Thoughts in regard to news that an extreme fringe group of anti-abortionists is trying to drum up cash for legal defense of Scott Roeder, killer of Dr. George Tiller who tried to provide for women seeking safe abortion.
Ask most anti-abortion supporters where in the Bible it is stated that inducing abortion is forbidden and they dutifully allude to three or four selected biblical verses, especially the sixth Commandment forbidding killing. Other verses cited are in regard to the conceiving of one special person such as a man who is allegedly meant to be a “prophet” or who is to become king. Because God is referred to as having worked in the womb of some certain woman for God’s special purpose, none of the verses used as authority declare or even imply that God is the active participant in every conception.
A favorite bit of anti-abortion propaganda is a phrase in the first chapter of the book of Jeremiah, verse 5, that goes; “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee…” If these Bible pickers would just read the rest of the passage, the words there do not support their argument. The phrase held in such fanatic respect was allegedly spoken to Jeremiah personally, to whom God also allegedly said, “…before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet of nations.” The soliloquy continues through verse 10 and elaborates on Jeremiah’s call as “prophet.” So, unless everyone is to play the role of “prophet” to nations it cannot be said of them, “…before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.”
Another favorite bit of cherry picking the Bible is Psalms 139:13-16, supposedly composed by King David, that alludes, “…thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” And, “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.” So, once again, only one particular pregnancy was personally activated and it does not support the claim that every conception is God-ordained.
The third popular selection of holy word ferreted out by anti-abortionists comes from Luke 1:39-41 that describes the unlikelihood of a fetus (who was to become John the Baptist) carried in Elisabeth’s body leaping in his mother’s womb when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, greeted her. That passage is taken by anti-abortionists to imply that all gestating fetuses are sentient persons; but once again the account is in regard only to a “prophet” allegedly ordained by God.
Religious dogma too often celebrates ignorance, such as the untruth that self-aware physical personhood begins at conception. A fertilized egg—a zygote—within a woman’s abdomen becomes active with 23 chromosomes from her egg and 23 chromosomes from a man’s sperm. The resultant single cell that evolves then contains all the DNA to initiate a cellular glob, but that cellular mass has only the potential to evolve into a physical independent being. The unproven assertion that a cognizant human exists is not a scientific or holy fact.
During the gestation period, a simple cell amoeba becomes activated by drawing upon nutrients and oxygen supplied by the carrier, which then converts (evolves) into biological energy which causes cells to divide, multiply and grow. The developing energy-substance, although containing all 46 chromosomes for a potential human being, is not yet endowed with consciousness of self. It is still simply a growing amoeba, meaning that it is without consciousness of personhood. This is the indifferent method as described in Genesis by which all life in nature was programmed to renew itself.
Although a zygote, the fertilized egg, does contain all 46 chromosomes that can involve and evolve as a potential human, it is alive only as a mass of cells that are multiplying as an energy substance which continues to lack any consciousness of self. That energy-mass will react to stimulus around itself just as “dead” tissue can be made to jerk by electrical stimulation, but it does not and cannot exist except by drawing all necessary life stimulants from its carrier. Until the developing mass can breathe and take nourishment with a smattering of consciousness, it remains only a potential person.
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