandment of God, then I have no choice but to assume that God is correct and that his commandments do indeed serve a vital purpose for humanity.
Right and Illegal
First, I would like to make clear that whether abortion should be legal is an entirely separate question from whether it is sinful, unethical, or wrong. Americans in general believe that the law determines right and wrong, and vice versa. Take, for example, insider trading. I can easily see how somebody could believe that insider trader doesn't actually hurt anybody. It's the fault of the other investors that they, too, didn't have friends on the inside. Using inside information to make money is just wisely using my available resources.
However, insider trading is illegal, and bulky safeguards are in place to prevent it from happening on large scales. If you surveyed Americans in the 1910s, before the stock market crash and subsequent legislation came about, I suspect that most of them would tell you that what we call insider trading was A-OK. (They would use that phrase because it was the 1910s.) If you asked people a mere 15 years later, or today, they spew bile at its evil nature. This is not because something changed in the nature of insider trading, but rather because it is no longer legal.
Abortion is the same way. When it was illegal in the 1950s, only a few dared question the law. After all, if it was illegal, it was wrong! The only woman who ever succeeded in the challenge did so anonymously. (Jane Roe is the female version of John Doe.) It was, by virtue of being illegal, completely wrong. Today, after several Supreme Court decisions concluding that abortion is, in fact, legal, few pro-choice advocates argue that abortion is right. They argue that it is the mother's decision, or that it is a legal medical procedure and so should be left alone. It is no surprise, given the American psyche, that both sides of this debate want to pass laws supporting their views.
So, for now, we will ignore the question of whether abortion should be legal and return to the question of whether it is sinful. Those of you who already believe that abortion is sinful and wrong are probably already conjuring up images comparing abortion clinics to Hannibal Lecter and the Son of Sam. Those of you who don't are conjuring up images of stuffy Puritans in belt-buckle hats telling one another that everything from sex to skipping church is sinful. Let's try to avoid those images for a while, because they are purely emotional responses to something about which we should use logic. Besides, unless you've skipped ahead, you don't know what conclusion we're going to reach. We may agree with you!
We'll come back to legality later.
Evidence from Scripture
To get a good idea of the sin involved, we should go to the Bible. After all, if it is sinful, we need to be able to find support for this idea in the Bible. Otherwise, we might be mixing up modern cultural beliefs in the vitality of the fetus with our genuine Biblical beliefs, thus creating an unnecessary mess. I have obtained all of these references from pro-life web pages. I would like to say to the authors of those pages that showing me photos of aborted fetuses is not going to keep me on your page long enough to read your argument. Ew! It is, after all, quite important to report to our listeners why we believe abortion is sinful, not merely that it is icky or that it makes us mad.
Unfortunately, many websites also assume that their view is true before arguing that it is true. For instance, my major reference for this section consistently cites verses related to the killing of children, when the issue in whether is exactly whether fetuses and children are identical. Certainly, if we can show that to be the case, then killing a fetus is indeed morally equivalent to killing a child. However, first we must do that!
Our first exhibit comes from the book of Exodus:
Unfortunately, there is very little information distinguishing the two cases. It is notable that a premature baby, regardless of what we now call trimester, probably would not have survived. Even today, a premature baby often requires extensive medical care, which simply didn't exist until a hundred years ago. In Moses's time, the baby would've been exposed instantly to thousands of pathogens, both from the parents' dirty skin and from the environment. If the baby required warmth, he had better receive it during the day, because in open areas like Israel, the temperature can drop considerably at night. (Even today, with our amazing medical system, thousands of newborns die every year because they were premature.)
So we're not going to get any clear answer out of this Scripture excerpt. It doesn't seem to offer us any helpful information by itself, so let's look at a few other verses:
The Hebrew in this verse literally says "fruit of the womb". The word translated fruit here is PRY (pronounced per-ee). It most often refers to the product of fruit-bearing trees and fruit-bearing plants. It is the same word used many times during the unfortunate incident in the Garden of Eden. The fruit of the vine is a fully formed grape ready for consumption or transformation into wine. Used figuratively, the word refers to the end result of a process. In the NASV, the same word is translated "offspring" a dozen times and "results" twice.
Now, we come to the 800-pound gorilla of pro-life verses. We'll look at several different translations of this verse. You'll see why in a minute. First, the NIV:
Incidentally, the word translated "inward parts" and "reins" actually means "kidneys". The ancient Hebrews thought that the kidneys were the seat of the desires. David here is saying that God possesses his innermost desires; God is ruler of them.
One commentator writes as follows about verse 13:
We'll move on with the assumption that Psalm 139 presents an argument in favor of a fetus being a human being, at least at some stage during its development.
Next, we jump to the New Testament, which we find to be is curiously silent. There are prohibitions of infanticide, but we have not yet demonstrated that a delivered infant is the same as an undeveloped fetus. There are also prohibitions of murder, but these too do not seem to apply. They refer to the murder of adults. Overall, despite the prevalence of medical abortion in the Gentile world, nobody even mentions it in passing.
A curious episode does occur in the beginning of Luke: the tale of the leaping fetus! Mary visits Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Not only does Elizabeth's fetus recognize the presence of Jesus, it reacts by willfully "leaping in the womb," squirming forcefully enough that Elizabeth could feel it moving around. Mary responds by bursting into song and dance, Broadway-style. Elizabeth was, at this point, about six months pregnant - she was entering her third trimester.
Most curious here is the Greek itself. The word used for fetus John is the same word translated "infant" elsewhere: brephos. The infant, or baby, leaped in her womb. Now, I'm not sure if the Greeks had a separate word for fetus. The Gentiles did practice abortion on a regular basis, so the absence of such a word cannot be used as an indication that the practice was frowned upon or that the two were considered equivalent. English speakers distinguish easily between 119 different meanings for the noun set. Obviously, Hippocrates and his followers did not find it to be particularly appealing - the Hippocratic Oath forbids a doctor to take part in it - but not every Greek-speaking doctor was a follower of Hippocrates.
We also cannot assume that the case of John and Jesus - two people carefully monitored and developed by God - is necessarily indicative of other individuals. These were two very special guys. John was declared a special prophet before he was even conceived, and Jesus is special for eternity. Incidentally, God knowing a person and his existence prior even to his conception forms another issue altogether, which we won't get into here. Mormon theology has a lot to say on this topic.
Let's give these verses the benefit of the doubt, for the sake of argument. Since Elizabeth is six months pregnant, let's say that any fetus greater than about six months pregnant is considered equivalent to a brephos. This is consistent with our conclusions on Psalm 139 and also with the earlier laws in Exodus, clearing up the ambiguity in that verse. An infant prematurely born between six and eight months has a small, but real, chance of survival. So, now we've discovered the most detailed pro-life argument we can make from Scripture. This instilling of life-value happens before the sixth month, but after conception, and we cannot say precisely when.
Quickening
The infant developing vitality in the middle of the pregnancy turns out to be what British lawmakers concluded almost 300 years ago. Quickening, in terms of pregnancy, refers to the first time that a mother can feel the baby moving of its own accord in her womb. According to Dictionary.com, "quicken" means "to become alive; receive life" and also "to enter that stage of pregnancy in which the fetus gives indications of life".
William Blackstone, establisher of the British "Common Law", wrote in 1765:
According to medical studies, a woman pregnant for the first time feels the fetal movement in her uterine muscles as late as 20-21 weeks, independent of her own body shape. A woman pregnant for the second time can feel the fetus moving as early as 14 weeks. So, this quickening takes place as early as 2.5 months and as late as 4. The woman knows that she is pregnant as early as a couple of weeks after conception, but the fetus wasn't considered quick (alive) until as much as four months later.
Zoe and Thelema
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that what the British, what Luke, what David, and what the author of Exodus were considering was the will of the child. No, this isn't directly supported by any of those, but bear with me. Throughout history, will, judgment, mind, and life have all been considered synonymous. The Greek word pneuma - spirit - refers to the ability to will one's own body to move. Even in modern English, a spirited person is one with a strong and forceful will. The Greek word psuche (soul) can also be translated breath. The soul was said to manifest itself through the action of willful breath.
In Greek, there are two words for life: bios and zoe. Bios is the biological life - simple worldly "being alive" - shared by animals and humans. It is characterized by such things as a beating heart, working reflexes, seeking nourishment, etc. It is sustained by such things as wealth, possession, food, drink, and shelter. Zoe is the life of the spirit. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal zoe." It is characterized by such things as will, activity, and vigor. It is sustained by such things as salvation. A person can have either, both, or neither. When a person dies, his zoe may live on. When an animal dies, its zoe and bios simultaneously end.
(Biology, from bios, is the study of life. Zoology, from zoe, is the study of living things.)
Curiously, ending somebody's bios is considered murder, even though that person's zoe may still be around, but Christians are encouraged to live as though they had only zoe. A fetus develops its bios fairly early in the pregnancy. The fetal heart begins to beat about 22 days after conception. Within another month, the heart consists of four chambers, like any other human, and its beating is audible using a special instrument. The brain has also started to develop, but definitely is not capable of anything resembling human activity. Incidentally, in another month, the mother experiences her earliest possible quickening. Imagine that.
Conclusion on morality
Based on Bible verses, medical science, and the distinction between bios and zoe, I think it's safe to say that the colonial British were onto something. 10 weeks, 1.5 months, is the latest possible time that we can consider a fetus to have no independent bios. (It shares its mothers bios.) A few weeks after that, at quickening, is the latest possible time that our infant has no independent zoe. In each case, the actual onset of life may very well be weeks or months earlier. It remains possible, though biologically unlikely, that both begin at conception.
We can safely conclude that 1.5 months is the latest conceivable time at which a woman can have an abortion and still be within God's guidelines. The actual onset of independent bios may be somewhat earlier, as early as 22 days after conception, translating the actual divine deadline back several weeks. In other words, as soon as your menstrual cycle is late by one week, it may be too late. Your baby has detached itself from your bios and begun to develop its own. Levonorgestrel or forever hold your child.
This is consistent, also, with reality. If a woman miscarries during or before the fifth week after her last period, she has no way of knowing whether she miscarried or whether she simply is experiencing her normal menstrual cycle (albeit a little late). After she misses one cycle, she can assume that she is pregnant and any future events are miscarriages.
Legality
I told you earlier that we'd come back to this. We've concluded, reading each Bible verse as consistently with scientific discoveries as possible, that 22 days is the absolute latest at which a human embryo can be morally killed. It may be earlier! Now, we must decide whether it is reasonable or even possible to outlaw such immoral acts. We must keep several guidelines in mind:
Let's look at each option in turn.
A Christian-controlled Congress could outlaw abortions entirely. This is based on the idea that all embryos, including those which do not have independent heartbeats, are human lives that cannot be destroyed. The legal ramifications of making this declaration are numerous.
We would have to conclude that all miscarriages, including unknown miscarriages, are accidental deaths. If a person accidentally causes the death of another person, he or she can be charged with manslaughter. A mother whose 3-year-old child dies due to nutritional deficiencies can be charged in his death. Should a mother who didn't eat quite right during her pregnancy, resulting in a flawed fetus and a miscarriage, be charged with a crime? When the cause of a late-term miscarriage is unknown, should the grieving parents be subject to an intense police investigation for possible criminal activity?
We would also, in the process, outlaw all in vitro or artificial fertilizations because these generally result in a large number of unviable fetuses. Parents who are unable to conceive via intercourse, due to a medical problem in either parent (e.g. low sperm count), would now be forced to live without children forever.
There is, incidentally, a perfect case study of outlawing all abortions. The South American country of Chile has done exactly that. They will not even perform an abortion if it would save the mother's life. During the 1950s, 118 in 100,000 live births resulted in the mother's death after she attempted an unsafe abortion. It is unknown how many attempted unsafe abortions resulted in the death of the child and also the death or injury of the mother. Furthermore, a mother who was caught attempting abortion could be in legal trouble, placing a strain on the public child care systems of an already-poor country.
(To be continued...)
Right and Illegal
First, I would like to make clear that whether abortion should be legal is an entirely separate question from whether it is sinful, unethical, or wrong. Americans in general believe that the law determines right and wrong, and vice versa. Take, for example, insider trading. I can easily see how somebody could believe that insider trader doesn't actually hurt anybody. It's the fault of the other investors that they, too, didn't have friends on the inside. Using inside information to make money is just wisely using my available resources.
However, insider trading is illegal, and bulky safeguards are in place to prevent it from happening on large scales. If you surveyed Americans in the 1910s, before the stock market crash and subsequent legislation came about, I suspect that most of them would tell you that what we call insider trading was A-OK. (They would use that phrase because it was the 1910s.) If you asked people a mere 15 years later, or today, they spew bile at its evil nature. This is not because something changed in the nature of insider trading, but rather because it is no longer legal.
Abortion is the same way. When it was illegal in the 1950s, only a few dared question the law. After all, if it was illegal, it was wrong! The only woman who ever succeeded in the challenge did so anonymously. (Jane Roe is the female version of John Doe.) It was, by virtue of being illegal, completely wrong. Today, after several Supreme Court decisions concluding that abortion is, in fact, legal, few pro-choice advocates argue that abortion is right. They argue that it is the mother's decision, or that it is a legal medical procedure and so should be left alone. It is no surprise, given the American psyche, that both sides of this debate want to pass laws supporting their views.
So, for now, we will ignore the question of whether abortion should be legal and return to the question of whether it is sinful. Those of you who already believe that abortion is sinful and wrong are probably already conjuring up images comparing abortion clinics to Hannibal Lecter and the Son of Sam. Those of you who don't are conjuring up images of stuffy Puritans in belt-buckle hats telling one another that everything from sex to skipping church is sinful. Let's try to avoid those images for a while, because they are purely emotional responses to something about which we should use logic. Besides, unless you've skipped ahead, you don't know what conclusion we're going to reach. We may agree with you!
We'll come back to legality later.
Evidence from Scripture
To get a good idea of the sin involved, we should go to the Bible. After all, if it is sinful, we need to be able to find support for this idea in the Bible. Otherwise, we might be mixing up modern cultural beliefs in the vitality of the fetus with our genuine Biblical beliefs, thus creating an unnecessary mess. I have obtained all of these references from pro-life web pages. I would like to say to the authors of those pages that showing me photos of aborted fetuses is not going to keep me on your page long enough to read your argument. Ew! It is, after all, quite important to report to our listeners why we believe abortion is sinful, not merely that it is icky or that it makes us mad.
Unfortunately, many websites also assume that their view is true before arguing that it is true. For instance, my major reference for this section consistently cites verses related to the killing of children, when the issue in whether is exactly whether fetuses and children are identical. Certainly, if we can show that to be the case, then killing a fetus is indeed morally equivalent to killing a child. However, first we must do that!
Our first exhibit comes from the book of Exodus:
"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."This is describing an accidental miscarriage, but the rest of the situation is rather vague. The verse says "but there is no serious injury", but does not specify who must be seriously injured. Other translations imply that the serious injury refers to the fetus. If the serious injury belongs to the woman and not to the fetus, then these verses clearly distinguish between the value of a fetus and the value of a woman. The punishment for essentially destroying the fetus is a fine, just like destroying somebody's property. The punishment for harming the woman is the same punishment that applies elsewhere to harming innocent people. However, if the injuries belong to the fetus, then this verse is a clear example showing that fetuses were considered equal to other people by applying eye-for-an-eye punishments to somebody who causes the death or injury of one.
(Exodus 21:22-25, NIV)
Unfortunately, there is very little information distinguishing the two cases. It is notable that a premature baby, regardless of what we now call trimester, probably would not have survived. Even today, a premature baby often requires extensive medical care, which simply didn't exist until a hundred years ago. In Moses's time, the baby would've been exposed instantly to thousands of pathogens, both from the parents' dirty skin and from the environment. If the baby required warmth, he had better receive it during the day, because in open areas like Israel, the temperature can drop considerably at night. (Even today, with our amazing medical system, thousands of newborns die every year because they were premature.)
So we're not going to get any clear answer out of this Scripture excerpt. It doesn't seem to offer us any helpful information by itself, so let's look at a few other verses:
"Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward."This verse is used by one pro-life website to argue that God values children. I agree. God protects and nurtures children more than any other type of person, except perhaps his prophets. However, this verse is also not helpful to our argument because it is clearly talking about already-born children, as I will show.
(Psalm 127:3, ESV)
The Hebrew in this verse literally says "fruit of the womb". The word translated fruit here is PRY (pronounced per-ee). It most often refers to the product of fruit-bearing trees and fruit-bearing plants. It is the same word used many times during the unfortunate incident in the Garden of Eden. The fruit of the vine is a fully formed grape ready for consumption or transformation into wine. Used figuratively, the word refers to the end result of a process. In the NASV, the same word is translated "offspring" a dozen times and "results" twice.
Then Jacob's anger burned against Rachel, and he said, "Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?"In each of these figurative examples, PRY clearly refers to the "end product" of a process. The fruit of one's labor or deviance is the end result, the finished product. The fruit of the vine is the finished grape. Cain, who offered God a sampling of his "fruit of the ground" in Genesis 4:3, probably wasn't offering unripe eggplant.
(Genesis 30:2)
Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock.
(Deuteronomy 28:4)
So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be satiated with their own devices.
(Proverbs 1:31)
With the fruit of a man's mouth his stomach will be satisfied; he will be satisfied with the product of his lips.
(Proverbs 18:20)
Now, we come to the 800-pound gorilla of pro-life verses. We'll look at several different translations of this verse. You'll see why in a minute. First, the NIV:
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."Now, the King James:
(Psalm 139:13-16, NIV)
"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them."Now, the Amplified Bible. The English Standard Version and NASB are similarly translated.
(Psalm 139:13-16, KJV)
"For You did form my inward parts; You did knit me together in my mother's womb."The Message picks a side:
(Psalm 139:13, Amplified Bible)
"For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother's womb."
(Psalm 139:13, NASB)
"Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;And finally, Young's Literal Translation:
you formed me in my mother's womb.
I thank you, High God—you're breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I'd even lived one day."
(Psalm 139:13-16, The Message)
"For Thou -- Thou hast possessed my reins, Thou dost cover me in my mother's belly. I confess Thee, because that [with] wonders I have been distinguished. Wonderful [are] Thy works, And my soul is knowing [it] well. My substance was not hid from Thee, When I was made in secret, Curiously wrought in the lower part of earth. Mine unformed substance Thine eyes saw, And on Thy book all of them are written, The days they were formed -- And not one among them."As you can see, translators aren't entirely in agreement on interpreting this particular section of Scripture. (In fact, translators should not be doing any interpretation at all, but that's almost unavoidable with the Hebrew.) However, these verses do present a compelling argument! The psalmist, maybe David, argues that God knew him before he was born and, according to some translators, that God actually formed him in his mother's womb.
(Psalm 139:13-16, YLT)
Incidentally, the word translated "inward parts" and "reins" actually means "kidneys". The ancient Hebrews thought that the kidneys were the seat of the desires. David here is saying that God possesses his innermost desires; God is ruler of them.
One commentator writes as follows about verse 13:
"... as God had made him -- as he had formed his members, and united them in a bodily frame and form before he was born -- he must be able to understand all his thoughts and feelings. As he was not concealed from God before he saw the light, so he could not be anywhere."It is clear, at least, that David assumed that God knew him in the womb. He even claims that God assembled his body using some kind of weaving or knitting technique. Furthermore, it is clear that David believed that he was still David before he was born. This verse is indeed the 800-pound gorilla and is a fairly solid argument for the pro-life movement. We're going to move on now, but I want leave this verse with a few lingering questions: Did God know him the entire time he was in the womb, from the moment of conception to the moment of delivery? Is this actually true, or merely a poetic device or an assumption on the part of David? Does God's omniscient knowledge of all future things play into this at all?
(The Treasury of David)
We'll move on with the assumption that Psalm 139 presents an argument in favor of a fetus being a human being, at least at some stage during its development.
Next, we jump to the New Testament, which we find to be is curiously silent. There are prohibitions of infanticide, but we have not yet demonstrated that a delivered infant is the same as an undeveloped fetus. There are also prohibitions of murder, but these too do not seem to apply. They refer to the murder of adults. Overall, despite the prevalence of medical abortion in the Gentile world, nobody even mentions it in passing.
A curious episode does occur in the beginning of Luke: the tale of the leaping fetus! Mary visits Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Not only does Elizabeth's fetus recognize the presence of Jesus, it reacts by willfully "leaping in the womb," squirming forcefully enough that Elizabeth could feel it moving around. Mary responds by bursting into song and dance, Broadway-style. Elizabeth was, at this point, about six months pregnant - she was entering her third trimester.
Most curious here is the Greek itself. The word used for fetus John is the same word translated "infant" elsewhere: brephos. The infant, or baby, leaped in her womb. Now, I'm not sure if the Greeks had a separate word for fetus. The Gentiles did practice abortion on a regular basis, so the absence of such a word cannot be used as an indication that the practice was frowned upon or that the two were considered equivalent. English speakers distinguish easily between 119 different meanings for the noun set. Obviously, Hippocrates and his followers did not find it to be particularly appealing - the Hippocratic Oath forbids a doctor to take part in it - but not every Greek-speaking doctor was a follower of Hippocrates.
We also cannot assume that the case of John and Jesus - two people carefully monitored and developed by God - is necessarily indicative of other individuals. These were two very special guys. John was declared a special prophet before he was even conceived, and Jesus is special for eternity. Incidentally, God knowing a person and his existence prior even to his conception forms another issue altogether, which we won't get into here. Mormon theology has a lot to say on this topic.
Let's give these verses the benefit of the doubt, for the sake of argument. Since Elizabeth is six months pregnant, let's say that any fetus greater than about six months pregnant is considered equivalent to a brephos. This is consistent with our conclusions on Psalm 139 and also with the earlier laws in Exodus, clearing up the ambiguity in that verse. An infant prematurely born between six and eight months has a small, but real, chance of survival. So, now we've discovered the most detailed pro-life argument we can make from Scripture. This instilling of life-value happens before the sixth month, but after conception, and we cannot say precisely when.
Quickening
The infant developing vitality in the middle of the pregnancy turns out to be what British lawmakers concluded almost 300 years ago. Quickening, in terms of pregnancy, refers to the first time that a mother can feel the baby moving of its own accord in her womb. According to Dictionary.com, "quicken" means "to become alive; receive life" and also "to enter that stage of pregnancy in which the fetus gives indications of life".
William Blackstone, establisher of the British "Common Law", wrote in 1765:
"Life ... begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemeanor."Notice, also, that deliberate abortion was not considered equivalent with murder, but still remained a "very heinous misdemeanor"! This was the case also in the United States, which still uses Blackstone's common law as a basis for our own laws, until the middle of the 19th century. One law professor, teaching during this time period, published a copy of one of his lectures:
(Blackstone, William. Commentaries, 1:120--41 (1765), taken from Wikipedia)
"In Massachusetts, [abortion] is not even an indictable offense, prior to quickening. At common law, it not punishable at all, if done before quickening, and with the consent of the mother. The State of New York has, however, been aroused from this indifference to human life, and has presented a better example to her confederates in our Federal Union. By her revised statutes, criminal abortion, before quickening, is punishable by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, and imprisonment for one year. If the woman be quick, then it is punishable as manslaughter in the second degree."The British changed their laws in 1803 to reflect this religious and cultural trend. According to the new law, abortion prior to quickening was a felony punishable by a great variety of things, including fines, prison time, being shipped off to Australia, public whipping, and time spent in the pillory. After quickening, abortion was considered murder and punished as such.
(Hodge, Hugh Lenox. Foeticide: Or Criminal Abortion, 27 (1869), from Google Books)
According to medical studies, a woman pregnant for the first time feels the fetal movement in her uterine muscles as late as 20-21 weeks, independent of her own body shape. A woman pregnant for the second time can feel the fetus moving as early as 14 weeks. So, this quickening takes place as early as 2.5 months and as late as 4. The woman knows that she is pregnant as early as a couple of weeks after conception, but the fetus wasn't considered quick (alive) until as much as four months later.
Zoe and Thelema
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that what the British, what Luke, what David, and what the author of Exodus were considering was the will of the child. No, this isn't directly supported by any of those, but bear with me. Throughout history, will, judgment, mind, and life have all been considered synonymous. The Greek word pneuma - spirit - refers to the ability to will one's own body to move. Even in modern English, a spirited person is one with a strong and forceful will. The Greek word psuche (soul) can also be translated breath. The soul was said to manifest itself through the action of willful breath.
In Greek, there are two words for life: bios and zoe. Bios is the biological life - simple worldly "being alive" - shared by animals and humans. It is characterized by such things as a beating heart, working reflexes, seeking nourishment, etc. It is sustained by such things as wealth, possession, food, drink, and shelter. Zoe is the life of the spirit. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal zoe." It is characterized by such things as will, activity, and vigor. It is sustained by such things as salvation. A person can have either, both, or neither. When a person dies, his zoe may live on. When an animal dies, its zoe and bios simultaneously end.
(Biology, from bios, is the study of life. Zoology, from zoe, is the study of living things.)
Curiously, ending somebody's bios is considered murder, even though that person's zoe may still be around, but Christians are encouraged to live as though they had only zoe. A fetus develops its bios fairly early in the pregnancy. The fetal heart begins to beat about 22 days after conception. Within another month, the heart consists of four chambers, like any other human, and its beating is audible using a special instrument. The brain has also started to develop, but definitely is not capable of anything resembling human activity. Incidentally, in another month, the mother experiences her earliest possible quickening. Imagine that.
Conclusion on morality
Based on Bible verses, medical science, and the distinction between bios and zoe, I think it's safe to say that the colonial British were onto something. 10 weeks, 1.5 months, is the latest possible time that we can consider a fetus to have no independent bios. (It shares its mothers bios.) A few weeks after that, at quickening, is the latest possible time that our infant has no independent zoe. In each case, the actual onset of life may very well be weeks or months earlier. It remains possible, though biologically unlikely, that both begin at conception.
We can safely conclude that 1.5 months is the latest conceivable time at which a woman can have an abortion and still be within God's guidelines. The actual onset of independent bios may be somewhat earlier, as early as 22 days after conception, translating the actual divine deadline back several weeks. In other words, as soon as your menstrual cycle is late by one week, it may be too late. Your baby has detached itself from your bios and begun to develop its own. Levonorgestrel or forever hold your child.
This is consistent, also, with reality. If a woman miscarries during or before the fifth week after her last period, she has no way of knowing whether she miscarried or whether she simply is experiencing her normal menstrual cycle (albeit a little late). After she misses one cycle, she can assume that she is pregnant and any future events are miscarriages.
Legality
I told you earlier that we'd come back to this. We've concluded, reading each Bible verse as consistently with scientific discoveries as possible, that 22 days is the absolute latest at which a human embryo can be morally killed. It may be earlier! Now, we must decide whether it is reasonable or even possible to outlaw such immoral acts. We must keep several guidelines in mind:
- As Christians, it is our job to spread the gospel of peace through gentle and respectful means.
- A Christian government should uphold the will of God. (A non-Christian or mixed-faith government is under no such obligation.)
- Christians should be loving.
- It can outlaw abortions entirely, leaving no room for doubt about our interpretations.
- It can outlaw medical abortions, but still allow drugs like Plan B.
- It can outlaw medical abortions at a certain point during the pregnancy.
- It can allow all medical abortions.
Let's look at each option in turn.
A Christian-controlled Congress could outlaw abortions entirely. This is based on the idea that all embryos, including those which do not have independent heartbeats, are human lives that cannot be destroyed. The legal ramifications of making this declaration are numerous.
We would have to conclude that all miscarriages, including unknown miscarriages, are accidental deaths. If a person accidentally causes the death of another person, he or she can be charged with manslaughter. A mother whose 3-year-old child dies due to nutritional deficiencies can be charged in his death. Should a mother who didn't eat quite right during her pregnancy, resulting in a flawed fetus and a miscarriage, be charged with a crime? When the cause of a late-term miscarriage is unknown, should the grieving parents be subject to an intense police investigation for possible criminal activity?
We would also, in the process, outlaw all in vitro or artificial fertilizations because these generally result in a large number of unviable fetuses. Parents who are unable to conceive via intercourse, due to a medical problem in either parent (e.g. low sperm count), would now be forced to live without children forever.
There is, incidentally, a perfect case study of outlawing all abortions. The South American country of Chile has done exactly that. They will not even perform an abortion if it would save the mother's life. During the 1950s, 118 in 100,000 live births resulted in the mother's death after she attempted an unsafe abortion. It is unknown how many attempted unsafe abortions resulted in the death of the child and also the death or injury of the mother. Furthermore, a mother who was caught attempting abortion could be in legal trouble, placing a strain on the public child care systems of an already-poor country.
(To be continued...)
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Storge
In the following entry, I am recording my own experiences, along with what I assume are the experiences of others. Obviously, since you and I are not neighbors, I cannot speak directly to your life experience. However, I hope this entry resonates with you. If it does not, simply replace "we" with me.
(Draft 3)
Modern social commentators often speak of a great longing for that which has come and gone, or that which once was but is no longer. We hear of nostalgia for the good old days, before corruption, before modern conveniences, and before the spread of "secular" ideas throughout our society. We long for something more, something deeper than the surface pleasures of our supremely mechanical society.
We occasionally catch glimpses of that something in modern cinema. We, even the men, absorb "chick flicks" and shows about family togetherness with a fond remembrance for something better. These become our favorite movies, to watch again and again.
Holiday traditions, whether they be watching A Christmas Carol on an old VHS or actually singing Christmas carols with one's neighborhood, evoke the same sensation. It floods our bodies when we return home after a long trip, smelling the familliar old house-smell, walking up to the familiar old porch, or feeling the warm greetings of the familiar old pets. It is the feeling of home.
The home-feeling often comes as a childlike comfort, the comfort of a toddler clinging to his mother's familiar sleeve. The feeling compels us to continue doing and saying the same things with the same people year after year, when dozens of alternatives have become available in the meantime. It drives us to reunite after twenty years with former fellow soldiers, former co-workers, and former high school classmates. When are we more aware of the absence of a dear friend or family member than during these ritual reenactments of an era of our lives long gone?
And then, one day, quite suddenly, often while we are still quite unaware of the feeling itself, it vanishes. We're left with a gaping wound that we desperately try to fill with success, with new pets and new things, with new friends, and with new camaraderie. But these new things never quite mend the gash left when the old home-feeling is ripped from our souls like a scab from an old scrape. Oh yes, sometimes we think we feel it for a while, when beginning a new relationship journey, when meeting a new friend, or when moving to a new house. We want to believe that if we set up our things just so, or arrange our lives just so, that the feeling will remain with us. But it only remains as long as the acquisitions remain new and wonderous. When the new-wonder fades, so, too, does the home-feeling.
By now, you've probably noticed my deliberate spattering of the adjective old throughout the preceding paragraphs. Indeed, many of the things associated with the home-feeling can be described using the adjective old. Others may require the childish adverb always. A family friend or a neighbor who had always been there, as long as we can remember, often evokes the home-feeling.
In his scholarly treatise The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis describes a type of love that the ancient Greeks called storge and that he calls natural affection. It is a need we share with the rest of the animal kingdom. Affection, Lewis says, is the feeling one associates with old shirts, old jokes, old memories, and old traditions. It is the shared bond between people who exist together, not by choice, but by circumstance. It causes us to accept abuse from a dear friend but reject the help of a friendly stranger. It does not require attraction, similarity, or even sympathy. Often, too, it is humbled by its associations. How many of us are fond of the crazy old friend or family member that we would not want to meet our new girlfriends or boyfriends? How nervous are we the first time a dear friend from university meets our family? How many dogs would admit to curling up with a cat each night?
I believe that storge and what I've called the home-feeling are one and the same. Feeling it evokes the sensation of the always-been-such and the old-so-and-so. Furthermore, I argue that modern society seems dedicated to eradicating it through just about every one of our so-called conveniences. The home-feeling, writes Lewis, is threatened by change, particularly personal change. A person who has always-been-such is now some other way, perhaps by education, by a new hobby, by a move, or by a religious conversion. The Christian family thus alienates or shuns the atheist son who has been stolen by some other group. He must have been deceived, they say. He wouldn't reject us!
Modern society, on the other hand, is based almost entirely on that kind of fluidity. "Dynamic content!" is the battle cry of the technology sector. The Internet disconnects us from our friends and families, providing them with ever-changing names and faces. JaneGirl83's name is familiar only as long as she decides not to change it. Instant messages allow us to keep track of our friends on a daily basis, but we often choose to talk about nothing but ourselves. After all, no situation, no bond, is keeping us together now. Most of us, after all, know more things about Hollywood, New York, and Washington than we know about our own cities and regions.
Quick: When was the last mayoral election in the nearest city? Who won? What have they done since then?
The automobile industry, assisted by government roads, has focused for a century on enabling us to drive farther while spending less money. When our children are grown, we fully expect them to move some three hundred miles away to attend a college we've visited only twice, and from which we know they may never return. Each of their childhood friends makes a similar decision, and a friendship born of the bonds of nearness and convenience is torn apart by distance and long distance charges. Childhood hobbies, dreams, and interests are replaced by their grown-up versions, which naturally differ enormously.
We develop psychological conditions to explain our emotions. We are depressed, we say, or perhaps we simply have some condition that renders us unable to interact properly with other people. We're too shy, too rude, too demanding. Our attention spans are too short, or too long, leaving us looking flighty or creepy. In short, only something wrong with us can explain the distance and the separation we're feeling. If nothing was wrong, we'd still feel the same way, right?
Next, we assume that maybe change is good, and that we don't feel right because things don't change enough! So we buy things. We accumulate antiques and strange family heirlooms as our beloved relatives pass away. We buy DVR systems and Nintendo consoles. We become a generation of 20- and 30-somethings playing with the same toys as middle school children. We take expensive vacations to the seashore, to the desert, to the mountains. We travel to other nations, and then feel good because we claim to comprehend their cultures. Even if we aren't quite satisfied, at least we're not as closed-minded as that other guy, right?
After a while, we reject consumerism altogether, citing its damaging effects on our psyche. The post-modern backlash against the consumerism of our parents' generation is one that has reverberated through every distant outpost of tradition, from church to family to television commericals. Modern products, as advertised, claim to put the power to make decisions about our taxes, our insurance, our children, our time, and our ideologies back into our hands - the hands of the consumer. Damn the producer who tries to entertain us on his schedule! Everything from Saturday night church services to TiVo are formulated to fulfill our supreme desire. We watch movies like Fight Club and nod our heads knowingly when Tyler Durden sarcastically comments about Swedish furniture.
We come to believe that if we can just hike the Appalachian Trail, manage our own television schedules, or backpack through the European countryside, everything will be okay. We will control our own destinies, going where the wind takes us! We will see fantastic sights which with awe like a child. Naturally, in such a desirable situation, the home-feeling we remember so fondly from childhood will return. Right?
But it doesn't.
Throughout all of this, we boldly march on, developing new relationships, new jokes, and new traditions. Often, we adopt the traditions and relationships of our significant others, but they are not quite the same. Sometimes, we encounter something old, something always in somebody else's life, and the familiar feeling floods back into us. We feel at ease around it, comfortable, at home. But then the bond breaks, the old-and-always goes away, and we are tossed back into the empty space between loneliness and longing.
When does it end? Will marriage solve the problem? Having a child? Buying a dog? I cannot answer that yet. I can only hope that because not everybody seems to feel this way, there is resolution for those of us who feel like we're clinging to a collection of driftwood, the only remnants of a beautiful ship that no longer exists, floating alone in the deep and unfamiliar water.
Maybe the answer is that everything new becomes old with time.
Maybe I need only to be patient.
Maybe I just need to let go.
But I like my driftwood.
It's always been there.
(Draft 3)
Modern social commentators often speak of a great longing for that which has come and gone, or that which once was but is no longer. We hear of nostalgia for the good old days, before corruption, before modern conveniences, and before the spread of "secular" ideas throughout our society. We long for something more, something deeper than the surface pleasures of our supremely mechanical society.
We occasionally catch glimpses of that something in modern cinema. We, even the men, absorb "chick flicks" and shows about family togetherness with a fond remembrance for something better. These become our favorite movies, to watch again and again.
Holiday traditions, whether they be watching A Christmas Carol on an old VHS or actually singing Christmas carols with one's neighborhood, evoke the same sensation. It floods our bodies when we return home after a long trip, smelling the familliar old house-smell, walking up to the familiar old porch, or feeling the warm greetings of the familiar old pets. It is the feeling of home.
The home-feeling often comes as a childlike comfort, the comfort of a toddler clinging to his mother's familiar sleeve. The feeling compels us to continue doing and saying the same things with the same people year after year, when dozens of alternatives have become available in the meantime. It drives us to reunite after twenty years with former fellow soldiers, former co-workers, and former high school classmates. When are we more aware of the absence of a dear friend or family member than during these ritual reenactments of an era of our lives long gone?
And then, one day, quite suddenly, often while we are still quite unaware of the feeling itself, it vanishes. We're left with a gaping wound that we desperately try to fill with success, with new pets and new things, with new friends, and with new camaraderie. But these new things never quite mend the gash left when the old home-feeling is ripped from our souls like a scab from an old scrape. Oh yes, sometimes we think we feel it for a while, when beginning a new relationship journey, when meeting a new friend, or when moving to a new house. We want to believe that if we set up our things just so, or arrange our lives just so, that the feeling will remain with us. But it only remains as long as the acquisitions remain new and wonderous. When the new-wonder fades, so, too, does the home-feeling.
By now, you've probably noticed my deliberate spattering of the adjective old throughout the preceding paragraphs. Indeed, many of the things associated with the home-feeling can be described using the adjective old. Others may require the childish adverb always. A family friend or a neighbor who had always been there, as long as we can remember, often evokes the home-feeling.
In his scholarly treatise The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis describes a type of love that the ancient Greeks called storge and that he calls natural affection. It is a need we share with the rest of the animal kingdom. Affection, Lewis says, is the feeling one associates with old shirts, old jokes, old memories, and old traditions. It is the shared bond between people who exist together, not by choice, but by circumstance. It causes us to accept abuse from a dear friend but reject the help of a friendly stranger. It does not require attraction, similarity, or even sympathy. Often, too, it is humbled by its associations. How many of us are fond of the crazy old friend or family member that we would not want to meet our new girlfriends or boyfriends? How nervous are we the first time a dear friend from university meets our family? How many dogs would admit to curling up with a cat each night?
I believe that storge and what I've called the home-feeling are one and the same. Feeling it evokes the sensation of the always-been-such and the old-so-and-so. Furthermore, I argue that modern society seems dedicated to eradicating it through just about every one of our so-called conveniences. The home-feeling, writes Lewis, is threatened by change, particularly personal change. A person who has always-been-such is now some other way, perhaps by education, by a new hobby, by a move, or by a religious conversion. The Christian family thus alienates or shuns the atheist son who has been stolen by some other group. He must have been deceived, they say. He wouldn't reject us!
Modern society, on the other hand, is based almost entirely on that kind of fluidity. "Dynamic content!" is the battle cry of the technology sector. The Internet disconnects us from our friends and families, providing them with ever-changing names and faces. JaneGirl83's name is familiar only as long as she decides not to change it. Instant messages allow us to keep track of our friends on a daily basis, but we often choose to talk about nothing but ourselves. After all, no situation, no bond, is keeping us together now. Most of us, after all, know more things about Hollywood, New York, and Washington than we know about our own cities and regions.
Quick: When was the last mayoral election in the nearest city? Who won? What have they done since then?
The automobile industry, assisted by government roads, has focused for a century on enabling us to drive farther while spending less money. When our children are grown, we fully expect them to move some three hundred miles away to attend a college we've visited only twice, and from which we know they may never return. Each of their childhood friends makes a similar decision, and a friendship born of the bonds of nearness and convenience is torn apart by distance and long distance charges. Childhood hobbies, dreams, and interests are replaced by their grown-up versions, which naturally differ enormously.
We develop psychological conditions to explain our emotions. We are depressed, we say, or perhaps we simply have some condition that renders us unable to interact properly with other people. We're too shy, too rude, too demanding. Our attention spans are too short, or too long, leaving us looking flighty or creepy. In short, only something wrong with us can explain the distance and the separation we're feeling. If nothing was wrong, we'd still feel the same way, right?
Next, we assume that maybe change is good, and that we don't feel right because things don't change enough! So we buy things. We accumulate antiques and strange family heirlooms as our beloved relatives pass away. We buy DVR systems and Nintendo consoles. We become a generation of 20- and 30-somethings playing with the same toys as middle school children. We take expensive vacations to the seashore, to the desert, to the mountains. We travel to other nations, and then feel good because we claim to comprehend their cultures. Even if we aren't quite satisfied, at least we're not as closed-minded as that other guy, right?
After a while, we reject consumerism altogether, citing its damaging effects on our psyche. The post-modern backlash against the consumerism of our parents' generation is one that has reverberated through every distant outpost of tradition, from church to family to television commericals. Modern products, as advertised, claim to put the power to make decisions about our taxes, our insurance, our children, our time, and our ideologies back into our hands - the hands of the consumer. Damn the producer who tries to entertain us on his schedule! Everything from Saturday night church services to TiVo are formulated to fulfill our supreme desire. We watch movies like Fight Club and nod our heads knowingly when Tyler Durden sarcastically comments about Swedish furniture.
We come to believe that if we can just hike the Appalachian Trail, manage our own television schedules, or backpack through the European countryside, everything will be okay. We will control our own destinies, going where the wind takes us! We will see fantastic sights which with awe like a child. Naturally, in such a desirable situation, the home-feeling we remember so fondly from childhood will return. Right?
But it doesn't.
Throughout all of this, we boldly march on, developing new relationships, new jokes, and new traditions. Often, we adopt the traditions and relationships of our significant others, but they are not quite the same. Sometimes, we encounter something old, something always in somebody else's life, and the familiar feeling floods back into us. We feel at ease around it, comfortable, at home. But then the bond breaks, the old-and-always goes away, and we are tossed back into the empty space between loneliness and longing.
When does it end? Will marriage solve the problem? Having a child? Buying a dog? I cannot answer that yet. I can only hope that because not everybody seems to feel this way, there is resolution for those of us who feel like we're clinging to a collection of driftwood, the only remnants of a beautiful ship that no longer exists, floating alone in the deep and unfamiliar water.
Maybe the answer is that everything new becomes old with time.
Maybe I need only to be patient.
Maybe I just need to let go.
But I like my driftwood.
It's always been there.
# posted by Dev @ 3:11 PM
