The question of when human life begins may have become a socially fuzzy question five decades ago. But scientifically that is no longer the case. The science of embryology and our advancement in technology have removed doubt from the once opaque process of pregnancy. In the words of Nancy R. Pearcy “most scientifically informed people know that life begins at conception.” [i]

To cling to the misnomer, “it’s just a fetus, it’s not a child” ignores the obvious science of the day. A new individual begins at fertilization and develops through a continuous progression from womb into adulthood. There are no apparent or scientific thresholds to cross. The embryo needs no further external input to contribute to their autonomous life journey, only a mother’s nurturing womb.

Each life, as cellular as it may begin, possesses its own distinct genetic code and epigenetic mapping. From the first moments, it immediately commences cellular reproduction to fulfill its innate life purpose. The embryo is purposefully oriented to distinctive head and foot locations. As early as four weeks the baby’s own placenta begins developing which creates the necessary separation between the mother’s body and the child’s body, but also provides the nourishment and waste removal to sustain its life. By six to seven weeks the four-chambered human heart, head, neck, and expressions of a “Y” chromosome which induce gender formation all exist.

By fourteen weeks sensory fibers grow into the spinal cord and connections are made to the brain’s thalamus. Already by twenty weeks, the child is fully responsive to pain stimuli. They are also responsive to imaging of human faces, and human voices. In fact, those facial sensory receptors had begun appearing by eight weeks gestation. This is intimately human stuff. And the incredible list of developmental marvels goes extensively on.

So, what are we talking about when we talk about terminating a pregnancy? It isn’t a cancerous mass we’re bringing to an end. This isn’t a cucumber growing in a woman’s uterus. If it were anything other than an embryo the uterine wall would expel the object as harmful to the mother. If we magically plucked out this embryo and dropped it off millions of years ago in Darwin’s supposed “warm pond” it would confound secular biologists as unprecedentedly sophisticated life. So what is growing in the woman? A simple-single celled organism? A turnip? No!—rather the most sophisticated life form known on the planet—a human. Human life has always begun at conception. The developing embryo constitutes an independent and maturing person. 

Let’s not also neglect the obvious point that a woman’s body is uniquely designed to foster and inhabit this human life. Isn’t it telling that a female uterus is the only room in all of nature capable of developing a human life? For all of humanity’s technological wizardry, we still need a human mother’s womb to incubate a fertilized egg. Shouldn’t that inspire awe and instigate the protection of mothers and babies as separate humans almost impossibly and marvelously connected through biological nurture?

The Destruction of Human Life

In 2010 British Journalist, Antonia Senior—who believed that a woman had the right to choose an abortion—went through a personal evaluation process after she conceived and later gave birth to a daughter. Amazingly Senior came to a recognition of life at conception, “my daughter was formed at conception. Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life…yes, abortion is killing. But it’s the lesser evil.” 

The first time I read this I was appreciative of Senior’s candor, and shocked by her conclusion. What could possibly be a greater evil than killing your own child? Here was her conclusion. “You cannot separate women’s rights from their right to fertility control…to defend women’s rights you must be prepared to kill.”[ii] There she said it out loud. That is what the Life Movement has been saying for five decades. Abortion is the destruction of a human life. 

But now, what are we becoming if we feel that we must justify the taking of another life to get what we feel we deserve? 

But let’s be honest, most women aren’t thinking about that when they choose to have an abortion. Common reasons given for having an abortion are, they feel they aren’t able to afford the baby, they don’t feel prepared, they are afraid of losing a job, or dropping out of school, or they may be fearful of the social stigma and shame of conceiving a child out of wedlock. Yet, choosing to terminate a human life shouldn’t be a solution to financial hardships or calendar problems. In previous posts I've commented about the role of communities and churches to dynamically support women in the moment of their unplanned pregnancy.

A Woman’s Right to Choose

Let’s return to the broader social conversation for a moment. The argument goes, “The woman has the right to govern over her own body; this is a private medical decision between a woman and her doctor; it’s a woman’s right to choose.” If you are talking about shopping for peanut butter, then, yes a woman has the right to choose between chunky or creamy. If she is deciding whether to put aspirin or Tylenol into her body, then, yes, a woman has the right to choose. Once she has created a distinct human life, her liberty ends where the baby’s right to live begins. Once she reproduces another human being within her body, she may not knowingly violate the sanctity of that life (barring the extreme cases of threat to her own life) without experiencing damaging physical, emotional, and moral consequences to herself.

Using this right to choose logic, consider how the argument for medical privacy would play out in a family care situation. An elderly person is suffering from dementia. “The decision to end their life is a private decision between this person’s family and this person’s doctor.” Why doesn’t this work? Because, under our legal and moral protections that person has a right to life. No one else can decide on their behalf whether they have the right to live. The argument to end a life is not a right to choose. We are talking about a moral decision, not a medical decision.

Does anyone else see the irony that those who call the Life Movement extremist are the ones advocating the redefinition of “personhood” and the destruction of a human life? The Life Movement is not trying to suppress women or reinstate a theocracy. They are only trying to give a voice to the voiceless babies who have been deemed unworthy of legal protection. This is why churches are concerned and mobilized on this issue; more than a political or medical issue, it is a moral issue. 

Final Thoughts

Our church has recently wrestled with the language of our core beliefs about what it means to be human; when life begins; who it originates from; and from where its value derives. Of course we have the statements that are religious and creedal in nature. But the following conclusion statement is one we would hope everyone in our society can continue to embrace regardless of whether they believe in our religious doctrines.

We believe that all human life is equally valuable and worth saving, healing, protecting, and preserving from conception to last breath. 

As soon as society removes the boundaries to human exceptionalism, we begin to distinguish some human life as worthy of protecting and some as not worthy of protecting. Walk that thought down the road one more block. First, it’s the fetus that’s not a person. Then it’s the newborn. Then it’s the disabled, or the elderly. Then it becomes humane to put an end to someone’s suffering? Well, who defines suffering, those who are suffering or those who are paying to mitigate the suffering? What about the useless? Who defines usefulness? When society removes human exceptionalism society becomes full of persons and varying degrees of unprotected non-persons. And who decides who is a person and worthy of protection and who is a non-person and not worthy of protection? The Almighty State? Lord help us, that’s exactly where we are going.

Then we have undone the foundation of the American constitution. No longer can we say “all men were created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…Life…” Then we will say, only people are equal, but not all human life is a person worthy of rights of protection. 

The woman’s womb is the great incubator of human life. It has never been in greater need of protection in our nation. And how we define life sets a legal and moral precedence for the future. How we understand it will determine what kind of society we are becoming. Let’s embrace human exceptionalism with all of its privileges and responsibilities. 

Other Articles on Abortion and Life by Brian Flewelling

• Read Life Before Birth—a look at scripture
• Read Sanctity of Human Life
• To watch three lectures from Pro-Life Apologist Scott Klusendorff click here.

^{[iii] _{This misconception that protecting life in the womb is repressive to women has a cultural back story originating most recently from the second wave feminist movement. This misconception treats childbearing and child rearing as getting in the way, an obstacle to living a fulfilled life. This is why the underline assumption is that abortion is liberating women, not only in their career, but from nature, and from the repressive Christian moors that hold women to the responsibility of their nature. The sex distinction between male and female thus becomes an obstacle to human happiness. Humans can be freed from the tyranny of nature and biology.}} 

^{_{"The female is a woman in so far as she feels herself as such. Some essential biological gives are not part of her lived situation...nature does not define a woman, it is she who defines herself by reclaiming nature for herself." Simone de Beauvoir.}} 

Tags: value, abortion, science, life, women, development, injustice, liberty, support, conception, destruction, person, responsibility, embryo