"This is an important book for all Christians interested in

bringing their beliefs to bear upon the world around them.
Abortion is one of the most critical issues of our day, and R.
C. Sproul looks at it through the lenses of theology,
philosophy, and reason. This book is refreshingly free of
hyperbole, and yet does not compromise the truth."

-JIM DALY

President, Focus on the Family

Colorado Springs, Colorado

"R. C. Sproul's rapier logic will put to flight rationalistic
defenders of abortion. Those torn between conflicting claims
about the humanity of the unborn, the role of government,
and the rights of women will find this book particularly
instructive."

-MARVIN OLASKY

Editor-in-chief, WORLD magazine

Provost, The King's College

New York City

"When I read R. C. Sproul's book on abortion twenty years
ago, I was still a pastor. I recall how grateful I was that a
respected theologian had spoken out so clearly on the
critical issue of abortion. At the time, such voices were few
and far between, with many evangelical theologians
seemingly silent about the plight of unborn children. Sproul's
logic is sharp and penetrating, and his reliance on biblical
authority is refreshing. The appendix, in which Dr. Jerome
Lejeune offers courtroom testimony, is a great bonus. I'm
happy to recommend the re-release of Dr. Sproul's book on
this vital subject, and I pray God will use it to enlighten many
new readers."

-RANDY ALCORN

Founder and director, Eternal Perspective Ministries

Sandy, Oregon
 Author of ProLifeAnswers to ProChoiceArguments and Why
Prolife?

"R. C. Sproul's book on abortion is a classic text in the

evangelical witness against the culture of death. I pray this
Twentieth Anniversary Edition will awaken a new generation
of Christians to the joyful duty of protecting the `least of
these,'our Lord Jesus' unborn brothers and sisters."

-RUSSELL D. MOORE

Dean, School of Theology

 The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Kentucky

"R. C. Sproul covers the issues candidly and objectively-

without the emotion and demagoguery that so often pervade
the abortion debate. You are the jury; you decide the
verdict."

-JOHN MACARTHUR
 Pastor-teacher, Grace Community Church

Sun Valley, California

"Staying silent on the issue of abortion is no longer an

option. It is time for those who are respected and capable to
speak out and say it straight. I know of no one who qualifies
better than R. C. Sproul."

-CHUCK SWINDOLL

Senior pastor, Stonebriar Community Church

Frisco, Texas
"Classic Sproul! Logical, clear, fair, attempting to understand
the pro-choice views while all the time making a solid,
biblical prolife apologetic that seeks both to convince the
opponents but also to bring about in practical ways the end
of this North American holocaust. Add to that the foreword of
George Grant and you have a winner."

-PETER JONES

Executive director, truthXchange

Escondido, California
"I am delighted to see this Twentieth Anniversary Edition of
Abortion: A Rational Look at an Emotional Issue. It was and
continues to be an important contribution to the pro-life
movement and to the defense of the sanctity of human life."

-JOHN JEFFERSON DAVIS

Professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

South Hamilton, Massachusetts

 
R,C, SPROUT
 to Andrea Krazeise for her heroism in ministry to pregnant
women in crisis

 
Foreword by Dr. George Grant ................................ xi

Preface ................................................. xxi

PART I: ABORTION: THE ETHICAL DILEMMA OF OUR TIME

1 A Nation Divided ........................................ 3

2 The Sanctity of Life ......................................17

3 The Sanctity of Life and Natural Law ....................... 33

4 When Does Life Begin? ................................. 45

5 What If You Are Not Sure about Abortion? ................... 63

6 The Role of Government in Abortion ....................... 75

 PART II: AN ANALYSIS OF PRO-ABORTION AND PRO-CHOICE
ARGUMENTS

7 A Woman's Right to Her Body ............................ 93

8 Three Frequent Assertions .............................. 103

9 The Pro-Choice Position ................................. 111

10 The Problem
of Unwanted
Pregnancies
.....................121
 PART III: A COMPASSIONATE RESPONSE AND STRATEGY

11 Is Abortion the Unpardonable Sin? ....................... 135

12 A Pro-Life Strategy .................................... 143

Appendix A: Testimony on the Beginning of Human Life

.......... 155
Appendix B: Pro-Life Resources .............................217

Notes .................................................. 221

Bibliography ............................................ 225

Index .................................................. 227

 
In the two decades since this landmark book was first
published, four different presidents have occupied the White
House, seven justices have come and gone on the Supreme
Court, and eleven sessions of Congress have held sway in
the Capitol.

These federal
magistrates have faced economic booms and busts. They
have weathered terror attacks and foreign wars. They have
witnessed the end of the Cold War and the rise of the al
Qaeda menace. They have wrangled over corporate bailouts
and health-care reforms. They have endured Tea Party
protests, campaign scandals, personal embarrassments, and
policy failures. They have been plagued on every side by
mounting demands, frustrated expectations, declining
resources, and diminished prestige.

Through it all, the

divisiveness of the abortion issue has remained constant.
The many and varied political turns of events during the past
twenty years have done nothing to ameliorate it-much less,
to resolve it. If anything, the divide over abortion has
become more pronounced, more acrimonious, and more
entrenched. While political gridlock on nearly any and every
other issue ultimately has been overcome, no
rapprochement on the issue of abortion is anywhere in sight.
 Of course, matters
have not exactly been helped by the fact that the politically
protected international abortion business has grown into a
multibillion-dollar industrial complex. Utilizing its
considerable wealth, manpower, and influence, the abortion
industry has proven itself adept at muscling its way into
virtually every facet of modern life.' It now plays a strategic
role in the health and social-services community.' It exerts a
major influence on education, providing the majority of sex-
education curricula and programs in both public and private
schools.' It carries considerable political clout through
lobbying, campaigning, advocacy, and litigation.' It is
involved in publishing, broadcast media production, judicial
activism, public relations, foreign aid, psychological research
counseling, environmental policy-making, sociological
planning, demographic investigation, pharmacological
development, contraceptive distribution and sales, mass
advertising, and public legal service provision.'

Planned
Parenthood, the oldest, largest, and best-organized provider
of abortion and birth-control services in the world, has
become a tenured player in all the great social and political
issues of our day.' From its ignoble beginnings around the
turn of the twentieth century, when the shoestring operation
consisted of an illegal back-alley clinic in a shabby Brooklyn
neighborhood, staffed by a shadowy clutch of firebrand
activists and anarchists,7 it has expanded dramatically into a
conglomerate with programs and activities in 134 nations
and on every continent.8
 In the United
States alone, Planned Parenthood has mobilized more than
twenty thousand personnel and volunteers along the front
lines of the confrontational and vitriolic battle over abortion.
Today those minions man the organization's more than 150
affiliates and its nearly one thousand clinics in virtually every
major metropolitan area, coast to coast.9 It boasts a national
headquarters in New York, a legislative center in Washington,
regional command posts in Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, and San
Francisco, affiliate offices in 49 states and the District of
Columbia, and international centers in London, Nairobi,
Bangkok, and New Delhi. With an estimated combined
annual budget-including all its regional, national, and
international service affiliates-of more than a billion dollars,
this leading light of the abortion industry may well be the
largest and most profitable nonprofit organization in history."

As if that were not

enough, the current Democratic administration in
Washington-aided and abetted by the Democratcontrolled
Senate and House of Representatives-is the most ardently
proabortion in American history." With a bevy ofexecu- tive
orders, appointments, and administrative policy changesto
say nothing of its 2,407-page monolithic, partisan
"healthcare-reform" legislation, which removed the
longstanding ban on federal funding of abortions in favor of a
much more easily overturned executive order-the abortion
industry has logged more gains during this administration's
short tenure than in the rest of its history combined.12
 Yet the great divide
persists. Despite its obvious cultural clout, its cavernously
deep corporate pockets, and its carefully crafted public-
relations efforts, the abortion industry has yet to prevail in
the battle for the hearts and minds of most Americans.
Public-opinion polls conducted during the first year of the
Obama administration found that 51 percent of Americans
now call themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion, while
only 42 percent call themselves "Pro-choice."" In addition,
the number of Americans who favor making it more difficult
to obtain an abortion is up six percentage points in just five
years. In 2005, 59 percent of respondents agreed it would be
good to reduce abortions. Today, 65 percent take this view.
One poll also found that fewer Americans, and fewer pro-life
activists, are willing to compromise on abortion by finding
some "middle ground." Indeed, support for finding a middle
ground on the abortion issue is down twelve percentage
points among conservatives and six points among all
Americans.14 Yet another poll found that 58 percent of
Americans say abortion is morally wrong most of the time.
Just 25 percent disagree, and the rest have no opinion. The
poll found women are more strongly pro-life than men, with
64 percent of women asserting that most abortions are
morally wrong, a view shared by 51 percent of men.
Meanwhile, still another survey found a majority of
Americans, 52 percent, think it is too easy to get an abortion
in America. That's up seven percentage points from two
years ago, when 45 percent thought it was too easy.15

So why does it
seem that the abortion Goliath's grassroots support is
slipping at the very moment when its power and resources
have reached their zenith? At least part of the reason may be
the very nature of the abortion business itself-along with the
inevitable fallout that accompanies it. Consider:

• Although
heralded by the abortion lobby as both "safe and legal," it is
now apparent that abortion is merely "legal." The
complications of this, the most commonly performed medical
procedure in America today, are legion. They include
sterilityoccurring in as many as 25 percent of all women
receiving mid-trimester abortions; hemorrhaging-nearly 10
percent of all cases require transfusions; viral hepatitis-
occurring in 10 percent of all those transfused; embolism-
occurring in as many as 4 percent of all cases; cervical
laceration; pelvic inflammatory disease; genital tract
infection; cardiorespiratory arrest; acute kidney failure; and
amniotic fluid [Link]

• As a result of
these sundry complications, women in America have seen a
massive increase in the cost of medical care. While the
average cost of normal health maintenance for men has
increased nearly 12 percent over the past fifteen years due
to inflation, the average cost for women has skyrocketed a
full 27 percent.'7
 • A spate of
medical malpractice lawsuits from botched abortions has
intensified the industry's already looming insurability crisis.'8

• At the same time,

the cultural and political stigmatization of abortion providers
has dramatically reduced the number of qualified physicians
willing to serve them. As a result, many clinics have been
forced to rely on less adequately trained personnel-nurse
practitioners and doctors who more often than not have
failed in private or institutional practices.19

• Revelations
about deliberately suppressed research data on various
procedural risks-particularly concerning the established links
between abortion and breast cancer-have raised new
questions about the industry's medical objectivity and
professional integrity.20

• New clinical
evidence exposing the grave hazards of several of the other
forms of treatment championed by the industryfrom the
deleterious effects of the RU-486 abortion drug and the
Norplant contraceptive surgery to the inherent risks and
complications in the use of intrauterine devices-have raised
the specter of "wholesale institutional quackery. 1121

• The shadow over

the industry's iatrogenic carelessness has been further
darkened by its enthusiastic defense of the horrifying
second-trimester "dilation and extraction" surgical
procedurecommonly known as D&X or "partial-birth"
abortion.22

• In addition, the
industry has staked its tenuous reputation on the therapeutic
usefulness of two very dangerous new chemical treatments-
the Depo-Provera long-term contraceptive injection and the
Methotrexate-Misoprostol abortifacient. Both drugs present
grave hazards to women's health, according to a battery of
recent clinical tests.23
 • Horrifying new
evidence of barbaric human-rights violations-including forced
abortions, coercive sterilizations, and torturous
disfigurement-associated with the Planned Parenthood-
designed population program in Communist China has cast
an ominous shadow over the industry's innumerable other
tax-funded international activities.'

• Not surprisingly,
the bridling of information about viable alternatives to the
abortion industry's clinical, educational, and surgical services
has provoked the wrath of a variety of healthcare consumer
advocates .21

• Parents,
outraged at the promiscuity-promoting content of the
abortion industry's affiliated sex-education materials, AIDS-
awareness programs, and community-advocacy projects,
have begun to organize grassroots efforts to bar
organizations such as Planned Parenthood from schools,
charitable networks, and civic coalitions in communities all
across the United States .21
 • Several punitive
lawsuits initiated by the abortion industry-filed in an effort to
close down pro-life adoption agencies and abortion-
alternative crisis pregnancy centers-have begun to reinforce
a perception that the organization is more concerned with
the ideological enforcement of its agenda than with the
health and welfare of its clients.27

• A series of
negative public-relations campaigns launched by the well-
heeled abortion lobby-against cultural conservatives in
general and Christian conservatives in particular-has
highlighted the industry's immoderate aims and set the
standard for the increasingly shrill rhetoric and hysterical
extremism of the pro-abortion movement.28

• Conflict-of-
interest accusations have begun to circulate in Washington
concerning the cozy relationships between certain past and
present federal officials and the industry's voluble lobbyists
on Capitol Hill.29
 • A backlash
against the massively unpopular "health-carereform"
legislation passed in early 2010 not only has brought
renewed support for pro-life organizations, crisis pregnancy
centers, and principled politicians, it has brought renewed
scrutiny to the grisly abortion trade. New calls to enforce
existing laws and enact stricter new ones bode ill for the
industry's plans for growth and expansion.3o

In short, one
scandal after another has hit the abortion industry, its
medical personnel, its educators, its researchers, its
lobbyists, and its administrators. As a result, its "Teflon"
reputation is starting to wear a little thin and its "grand
illusion" has begun to lose its luster.31

As a result, Dr.
Sproul's incisive analysis in this book is as relevant and
necessary today as it was in the last decade of the twentieth
century. Indeed, he points the way to the only possible
resolution of this deeply emotional issue.
 Once before in
American history, a national pro-life consensus was forged,
laws were changed, and life was protected. At the outset of
the nineteenth century, abortion was actually legal-if only
marginally-in every state in the Union. By the end of the
century, the procedure had been universally criminalized.

Most of the legal

changes came during a relatively short twenty-year period,
from 1860 to 1880.32In less than two decades, Christians
were able to recruit hostile journalists, ambivalent
physicians, reticent politicians, and even radical feminists to
the cause of mothers with crisis pregnancies and their
unborn children. They succeeded overwhelmingly despite
the vast wealth, power, and political clout of the burgeoning
abortion industry. At a time when the nation was riven with
strife over the recalcitrance of chattel slavery, the
proliferation of abortion, and the challenging of the most
basic principles of American liberty, they demonstrated in
word and deed that every human being is made in the image
of God and is thus sacred.

The popular press

made information about abortion available to the average
man on the street. The medical associations made
physicians aware of the physical risks and the moral
compromises inherently involved in the procedure. Lawyers,
politicians, and judges enacted the legal constraints
necessary to criminalize abortion profiteers. But it was the
church that catalyzed and spearheaded the wildly successful
pro-life efforts of the nineteenth century.33

It is probably not
surprising that pro-life stalwarts of nineteenth-century
America did not simply say "no" to abortion; they said "yes"
to women in crisis. They said "yes" to the poor and
desperate. They said "yes" to the confused and afflicted. In
short, they fulfilled their servanthood mandate
simultaneously with their prophetic mandate.

Lives were saved,

families restored, and the men and women who dedicated
themselves to the cause of the sanctity of human life laid a
remarkable foundation of liberty for future generations.
America at last seemed poised to fulfill her promise-as the
land of the free and the home of the brave.
 May it be so yet
again. And may God be pleased to use this book as a means
to bring to pass this, the church's great work of standing for
truth, justice, and mercy in the midst of a poor, fallen world.

-George Grant

Franklin, Tennessee

January 2010

 
Abortion is an ethical issue, perhaps the central ethical issue
of the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries. As a
question of ethics, abortion is not morally neutral; it does not
fall within the gray zone of things that are indifferent. There
is widespread disagreement about whether abortion on
demand is right or wrong, but it cannot be both.

In this book, I seek

to examine the ethical implications of abortion. I look at the
issue from the perspectives of biblical law, natural law, and
positive judicial law.

Although in the
pages that follow I will examine arguments from both sides
of the debate, I am convinced that abortion on demand is
evil. I will try to show that abortion is against the law of God,
against the laws of nature, and against reason.

This is intended to
be a brief case against abortion. The reader who wrestles
with this issue will receive an overview so that he or she may
respond to the issue objectively.

To assist the
comprehension and use of the book's information,
summaries and discussion questions appear at the end of
each chapter. Also, the back matter includes a list of
agencies offering more information on pro-life groups and
adoption, as well as a bibliography and index.

At times, I have
used generic terms for human beings, such as humanity or
mankind, for stylistic brevity and to avoid the repetition of
"he" and "she." In doing this, it is not my desire to offend any
who may be sensitive to the issue of gender in speech. This
is especially critical when discussing issues that have been
linked so strongly to the broader ethical concerns of the
feminist movement. I think it is imperative to distinguish the
abortion issue from the feminist issue. However, because
concern for women is closely related to the abortion debate,
feminism and abortion cannot be totally separated. For
clarity's sake, though, they must be distinguished.
 My thanks for help
in this book go to Maureen Buchman, Gwen Weber, my wife,
Vesta, and my son, R.C. I am also grateful to George Grant
for his exceptionally helpful foreword for this edition and for
helping update the book in light of changes over the past
twenty years.

 
 
 Never, never will we desist till we ... extinguish every trace
of this bloody traffic [slavery], of which our posterity, looking
back to the history of those enlightened times, will scarce
believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace
and dishonor to this country.

-William Wilberforce, 1791 speech, House of Commons

A single issue rarely divides the American people. The few

that have include slavery, the civil-rights movement, and the
war in Vietnam. Yet another such issue is roiling in the
present, an issue of such magnitude that our national
solidarity is threatened. To many citizens, it is a matter of life
and death, and may be the most serious ethical dilemma
ever faced by the United States. The issue is abortion.
 Why should
abortion-a matter that many believe should concern only a
woman and her physician-have the potential to rip apart the
social fabric of one of history's most successful nations?

Abortion provokes
volatile feelings in combatants on both sides of the debate,
which is carried on with heated emotion and militancy.
Activists for and against abortion have indulged in strident
and inflammatory rhetoric, threatening protests, and even,
on occasion, violence, from vandalism to arson and murder.
Politicians feel the heat. The abortion issue has become so
critical that no candidate for public office can remain silent
on his or her views. The politician who tentatively puts his
finger to the wind, hoping to gauge the direction of public
opinion on abortion, is frustrated by the ever-changing
currents. Both sides keep an anxious eye on the health of the
current justices of the United States Supreme Court, as the
balance of power there is fragile. The addition of one anti-
abortion justice to the nation's highest court could
precipitate a reversal of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision,
the 1973 case that made abortion on demand a reality in the
United States.

The abortion issue

is not only volatile but complex, for it is directly connected to
other issues and related popular movements. One example
is the feminist movement. Women, who have struggled for
decades to secure equal rights under the law and equitable
treatment in the business world, fear that a reversal of the
abortion laws would signal a serious loss of the gains they
have achieved.

Abortion also has

been linked to the sexual revolution that swept the country
during the 1960s. People who believe that mutually
consenting adults have the right to freedom of sexual
expression are threatened by the possibility of laws that
would invade the "privacy of the bedroom."

The issue of the

separation of church and state also looms in the abortion
conflict. People on both sides of the debate fear a loss of
constitutional rights as a consequence of abortion law. The
same constitutional amendment that prohibits the
establishment of religion by the state also guarantees the
free exercise of religion. There is no question that many, if
not the majority, of those who oppose abortion are driven by
religious convictions. Religious institutions-including the
Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant churches-have
taken and continue to take strong stands in opposition to
abortion. Those people without church affiliation and those
who are affiliated with churches that do not record an anti-
abortion stance fear an intrusion into the social and political
milieu by the church. They fear a tyranny of religion.

Still others see

connections between abortion and a bevy of other issues:
education, health-care reform, climate change, social
welfare, economic development, government regulation, and
foreign aid. Some would even link the abortion issue to the
fundamental constitutional right to life, which transcends
religious, political, or social considerations. Do the unborn
have basic rights that should be protected by constitutional
law?

A further issue
complicates the matter-the right to freedom of choice, which
many Americans consider the most fundamental democratic
right of all. Perhaps the most frequently stated sentiment of
those caught in the middle of the abortion debate is this: "I
would not choose to have an abortion myself, but I would not
force my view on someone else." The right to one's opinion is
a sacred belief in United States tradition.
 Thus, abortion is
not a single issue with one solitary facet. It is a multifaceted,
complex matter that involves a conflict of perceived rights.
No matter how the issue of abortion is resolved, someone's
rights-or at least perceived rights-will be in jeopardy. Can
such a web of interwoven and conflicting issues be
untangled?

The core issue

At the heart of the abortion issue rests one overarching
question: Is abortion a form of murder? In other words, does
abortion involve the willful destruction of a living human
person?

Before discussing
this question, certain points must be stated firmly and
clearly. First, the vast majority of those advocating the pro-
abortion and pro-choice positions are not arguing that
women's rights or individual freedom of choice carry with
them the right to murder. I am convinced that if the most
ardent feminists thought that abortion was in fact a type of
murder, they would be as ardently opposed to abortion as
they are in favor of equal rights for women.

Though there are

many who believe an abortion is justified on the grounds that
the developing baby is "unwanted," very few of these people
would be in favor of destroying the child after it is born.
There are far fewer advocates of infanticide than there are of
abortion. The reason for this is clear. In the minds of
proabortion activists, an unborn baby is not a living human
person. Once birth occurs, however, a different set of rules
applies. Even in the case of the late-term "partial-birth"
abortion procedure, or D&X, all but the most hardened pro-
abortion activists argue that the child remains nonviable and
nonhuman-and therefore the procedure, however grisly, does
not rise to the level of murder.

I labor these points

to underscore the reality that proabortion and pro-choice
activists do not ground their position on some kind of claim
for an inalienable right to murder. I am convinced that if
somehow it could be proven conclusively that the
destruction of unborn babies is in fact the willful destruction
of living human beings, the debate on abortion would be all
but over, and the law of the land would as clearly prohibit
abortion as it does all forms of homicide. The abortion
debate is not over whether or not murder should be
legalized; it is a debate over whether or not abortion is a
kind of murder.

Of course, on the
other side of the debate stand the pro-life activists. Those
who are pro-life are quite logically also antiabortion. This
group is convinced that abortion is actually a form of murder.
Most of them recognize that the intent of abortionists is
probably not murder, but they adamantly claim that the act
of abortion nevertheless takes the life of a human being.
 There is something
wrong, however, with even using the word murder in this
discussion. The word itself is highly charged. At times it is
used as a virtual synonym for homicide. The law, however,
distinguishes between types of homicide. There is a
difference between voluntary and involuntary homicide. A
further category is manslaughter, both voluntary and
involuntary. A clear delineation in the levels of the severity of
these crimes exists under the law. Punitive measures for
"murder one" (or first-degree murder) are greater than for
"murder two" (or second-degree murder) and considerably
more severe than for cases of involuntary manslaughter. All
three of these terms-murder, homicide, and manslaughter-
are used for the killing of human beings. All are deemed to
be serious offenses and crimes against humanity, but their
gradations indicate that they are not considered to be crimes
of equal severity. We rarely use the word murderer for
someone who has been convicted of involuntary
manslaughter.

The emotional
connotation accompanying the word murder associates the
act of killing with what the law refers to as murder one.
Murder one incorporates within its definition the idea of
premeditation. It involves malice aforethought. Thus, not
only the act of killing a human person is in view, but the
motive and intent are also important considerations.
 Given this
understanding of our use of the term murder, we must be
careful to insist that pro-abortion and pro-choice activists are
not necessarily advocating murder. They are not endorsing
the premeditated, willful destruction of human beings with
malice aforethought. Almost universally, the proponents of
abortion act on the conviction that what is being aborted is
less than a human being.

Is a fetus a human being?

To state that abortion is not murder in the first degree
because the premeditated intent is absent is not to say that
it is legitimate. We already have seen that lesser forms of
the killing of human beings are grave and serious evils. Why
is abortion not included in the same category?

What is a fetus?
The question is objective, not subjective. To determine the
status of a fetus is not a matter of personal, arbitrary
caprice. The fetus is either alive or not alive. The fetus is
either human or not human. The fetus is either a person or
not a person. What I think the fetus is does not determine
which of these it actually is. If a fetus is a living person but I
do not believe or think that it is a living person, my thoughts
have no bearing on what the fetus actually is. By merely
thinking or believing, I cannot change what is a person into a
nonperson, what is living into unliving, or what is human into
nonhuman. By the same token, if the fetus is not a living
person, then whatever I believe or think cannot change it
into a living person.

Before we can
determine whether a fetus is a living human person, we must
answer this question: When does life begin? At what point in
the continuum of human development do we have a living
human person? Does life begin at conception? Does it begin
at birth? Or does it begin at some point between these poles
of progress, such as at quickening or viability? The answer a
person chooses to this question often determines his or her
position on the abortion issue.

Because the
question of the point of origin of human life is so crucial to
the abortion debate, I will devote chapter 4 to the subject.
However, some foundational questions must be faced at this
point.

It is obvious from
the abortion controversy that there is widespread
disagreement about when life begins. Pro-abortion activists
come to radically different conclusions than those of pro-life
activists. The two sides tend to use different methods for
finding answers on the question of the origin of life.

Many in the anti-

abortion camp base their convictions on inferences drawn
from the Bible or from decrees pronounced by their
churches. This raises an obvious problem. If one group
determines its position exclusively from the Bible or church
teaching, what is the effect for people who do not embrace
the authority of the Bible or of the church? At this point, the
issue of religious tyranny, or the illegitimate intrusion of the
church into the realm of the state, rises immediately. In other
words, who has the right to say what's right and on what
grounds?

The national crisis in ethics

Beneath the division in society over abortion is a more
foundational problem: How does one determine what is
right? The irony of the United States debate on abortion is
that it is a battle over "rights" in a nation that is sharply
divided over how to determine what is right about anything.
Allan Bloom, in his book The Closing oftheAmerican Mind,
chronicled the epidemic rise of moral relativism that reduces
ethics to personal preferences rather than to objective norms
for what is right and wrong.

A slogan emerged
in the 1960s that crystallized the perspective of moral
relativism: "Everyone has the right to do his own thing." This
slogan is as crass as it is silly. If it were followed by everyone
resolutely, society itself would be an impossibility. No one
would have any true rights protected, because at any given
moment my rights could trample your rights.

In the late 1960s, I

experienced firsthand the ethical insanity of everyone doing
his or her own thing. I was working as a pastor in a church. A
distressed mother came to me, weeping as Monica wept for
her wayward son, who became the great theologian
Augustine. The woman related to me that her college-age
son had renounced the Christian faith and had moved into a
college "pad" adorned with psychedelic posters and black
lights. The son wanted to do his "thing," namely, drugs and
the pleasure of uninhibited sexual liaisons. The mother
pleaded with me to talk to her son about the error of his
ways.

I told the woman

that I would talk to her son if he was willing to speak with
me, but I gave her little encouragement. How open would he
be to the counsel of a clergyman forced on him by a parent?
To my surprise, the boy came to see me. He was overtly
hostile. I asked him why he was so angry. He replied,
"Because my mother keeps trying to cram religion down my
throat."I nodded in sympathy for his obvious frustration with
an overbearing mother.

"What's your
alternative ethical system to Christianity?" I asked.

"I believe that

everyone has the right to do his own thing," he replied.
 "Then what's
wrong with your mother's cramming religion down your
throat?" I asked.

He did not
immediately grasp the point of my question. Instead he
launched into a lengthy diatribe against the myriad ways his
mother was violating his right to do his own thing. Finally, I
said: "But what if your mother's thing is to cram religion
down people's throats? Just because it's your throat that
religion is being crammed down shouldn't bother you. You
should rejoice that your mother is enjoying her freedom to
do her own thing."

I then explained to
him that if he had come to me with a protest based on
biblical ethics, I could have supported his point of view, at
least in part. Biblical law has something to say against
insensitive parents provoking their children.
 The young man
had not thought through the implications of his ethic. He had
no recourse when his thing came into conflict with someone
else's thing. This is why laws are established to govern
society. We seek laws that are inherently just, laws that are
based on objective norms. Otherwise, we become victims of
the unprincipled preferences of others.

One of the chief

functions of law is to protect the rights of individuals. To be
sure, every law restricts someone's freedom in order to
protect someone else's rights. Laws against theft restrict the
freedom of thieves while protecting the private-property
rights of their intended victims. Laws against murder restrict
the liberty of murderers to do their own thing.

The relevance of
the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights rests on
the political theory that the nation is a republic and not a
pure democracy. The difference between the two is crucial. It
frequently has been summed up as the difference between
rule by law and rule by men. In a pure democracy, the
majority rules with complete authority. In a republic, the
power and the freedom of the majority are restricted by law.
The edicts of the Constitution are designed to protect the
rights of every person from the power of the majority. For
example, if the majority is of one race and decides to enact
legislation that discriminates against a minority race, the
minority can have the legislation overturned in court. In a
republic, no one has the right to do his or her own thing if it
violates the law.

For a republic to
work, its foundational laws must be just. We can have
tyranny by law as well as tyranny by men. That is why the
founding fathers of the United States were acutely
concerned about establishing just laws. But how do we know
which laws are just and which laws are unjust-for example, in
the case of abortion?

The issue of just

and unjust laws is tied to ethics. Just laws reflect what is
right. The very question of rights is rooted in the realm of
ethics. We must be careful to distinguish between what we
call moral rights and legal rights. In human societies, unjust
laws may be passed. People may be given the legal right to
do what is morally wrong or may be legally prohibited from
doing what is either morally permissible or morally required.
Thus, moral rights may be made illegal and immoral
activities may become legal.
Who decides what is right?

To determine what is right about abortion, or about anything

else, we must look beyond the laws of governments. Though
legal opinions maybe helpful and insightful, they do not
constitute the highest court of appeals for determining what
is ethically right.

The framers of the

Declaration of Independence and the Constitution clearly
appealed to norms beyond human legislation or judicial
opinions in defining our most basic rights. Natural law was a
chief consideration and served as a convenient middle
ground to satisfy religious as well as nonreligious people. The
religious person assumed that what God revealed in nature
was compatible with and consistent with what He revealed in
the Bible. The nonreligious person was content to live by
natural law as long as the canon law of the church was not
made binding by the state.
 Thus, the founders
came to agreement on the common ground by which church
and state could function together smoothly. That agreement,
however, has radically disintegrated. Now, not only is biblical
law under attack, but natural law has all but been eliminated
as a foundation for societal law. The abortion issue is one
manifestation of this ethical crisis.

To reach a national
consensus on abortion will be a difficult if not impossible
task. A large segment of the population will not look to the
Bible for ethical norms, and many people believe that natural
law is too vague to guide us on an ethical basis. A growing
cynicism toward government indicates a reluctance to look
there for ethical guidance. We are left with a kind of ethical
free-for-all where deciding what is right is based on power
alone, either by physical or electoral might.

Though the crisis of

ethical relativism is real, its encroachment into society has
not yet destroyed all hope of establishing justice on the
objective norm of what is ethically right. We still have a
Constitution in place. Though its credibility as an objective
norm is being eroded by relativism, the Constitution still
functions as an objective basis for law.
 Whatever happens
in the United States, however, will not change the nature of
truth. Although the perception of reality may change from
generation to generation, that does not change reality itself.
Former generations perceived and believed that the earth
was the center of the solar system; however, that did not
have the slightest influence on either the sun or the earth.
Neither did Copernicus alter the actual situation of the sun
and the earth by the power of his theories.

Whatever happens
to the Constitution or to American ethics will not determine
when human life begins. That is an objective question, for
better or for worse. But before we seek answers on the origin
of life itself, an even broader issue-the sanctity of life-must
be considered.
 Summary

• The abortion issue is divisive and intertwined with other

important cultural phenomena,
including the women's movement and
the sexual revolution.

• This is the core question of the abortion issue: Is abortion a

form of murder?

• Many pro-abortion and pro-choice activists do not believe

abortion is murder because they do
not consider an unborn baby to be a
living human person.
• Is a fetus a living person? When does life begin? These
questions are foundational to any
opinion about abortion.

• It is difficult for contemporary Americans to agree on what

is right because the nation's laws
increasingly have a relativistic base.

Discussion Questions
1. Why is abortion such a divisive issue?

2. How do people, whether anti-abortion, pro-choice, or pro-

abortion, reach their positions? What
kinds of criteria do they use?

3. What is attractive about "sitting on the fence" or taking a

pro-choice position?

4. Would pure democracy be bad if we had a Christian

majority? Why or why not?

5. What is the difference between a moral right and a legal

right?
6. What role should the church take in relation to public
policy?

 
 Once a man ceases to recognize the infinite value ofthe
human soul... then all he can recognize is that man is
something to be used. But then he will also have to go
further and recognize that some men can no longer be
utilized and he arrives at the concept that there are some
lives that have no value at all.

-Helmut Thielicke

I do not feel that I am a product of chance, a speck of dust in

the universe, but someone who was expected, prefigured. In
 short, a being whom only a creator could put here; and this
idea o fa creating hand refers to God.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Any ethical matter that has life-and-death implications forces

us to deal with the larger issue of the sanctity or sacredness
of life. War, capital punishment, euthanasia, homicide,
abortion, and health care-all are sanctity-of-life issues.

Since a central
issue in the abortion debate is the question of when life
begins, is the discussion clouded by introducing the matter
of the overall sanctity of life? If, as already argued,
proabortion and pro-choice activists do not consider abortion
the destruction of human life, it may seem that all parties in
the dispute have an equal concern for the sanctity of life. For
the most part, the pro-abortion and pro-choice activists are
not denying that life is sacred; they are only saying that a
developing fetus is not a human life.

My intent in
introducing the topic of the sanctity of life is not to muddle
the issue of when life begins. The sanctity of life touches the
abortion question when a person has real doubts about
whether a fetus is a living human. Here's my reasoning: If we
are in doubt at any point about whether or not we are
dealing with human life in relation to abortion, the
overarching principle of the sanctity of life stimulates us to
think carefully and avoid rash judgments. The sanctity-of-life
principle underscores the gravity of the question of when
human life begins.

Though I am
assuming that the majority of those who are pro-abortion or
pro-choice declare a high view of the sanctity of life, it is
wise to assume that the overall respect for the sanctity of life
eroded significantly in the twentieth century.
 Perhaps the most
pressing issue in philosophy over the past century has been
the question of anthropology, the nature of man. Pessimistic
existential philosophy has raised serious questions about the
value and worth of humanity. Jean-Paul Sartre once described
man as a "useless passion."B. F. Skinner wondered aloud
about the illusory character of human freedom. Friedrich
Nietzsche contemplated the dreadful depths of nihilism.
Science has joined with philosophy and reached equally
gloomy conclusions. Nuclear physicist Winston C. Duke
stated: "A philosophy of reason will define a human being as
life which demonstrates self-awareness, volition and
rationality. Thus it should be recognized that not all men are
human.... It would seem ... to be more inhumane to kill an
adult chimpanzee than a newborn baby, since the
chimpanzee has greater mental awareness."34

Almost monthly we
are alerted to new scientific discoveries that at once increase
our understanding of the size and complexity of our universe
and appear to diminish the role of man in the vast sum of
things. More and more we appear to occupy a speck of an
island in a vast cosmic sea.

People of ancient
times were often awestruck by gazing toward the night sky.
The vastness of what we see with our naked eye seems to
dwarf our own locale by comparison. King David spoke of this
thousands of years ago:
 If David was
overwhelmed by the heavens, how much more should we be
with our modern understanding of the cosmos? Philosopher
Edward Carnell summed it up this way: "Modern man
appears to be but a grown-up germ, sitting on a gear of a
vast cosmic machine which is some day destined to cease
functioning because of lack of power."35

This is not an
optimistic view of the sanctity of human life. Modern man
contemplates the horror that he may live between two poles:
meaninglessness and insignificance. If our origin is
accidental and insignificant, and if our destiny is annihilation,
is it not absurd to believe that we have some significance in
between?

The nagging threat

of insignificance propels some people to religion, others to
the occult, still others to forms of escapism, and many to
suicide. Yet most of us are not ready to give up on the value
of human life. All of our toil, struggles, longings for
significance, thoughts, and dreams force us to seek evidence
for our hope of human worth.
 For years, I was
active in labor-management relationships. I saw over and
over again that it is not economic issues that divide these
camps. The central issue is human dignity. Many times I
asked various groups: "How many of you want to be treated
with dignity? How many of you want to be valued as a
person?" I discovered that, though the makeup of such
groups was diverse, everyone wanted to be treated with
dignity. Even ifwe have difficulty precisely defining the
concept of dignity, we all understand what it means to lose
it.

What, then, do we
mean when we say that life is sacred? Does embracing the
sanctity of anything mean that we must also embrace
religion? The answer is both yes and no. To embrace
anything as sacred requires that we first create a category
for the sacred. Ultimately that requires some kind of religious
framework. However, a secular society may use words with
religious moorings that have been abandoned. Today when
people speak of the sanctity of life, most mean simply that
life has a special value or worth.
The Bible and the sanctity of life

In biblical terms, the sanctity of human life is rooted and

grounded in creation. Mankind is not viewed as a cosmic
accident but as the product of a carefully executed creation
by an eternal God. Human dignity is derived from God. Man
as a finite, dependent, contingent creature is assigned a high
value by his Creator.

The creation
account in Genesis provides the framework for human
dignity: "Then God said, `Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish
of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the
livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping
thing that creeps on the earth.' So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God he created him; male and
female he created them" (Gen. 1:26-27).
 Creation in the
image of God is what sets humans apart from all other
creatures. The stamp of the image and likeness of God
connects God and mankind uniquely. Though there is no
biblical warrant for seeing man as godlike, there is a high
dignity associated with this unique relationship to the
Creator.

It has often been

suggested that whatever dignity was given mankind through
creation was erased or canceled through the fall. Since evil
mars the countenance of human beings, is the original image
still intact?

Because of the fall,

something profound has stained the greatness of humanity.
Therefore, we now must distinguish between the image of
God in its wide and narrow senses.

The image of God

in the narrow sense concerns mankind's ethical capacity and
behavior. In creation, man was given the ability and the
responsibility to mirror and reflect the holy character of God.
Since the fall, the mirror has been splotched by the grime of
sin. We have lost our capacity for moral perfection, but we
have not lost our humanity with this ethical loss.

Man may no longer

be pure, but he is still human. Insofar as we are still human,
we retain the image of God in the wider sense. We are still
valuable creatures. We may no longer be worthy, but we still
have worth. This is the resounding biblical message of
redemption. The creatures God created are the same
creatures He is moved to redeem.

Because Christians
speak so tirelessly about human sin, do they have a low view
of humanity? Indeed, they have a low view of human virtue,
but not a corresponding low view of human worth or
importance. It is precisely because the Bible has such a high
view of human dignity that Christians take human sin so
seriously. If one rat steals another rat's food, we don't get
morally outraged. But if one human steals another human's
food, we rightly become concerned.
 The biblical view
indicates that human theft is more serious than rat theft
because humans are a higher order of being. As the psalmist
indicated, we are created "a little lower than the heavenly
beings" (Ps. 8:5). This ranking of value is deeply rooted
within our own humanity. For instance, when the president of
the United States is killed, we do not refer to the deed
merely as homicide or murder. We have a special word for it:
assassination.

During the news

reports that followed the announcement of the assassination
of President Kennedy, the reporters seemed to have difficulty
finding words powerful enough to express their outrage.
They called the assassination "diabolical," "fiendish,"
"inhuman," and other such terms. I wondered at the time
what made it difficult to describe Kennedy's murder simply
as one human being killing another human being. Not only a
devil or a fiend can commit murder. A person is not instantly
shorn of humanity when he kills another human. Lee Harvey
Oswald was a human being when he pulled the trigger in
Dallas.

Does this mean,

then, that in the hierarchy of value President Kennedy had
more human dignity than Officer Tippet, who was killed the
same day in the same city by the same man? By no means!
The murder of Officer Tippet was just as much an assault on
his dignity as the murder of Kennedy was on his. Each was a
human person. Each had personal worth and dignity.
Kennedy's person was no more laden with dignity than
Tippet's. What made the outrage over Kennedy's death
greater than that over Tippet's death was the office Kennedy
held. He was the president of the United States. He was the
supreme publica persona of our land.

It is by similar
reason that an offense against a human is more outrageous
than an offense against a rat. Both the rat and the human
are creatures created by God. But the "office" of a person is
considerably higher than the "office" of the rat. It is mankind-
not the rat-who is made in the image of God. It is the human
who is given a role of dominion over the earth. Man, not the
rat, is God's vice-regent over creation.
Does capital punishment violate the sanctity of life?

The principle of the special dignity of mankind is echoed

later in Genesis in the institution of capital punishment:
"Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be
shed; for God made man in his own image" (Gen. 9:6).

This text is not a

prophecy. It is not saying simply that those who live by the
sword will die by the sword. Rather, the passage is a divine
mandate for capital punishment in the case of murder. The
significant point is that the moral basis for capital
punishment in Genesis is the sanctity of life. The biblical
ethic is that because man is endowed with the image of God,
his life is so sacred that any malicious destruction of it must
be punished by execution.
 Note that this
verse implies that an assault against human life is
considered by God an assault against Himself. To murder a
person is to attack one who is the image-bearer of God. God
regards homicide as an implicit attempt to murder God.

The sanctity of life

is reinforced and reaffirmed in the Ten Commandments. We
read, "You shall not murder" (Ex. 20:13). The biblical
prohibition against murder is widely known in our society. It
is frequently appealed to as a moral ground against capital
punishment. When the state of Pennsylvania voted to
reinstate the death penalty for murder, the legislation was
vetoed by thenGov. Milton Shapp. Shapp explained to the
news media that the ground for his veto was that the Ten
Commandments said, "Thou shalt not kill."

Gov. Shapp should

have read on. If we turn just a single page in Exodus, we see
what the law of God required if someone broke the command
prohibiting murder: "Whoever strikes a man so that he dies
shall be put to death" (Ex. 21:12). The punitive measures
against murder underscore the gravity of the crime precisely
because of the value of the victim. Life is regarded as so
sacred that it must never be destroyed without just cause.
 Many Old
Testament statements speak of the dignity of human life as it
rests in divine creation, including the following:
Jesus' views on the sanctity of life

Interestingly, Jesus Christ gave the most important

explanation of the Old Testament view of the sanctity of life:
"You have heard that it was said to those of old, `You shall
not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.'
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be
liable to the council; and whoever says, `You fool!'will be
liable to the hell of fire" (Matt. 5:21-22).

The words of Jesus

have vital significance for our understanding of the sanctity
of life. Here Jesus broadened the implications of the Old
Testament law. He was speaking to religious leaders who had
a narrow and simplistic grasp of the Ten Commandments.
The legalists of His day were confident that if they obeyed
the explicitly stated aspects of the law, they could applaud
themselves for their great virtue. They failed, however, to
grasp the wider implications. In Jesus'view, what the law did
not spell out in detail was clearly implied by its broader
meaning.

This quality of the

law is seen in Jesus' expansion of the prohibition against
adultery: "You have heard that it was said, `You shall not
commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at
a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery
with her in his heart" (Matt. 5:27-28). Here Jesus explained
that a person who refrains from the physical act of adultery
has not necessarily been obedient to the whole law. The law
on adultery is a complex one, including not only actual illicit
intercourse but everything that falls between lust and
adultery. Jesus described lust as adultery of the heart.

The law not only

prohibits certain negative behaviors and attitudes, but by
implication it requires certain positive behaviors and
attitudes. That is, if adultery is prohibited, chastity and purity
are required.
 When we apply
these patterns set forth by Jesus to the prohibition against
murder, we understand clearly that, on the one hand, we are
to refrain from all things contained in the broad definition of
murder, but on the other hand, we are positively
commanded to work to save, improve, and care for life. We
are to avoid murder in all of its ramifications and, at the
same time, do all that we can to promote life.

Just as Jesus
considered lust a part of adultery, so He viewed unjustifiable
anger and slander as parts of murder. As lust is adultery of
the heart, so anger and slander are murder of the heart.

By expanding the
scope of the Ten Commandments to include such matters as
lust and slander, Jesus did not mean that it is just as evil to
lust after a person as it is to have unlawful physical
intercourse. Likewise, Jesus did not say that slander is just as
evil as murder. What He did say is that the law against
murder includes a law against anything that involves injuring
a fellow human unjustly.
 How does all of this
apply to the abortion issue? In Jesus' teaching we see
another strong reinforcement of the sanctity of life. Murder
of the heart, such as slander, may be described as
"potential" murder. It is potential murder because, as an
example, anger and slander have the potential to lead to the
full act of physical murder. Of course, they do not always
lead to that outcome. Anger and slander are prohibited, not
so much because of what else they may lead to, but because
of the actual harm they do to the quality of life.

The link between the sanctity of life and abortion

When we link the discussion of the sanctity of life to
abortion, we make a subtle but relevant connection. Even if
it cannot be proven that a fetus is an actual living human
person, there is no doubt that it is a potential living human
person. In other words, a fetus is a developing person. It is
not in a frozen state of potentiality. The fetus is in dynamic
process-without interference or unforeseen calamity, it
surely will become a fully actualized living human person.

Jesus Christ sees

the law against murder as including not only the act of actual
murder, but also actions of potential murder. Jesus taught
that it is unlawful to commit the potential murder of an
actual life. What, then, are the implications of committing
the actual destruction of potential life?

The actual
destruction of potential life is not the same thing as the
potential destruction of actual life. These are not identical
cases, but they are close enough to make us pause to
carefully consider the possible consequences before we
destroy a potential life.
 If this aspect of the
law does not fully and finally capture abortion within the
broad and complex prohibition against murder, a second
aspect clearly does.

As I stated earlier,
the negative prohibitions of the law imply positive attitudes
and actions. For instance, the biblical law against adultery
also requires chastity and purity. Likewise, when a law is
stated in a positive form, its negative opposite is implicitly
forbidden. For example, if God commands us to be good
stewards of our money, clearly we ought not to be wild
spenders. A positive command to diligent labor carries an
implicit negative prohibition against being lazy on the job.

A negative
prohibition against actual and potential murder implicitly
involves a positive mandate to work for the protection and
sustenance of life. To oppose murder is to promote life.
Whatever else abortion does, it does not promote the life of
the unborn child. Although some people will argue that
abortion promotes the quality of life of those who do not
desire offspring, it does not promote the life of the subject in
question, the developing unborn child.
 The Bible is
consistently strong in its support for the exceedingly great
value of all human life. The poor, the oppressed, the
widowed, the orphaned, and the handicapped-all are highly
valued in the Bible. Thus, any discussion of the abortion
issue ultimately must wrestle with this key theme of
Scripture. When the destruction or the disposal of even
potential human life is done cheaply and easily, a shadow
darkens the whole landscape of the sanctity of life and
human dignity.

The sanctity of life,

however, is not merely an issue of theological or religious
law. It also touches heavily on matters of natural and
positive law, which are subjects of the next chapter.
 Summary

• The sanctity-of-life issue is important because it

underscores the gravity of the debate
over when life begins.

• Modern humanity is uncertain of its ultimate value and

significance.

• The Bible has a high view of humanity's significance.

• The sanctity of life was articulated in the Old Testament,
and its importance was expanded by
Jesus Christ.

• Because the Bible is so emphatic in its support for the

sanctity of life and human dignity,
anyone contemplating abortion must
ask, "Will my actions potentially align
or conflict with biblical teaching?"

Discussion Questions
1. What influences have led to the weakening of Western
society's sense of the sanctity of life?

2. Why do you want to be treated with dignity and respect?

3. If everyone agrees on the sanctity of life, why does the

controversy over abortion remain?

4. What heroic attempt to protect, defend, or promote life

has been in the news lately?

5. Does it make sense to execute murderers? Is such an act

contradictory?

 
 I see no reason for attributing to man a significance in kind
differentfrom that which belongs to a baboon or a grain
ofsand.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

The opinion (Roe v. Wade) fails even to consider what I would

suppose to be the most compelling interest of the state in
prohibiting abortion: the interest in maintaining that respect
for the paramount sanctity of human life which has always
been at the center of Western civilization.
 -Archibald Cox

A high regard for human life is not the exclusive legacy of

Christianity or other religious faiths. In the natural law arising
in many cultures, in belief systems, and in nature itself, we
find a persistent devotion to the sanctity of life.

Natural law is
rooted in various sources. One source is the laws of nations.
When the laws, taboos, and precepts found in diverse
cultures in various ages are examined, regular patterns of
law become apparent. For example, in virtually every culture
of recorded history, some evidence is found of laws against
murder. There are some societies, or groups within societies,
that condone or enjoin murder (such as within Satanic
worship cults or militant terrorist cabals), but even within
such groups, the condoned murder tends to be highly
selective. Murder may be approved for one's enemies but
not for the members of the group themselves. Here we find a
kind of "honor among thieves."

A second source of
natural law is what philosophers call "first principles," or
clear and distinct ideas. The national documents of the
United States call these ideas "self-evident" truths. The
impropriety of the act of murder is seen as one of these
selfevident truths. Murder violates what Immanuel Kant
defined as the "Categorical Imperative," which involves a
kind of universal sense of duty or "oughtness." Kant's
formulation sounds very much like the Golden Rule
expressed in more philosophical language. The Golden Rule,
simply stated, is "Do unto others as you would have others
do unto you." If we apply this rule to the sanctity of life, it
means, "I should refrain from committing murder if I want
others to refrain from murdering me."

A third and vitally

important source for natural law is the universal biological
law of self-preservation. In the complexities of nature, living
organisms make a herculean effort to stay alive and to
reproduce. Two of the premises basic to Darwinian evolution
are the quests for survival and for reproduction, to which the
concept of natural selection is linked.
 Timothy Ferris, in
Coming ofAge in the Milky Way, cited the example of moths
living in a forest in England. Of the varieties of moths, the
overwhelming majority were white. A very small number of
black moths were counted. Then something radically altered
the moths' environment. A factory was built on the edge of a
town near the forest. Black smoke belched daily from the
chimneys of the factory, leaving a residue of soot on the
bark of the trees. Within a few years, the moth population
changed dramatically. The black moths became the
dominant variety, while the white moths all but disappeared.
The darkened tree trunks afforded excellent coverage for the
black moths, allowing them to live long enough to reproduce,
while the white moths were clearly visible to their natural
enemies and began to die off before they could reproduce.
Those moths that won the battle for survival became the
dominant variety.

Consider the case

of the common dandelion. One dandelion in a lawn is not
much to be concerned about. But as every homeowner
knows, where there is one dandelion, soon there will be
many more. As the dandelion goes to seed, it forms the fuzzy
head that children like to blow. The slightest wind scatters
the tiny seeds. Some fall on the sidewalk and perish, but
many land on fertile soil, germinate, and produce a sea of
yellow.
 Why doesn't the
dandelion produce only one or two seeds? Dandelions do not
buy the Planned Parenthood theory that the perfect family
involves a maximum of two children. The multitude of seeds
that the dandelion sends into the air is nature's way of
ensuring the survival of the species. The dandelion lottery is
weighted for success.

In the case of
human reproduction, the force of nature is even more
astonishing. A fertile female produces one egg per month. In
itself, this does not seem like a prolific number designed to
enhance the species' survival. Yet during human intercourse,
in a single male ejaculation (depending on the man's age
and fertility), between thirty million and sixty million sperm
are released toward the target egg. If one sperm seed
penetrates the egg, fertilization takes place. It almost seems
like overkill. Nature, in terms of human reproduction, leaves
little to chance. The female egg is subjected to a
bombardment of male sperm to increase the likelihood of
fertilization.

Once the egg is

fertilized, crisis stages must be passed successfully before a
child can be born. First, the fertilized egg must be
successfully implanted in the womb. A significant percentage
of fertilized eggs fail to achieve implantation. Of those that
implant, another percentage fail to develop to term as they
are lost through natural abortion or miscarriage. Of the
fetuses that make it through the entire gestation process,
some fail to survive the birth process and are stillborn. Of the
babies that are born alive, some die in early infancy.

We see that the

production of a healthy living baby is one of nature's most
amazing feats. How high are the odds against a single sperm
ever contributing to the life of a human being? Yet it
happens.

We can look at the

probability quotient of human reproduction in different ways.
Suppose, for example, a couple had a great desire to have a
child and decided to make a concerted effort to effect a
pregnancy. Suppose they had intercourse every day for thirty
days. In that thirty-day period, the odds against a particular
sperm yielding a fertilized egg would be on average over a
billion to one. Add the factors of failed implantation,
miscarriage, and so on, and the approximate odds against a
particular sperm's being a contributory factor to a live baby
would be about two billion to one-if pregnancy were
achieved in the thirty-day attempt. Many couples try
earnestly for not just one month but for years before
achieving pregnancy.

Looking at the
odds in this way makes it seem that human reproduction is
an almost impossible task. That is because we are looking at
it from the perspective of a single sperm. But nature
provides millions, indeed billions, of sperm, or "genetic
bullets," in order to make sure the target egg is hit. Nature
operates a system of human reproduction that ensures the
survival of the species.
Abortion versus nature

Abortion-whatever else it may be-is an act against nature.

After all the elaborate processes have worked together to
produce a fertilized and implanted egg, then a developing
human embryo, the natural process is interrupted and
frustrated by the willful act of a human being. In this
instance, humanity's greatest enemy in the cycle of nature's
law of self-preservation and survival is humanity itself.

The natural law of

self-preservation is seen not only in human reproduction but
also in the struggle among humans to survive illnesses,
accidents, and other perils. A vivid example of this effort was
seen in the energy exerted to save the life of a little girl
named Jessica who fell into a well in Texas. For days,
Americans monitored the television bulletins for news of the
child's fate. No expense was spared, no effort deemed too
great to save Jessica's life. Her rescue was not just
extraordinary altruism, but a sign of the deep-rooted
commitment within humanity to spare no effort to save a
human life, especially when the life is that of a child.

Whenever a crisis
occurs, our first concern is for the people involved. What
happened? Is everyone all right? Was anyone hurt? Did help
arrive in time? Is there anything we can do? It doesn't really
matter whether it was a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.
It isn't particularly important whether it was an accident or a
crime. It makes no real difference whether it was a national
calamity or a personal tragedy. Our first thought is always of
the people.

People are
precious. Their lives are of inestimable value. They are gifts.
They must never be taken for granted. Things can be
replaced-but there is no replacement for a mother, a father,
a sister, a brother, an aunt, an uncle, a friend, or a neighbor.
Civil societies always recognize this vital principle and build
their cultural institutions upon it. They do anything and
everything they possibly can to protect the dignity, integrity,
and sanctity of life. Because there are no expendable or
disposable people, every life is worth honoring, protecting,
and saving. Ultimately, the rule of law depends on an
absolute respect for the value of people.
 Why do we display
this kind of concern for living individuals but not for the
multitude of unborn who die each day and become mere
statistics? Perhaps the reason is that people outside the
womb are not nameless, abstract statistics. In little Jessica's
case, we saw pictures of her face. We knew her name. We
heard interviews with her distraught mother and father. By
television, we became personally acquainted. Jessica was a
real person. However, in the case of abortion, we are not so
personally acquainted. Many people do not consider fetuses
to be people at all, or at least they are not sure whether
fetuses are people. The unborn remain anonymous "things"
that are discarded. Fetuses have no names. They have no
personal biographies. They tend to be presented to the
public mind as abstract entities. I have heard fetuses
described in abortion debates as "undifferentiated blobs of
protoplasm," "biological parasites," and "so much domestic
sewage."

It is difficult for
people to become concerned about the fate of blobs of
protoplasm or domestic sewage. After a child is born, no one
is much concerned about the destiny of the placenta.
Perhaps this demonstrates why the film The Silent Scream
provoked such an outcry. In this film, viewers had a window
into the womb that revealed a graphic picture of what
actually happens in an abortion. Pro-abortion activists
decried the film as emotionally provocative and
inflammatory. They were certainly correct in that
assessment. The film was indeed emotionally provocative,
precisely because what was once hidden from the human
eye was made clearly visible.

In The Silent
Scream, we saw what looked like a formed human being
going though obvious pain and distress in trying to escape
the destructive instruments of the abortionist. The face was
contorted into what resembled agonized human pain. The
mouth opened in what looked like a human scream. Those
factors were indeed emotionally provocative. The drama on
screen did not resemble removal of a "tumor" or a "parasite"
from a human body.

The fact that

people become emotional about the abortion issue has a
rational basis. The emotion is not arbitrary or capricious. The
emotion is rooted in the deep human consciousness of the
sanctity of life. It is emotional concern for the well-being of
people-living people. Granted, many people remain
unconvinced that the fetus is a human person. But if a fetus
is a living person, or even if it is merely perceived to be, the
emotional response should not be considered irrational.
The sanctity of life in American history

The foundational documents of the United States' system of

government give eloquent testimony to the sanctity of
human life. The Declaration of Independence affirms that it is
"selfevident" that we are endowed by our Creator with
"certain inalienable rights," among which are "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness." The right of each person to
life is seen as basic to all other human rights. Obviously, if
the right to life were not primary, no other human rights
would mean very much.

What was affirmed

by the Declaration of Independence was encoded in the
United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment of the
Constitution reads:

No person shall
be held to
answer for a
capital or
otherwise
infamous crime,
unless on a
presentment or
indictment of a
Grand Jury,
except in cases
arising in the
land or naval
forces, or in the
Militia, when in
actual service in
time of War or
public danger;
nor shall any
person be
subject for the
same offence to
be twice put in
jeopardy of life or
limb, nor shall be
compelled in any
criminal case to
be a witness
against himself,
nor be deprived
of life, liberty, or
property, without
due process of
law; nor shall
private property
be taken for
public use
 without just
compensation.

The chief intent of

this amendment is due process of law, but it evidences a
concern for life, liberty, and private property. It is because of
the constitutional commitment to the sanctity of life that
personal liberty and property are thus protected.

It is important to
note that because of the Roe v. Wade decision of the
Supreme Court, developing fetuses are not accorded
protection under this constitutional amendment-nor any
other amendment because they are not deemed to be
people till they reach the point ofviability (able to survive
outside the womb). At the present time, though the law of
the United States affirms the principle of the sanctity of
human life, that principle does not include or embrace the
unborn, because the unborn are not considered alive.

The history of abortion

The law codes ofvarious nations throughout history have
included strong affirmations of the sanctity of human life.
However, there is a disparity on the question of abortion.
Though some nations have included the unborn under the
sanctions that protect human life, many nations have not. In
the sense that the United States' position has changed at
least twice on this point36-and may yet change again-this
country is a microcosm of the disparity on this issue that has
existed throughout world history.

The ancient world

was divided over abortion. The Greeks debated the issue
strenuously and are considered pioneers in legalized
abortion. Michael J. Gorman notes, "The Greeks enjoy the
dubious distinction of being the first [in the ancient Near
East or Western world] positively to advise and even demand
abortion in certain cases."37 Plato recommended both
abortion and infanticide when it was necessary to advance
the interests of the state. However, though Greek
philosophers tended to support abortion, the medical
community tended to oppose it. Abortion is specifically
mentioned in the famous Oath of Hippocrates, which reads
as follows:
I swear by Apollo
Physician, by
Asclepias, by
Health, by
Panacea, and by
all the gods and
goddesses,
making them my
witnesses, that I
will carry out,
according to my
ability and
judgment, this
oath and this
indenture. .. . I
will use
treatment to help
the sick
according to my
ability and
judgment, but
never with a view
to injury and
wrongdoing.
Neither will I
administer a
poison to
anybody when
asked to do so,
nor will I suggest
such a course.
Similarly, I will
not give to a
woman a pessary
to cause
abortion.38
 Roman law, for the
most part, did not outlaw abortion, as the fetus was not
considered a living person. Some philosophers, such as
Cicero, objected to this, but Roman law was not changed.

The Jews did not

sanction abortion; likewise, the early Christian community
was unambiguous on the question. The earliest explicit
inferences to abortion in Christian literature are found in the
Didache and The Epistle of Barnabas. The Didache was a
manual of church discipline and a codebook for Christian
morality. It was called a summary of the teaching of the
apostles. It probably was written at the beginning of the
second century. The Didache contrasts two ways or styles of
living. One is called the way of life and the other is called the
way of death. In the second commandment of the teaching,
we read this exhortation: "Do not murder; do not commit
adultery; do not corrupt boys; do not fornicate; do not steal;
do not practice magic; do not go in for sorcery; do not
murder a child by abortion or kill a new-born infant."39

Likewise, The
Epistle of Barnabas declares, "Thou shalt not murder a child
by abortion. 1140
 It is noteworthy
that in the ancient cultures where abortion was legal,
infanticide was legal as well. The Jewish and Christian
communities outlawed both.41 Indeed, history reveals that
where Jewish and Christian influence was felt on national
policies, the tendency was to include the unborn under the
general concept of the sanctity of life.

Again, it is clear
that the overarching issue is the question of when human life
begins. Though the sanctity of life in general may be seen as
an integral part of the laws of nations, the question of the
beginning of life is not settled by law.

Summary
• The sanctity of life is affirmed by the laws of nations, self-
evident truths, and natural science.

• The human reproductive system exhibits a tremendous

bias toward life.

• It is rational to view abortion as an emotional issue.

• The Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision voided protection

of the nonviable unborn under the
Fifth Amendment of the United States
Constitution.

• In the ancient world, Greeks and Romans supported

abortion and infanticide, but the
Jewish and Christian communities did
not.
 Discussion Questions

1. If the Bible clearly demonstrates a high regard for the

sanctity of life, do we need to be
concerned about what natural law
says?

2. Which argument for the sanctity of life is most compelling

to a Christian? Which would be most
compelling to an unbeliever?

3. Where have you seen the principle of the sanctity of

human life upheld in legal decisions
and law enforcement?
4. Why do pro-abortion activists speak of"undifferentiated
blobs of protoplasm' or "biological
parasites"? Why were they outraged
by the movie The Silent Scream?

 
 Each of us had been a Tom Thumb in the womb of the
mother, and women have always known that there was a
kind of underground country, a kind of vaulted shelter, with a
kind of red light and curious noise in which very tiny humans
were having a very curious and marvelous life. That is the
story of Tom Thumb.

-Jerome Lejeune, M.D., Ph.D.

The question of when life begins is tightly linked to the

secret of life itself.
 I have a cousin
who is a physician and who served as chief of staff at a
metropolitan hospital. I once quizzed him about the search
for a cure for cancer. "With all the advanced technology at
our disposal and with the use of computers in research, why
aren't we advancing more rapidly in our quest for a cure for
cancer?" I asked. My cousin explained that to discover the
secret of cancer requires that we discover the secret of life,
because cancer is a form of life. It is life run amuck, but it is
life.

As difficult as it
may be to unravel the secret of life, it may be equally
difficult to define it. Concepts such as human, living, and
person have been the subject of much discussion and
analysis. Plato sought desperately for a description that
would clearly distinguish humans from all other species of
animals. He finally chose "featherless biped" as his working
definition. This lasted only until one of Plato's students threw
a plucked chicken over the academy wall with an attached
note that read, "Plato's man."

When we turn to
the Bible, we discover that it offers no explicit statement that
life begins at a certain point or that there is human life
before birth. However, Scripture assumes a continuity of life
from before the time of birth to after the time of birth. The
same language and the same personal pronouns are used
indiscriminately for both stages. Further, God's involvement
in the life of the person extends back to conception (and
even before conception). This passage supports the point:
 The psalmist
credits God for fashioning him in the womb. He also uses the
term me to refer to himself before he was born. It is
noteworthy that the Hebrew word translated as "unformed
substance" is the Hebrew word for "embryo," and this is the
only instance of that word in the Bible.

Another passage
relevant to God's involvement in life within the womb occurs
in Isaiah:
 This passage
indicates not only that the unborn baby was distinct from the
mother and was treated with a unique personal identity, but
that his formation in the womb was the activity of God.

A similar treatment
concerns the prophet Jeremiah:
 Jeremiah is told
that God knew him before he was born; God had personal
knowledge of the person of Jeremiah before the person
Jeremiah was born. This indicates that Jeremiah was treated
by God in a personal manner and as a personal being before
birth. It is also significant that God "set apart" or sanctified
Jeremiah before birth. Clearly God extends the sanctity
principle to life in the womb.

Even those who do

not agree that life begins before birth grant that there is
continuity between a child that is conceived and a child that
is born. Every child has a past before birth. The issue is this:
Was that past personal or impersonal, with personhood
beginning only at birth? It is clear that Scripture regards
personhood as beginning prior to birth. As David says,
"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my
mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:5).

Professor John
Frame, in Medical Ethics, made the following observation on
Psalm [Link]
Personal
continuity
extends back in
time to the point
of conception.
Psalm 51:5
clearly and
strikingly presses
this continuity
back to the point
of conception. In
this passage
David is
reflecting on the
sin in his heart
that had recently
taken the form of
adultery and
murder. He
recognizes that
the sin of his
heart is not itself
a recent
phenomenon but
goes back to the
point of his
conception in the
womb of his
mother.... The
personal
continuity
between David's
fetal life and his
adult life goes
back as far as
conception and
 extends even to
this ethical
relation to
God.42

In Psalm 51, David

recounts his personal moral history to the point of
conception. An impersonal being, a "blob of protoplasm,"
cannot be a moral agent. If David's moral history extends
back to conception, then his personal history also must
extend to the same point. It is not merely David's biological
substance that dates back to conception, but his moral
disposition as well.
 The New Testament
provides a fascinating text that has bearing on the question
of life before birth:

[Mary] entered
the house of
Zechariah and
greeted
Elizabeth. When
Elizabeth heard
the greeting of
Mary, the baby
leaped in her
womb. And
Elizabeth was
filled with the
Holy Spirit, and
she exclaimed
with a loud cry,
"Blessed are you
 among women,
and blessed is
the fruit of your
womb! And why
is this granted to
me that the
mother of my
Lord should come
to me? For
behold, when the
sound of your
greeting came to
my ears, the
baby in my
womb leaped for
joy." (Luke 1:40-
44)

This passage
describes the meeting between Mary, the mother of Jesus
Christ, and her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John
the Baptist. Upon their meeting, John, while still in the womb
of his mother, leaped for joy. This behavior was consistent
with the designated prophetic role of John, who was
commissioned by God to "announce" the Messiah. In this
instance, John performed his prophetic duty before either he
or Jesus was born. These verses show that before John was
born, he exhibited cognition and emotion. He leaped
because he was in a state of joy. The joy was prompted by
his recognition of the presence of the Messiah.

Some people may

dismiss the relevance of this passage on the grounds that (1)
the writer is speaking poetically or hyperbolically; (2) the
passage says nothing about life from conception, only about
life prior to birth; or (3) the occasion represents a special
miracle and does not prove that other babies could have
such prenatal ability.

To answer the first

objection, it is erroneous to dismiss the passage on the
grounds that it is poetic or hyperbolic. The literary form of
this portion of Luke's Gospel is unambiguously historical
narrative, not poetry. Also, hyperbole is an exaggerated
statement of reality. If this incident is presented with
hyperbole, that simply means John did not leap as high or
recognize as much as the text implies.

The second
objection, that the passage says nothing of conception as
the beginning point of life, is correct. The passage clearly
indicates, however, that John had human powers of cognition
and emotion (signs of personality) prior to birth.

The third objection,

that this incident was a special miracle, is more weighty.
Unless we claim that a normal fetus has the ability to
recognize the near presence of another fetus in another
woman's womb, we must concede that there is something
extraordinary or miraculous about this occurrence. It is
possible that God miraculously enabled the prenatal John to
have extraordinary cognitive powers that do not belong to
average unborn children. However, if we grant the miracle,
we are still left with a difficult question: Was the miracle an
act of extending normal powers beyond the normal limits or
an act of creating the powers? Did the unborn John the
Baptist have the natural abilities of cognition and emotion,
abilities that were extended by a miracle, or were the very
powers of cognition and emotion created by God? There is no
way to answer that question absolutely.
 However, before
we dismiss the passage in Luke, two observations must be
made. In many other biblical miracles, we see God extending
powers or abilities that already exist. For example, in 2 Kings
6:15-17, God opened the eyes of the servant of Elisha so
that he could see an angelic host. God did not first
miraculously have to give the servant the power to see.
Rather, the limit of his natural ability to see was extended.
Likewise, for John to recognize Jesus Christ while each was
still in his mother's womb, God did not necessarily have to
create the powers of cognition and emotion.

The second
observation is that, however we evaluate this incident, one
thing is certain: John the Baptist was an unborn child who
manifested cognition and joy.

Now let's consider

the most controversial biblical reference to the abortion
issue, which is found in Exodus 21:22-25:
"When men
strive together
and hit a
pregnant woman,
so that her
children come
out, but there is
no harm, the one
who hit her shall
surely be fined,
as the woman's
husband shall
impose on him,
and he shall pay
as the judges
determine. But if
there is harm,
then you shall
pay life for life,
eye for eye,
tooth for tooth,
hand for hand,
foot for foot, burn
for burn, wound
for wound, stripe
for stripe."
 In this text, there is
a difficult ambiguity related to the phrase no harm." No harm
to whom? Some people believe this text means that if, in the
midst of a struggle by two men, a woman was hurt and
miscarried, a fine could be levied to compensate for the loss
of the child, and if the woman was seriously injured or killed,
the penalty should correspond to her injury. Others interpret
this text to teach that the unborn baby was less valuable
under the law than the woman, and was therefore less than
human.

If this second
interpretation of the text is correct, we must note that the
fetus nevertheless was protected by law. Its destruction did
merit some punishment-though not capital punishment-and
it was accorded value. Also, if the accidental miscarriage was
seen as a serious matter, it would seem that intentional
destruction of the fetus would be even more serious. In the
case envisioned in Exodus, it was obviously not the intention
of the mother that her baby should be aborted. She was to
be compensated for the loss of a child that she did not desire
to lose. (Nothing is said about compensation or punishment
in the case of intentional abortion.)

A third major
interpretation of the text holds that it is not talking about the
death or loss of a fetus but of a forced premature birth. The
idea is this: If two men fought, and in the scuffle they injured
a woman who was pregnant to the extent that she went into
labor and bore a child prematurely, with no serious injury to
the child, then the mother and father were to receive
compensatory payment for their inconvenience. But if the
prematurely born child suffered further harm, then the full
law applied: "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth," and so
on. This means that if the baby died, a capital crime had
occurred.

A more
comprehensive treatment of this text is found in Medical
Ethics. Frame points out that this last, broader interpretation
of the text does not help the pro-abortion argument. He
provides careful exegesis of the Hebrew terms to
demonstrate that a narrower understanding is more
accurate.43

The Bible clearly

indicates that unborn babies are considered living human
beings before they are born. The weight of the biblical
evidence is that life begins at conception.
How human life develops

The development of a human being is a process that begins

at conception and continues until death. No one would argue
that human development begins at birth.

The moment of
conception combines forty-six genestwenty-three from the
mother and twenty-three from the father-so that a unique
individual begins the process of personal human
development. After two weeks, there is a discernible
heartbeat. The heart circulates blood within the embryo that
is not the mother's blood, but blood the unborn baby has
produced.
 After about six
weeks, the embryo is still less than an inch long but has
undergone considerable development. Fingers have formed
on the hands. At forty-three days, the unborn baby has
detectable brain waves. After six and a half weeks, the
embryo is moving; however, because of the tiny size of the
unborn baby and the thickness of the mother's abdominal
wall, she does not sense "quickening" or movement until
several weeks later.

By the end of nine

weeks, the fetus has developed a unique set of fingerprints.
By this time, the sexual organs of the male have already
appeared so that the gender of the unborn baby can be
distinguished. The kidneys also have formed and are
functioning.44

By the end of the

tenth week, the gallbladder is functioning. All the organs of
the body are functional by the end of the twelfth week, and
the baby can cry. All of this is accomplished during the first
three months of pregnancy.
 In adults, heartbeat
and brain waves are commonly referred to as "vital" signs.
When both brain waves and the heartbeat cease for a period
of time, a patient may be declared legally dead. Vital signs
are a demonstration of life. When such signs are clearly
present in the developing embryo, why are people so
reluctant to speak of prenatal life? The embryo or fetus is not
yet an independent living human person, but that does not
mean he or she is not a living human person. If
independence is the critical criterion for distinguishing living
people from living nonpeople, then we must admit (as some
readily do) that even birth does not yield a living person. At
birth, the baby is disconnected physically from the mother-
and in that sense is independent-but a newborn is still
desperately dependent on outside help for survival. The
newborn can breathe by himself in most cases, but he
cannot feed himself.
What death reveals about life

In our quest to understand the presence of life, it is helpful to

have an understanding of death. Since death is the cessation
of life, it gives clues into the essential elements of life itself.

One problem with

our definitions of life and death is seen in the case of
stillborn babies. Are stillborn babies "dead babies" or "never-
have-been-alive babies"? It is commonplace for physicians to
speak of stillborn babies as babies who have died.

My daughter
delivered a stillborn baby. I will relate her experience to show
how a nonreligious community dealt with the event. In the
ninth month of her pregnancy, my daughter noticed that an
entire day had passed with no feeling of fetal movement.
She called her doctor, who examined her immediately. His
response was grim: "I am sorry, but your baby has died," he
told my daughter. The physician used the language of death
to describe the event.

The next day, my

daughter was admitted to the hospital and labor was
induced. She endured the labor experience knowing in
advance that she would give birth to a stillborn baby. After
the baby-a girl-was delivered, the nurses cleansed the body
and took photographs. The baby was given a name, and
measurements were recorded in the hospital records. The
nurses then brought the dead child into my daughter's room-
giving her, her husband, my wife, and me the opportunity to
hold the baby. This was not an extraordinary or macabre
experience, but the customary practice. The nurses
explained that giving the parents an opportunity to hold the
stillborn baby and to say "goodbye" made the grief process
for the lost child less severe.

Holding my
daughter's stillborn baby was a profound experience for me.
Though I already was convinced that unborn babies are living
human beings, any shadow of doubt I might have had was
instantly removed. As I held the child, I wondered how
anyone could think that the baby was not a human being
then or two days earlier.

We use this
expression: "If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it
probably is a duck." In the case of human fetuses, we are
definitely not talking about ducks. The fetus looks like a
living human person. It acts like a human person. The
embryo has the genetic structure of a human person. It has
the vital signs of a living human person. The fetus has
sexuality and movement. Often, it sucks its thumb, reacts to
music, and kicks its legs. With this cumulative evidence, it
would seemingly require powerful evidence to the contrary
to conclude that a prenatal baby is not a living human
person. Why do people resist this conclusion?

The answer is
prejudice. Indeed, prejudice is a powerful force in the debate
concerning abortion. If we regard the embryo or fetus as a
living human person, then the moral implications of
destroying that person prior to birth are enormous. As long
as we can convince ourselves that a fetus is not human until
birth, we are relieved of those difficulties.
 Even if we come to
the conclusion that an embryo is a living human person prior
to birth, we have still not established that life begins at
conception. All we have established is that life begins before
birth. The most clear lines of demarcation in the continuum
between conception and birth are the conception and birth
themselves. Ifwe grant that a fetus is a living human person
merely five minutes, or even five seconds, before birth, then
birth cannot be the point when life begins.

In my judgment,
the evidence from science is as weighty as that inferred from
the Bible that a fetus is a living human person prior to birth.
If that is so, then we must locate the beginning of that life
either at the point of conception or at some point between
conception and birth.
The view of law on when life begins

In its Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled

that the state cannot regulate abortion in the first trimester
of pregnancy and left the decision to the woman and her
physician. In the second trimester, the state may choose to
regulate abortion, but only to protect the woman's health. In
the third trimester, the state may choose to regulate or
prohibit abortion except if it is necessary to preserve the
woman's health or life. In summary, the court held that
although the state has an important and legitimate interest
in protecting potential life, this interest cannot become
compelling until the point at which the fetus is viable.

In the Roe v. Wade

decision, it appears that the court regarded the unborn as
having only "potential" life until the point of viability.
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor raised questions
about this:
The difficulty
with this analysis
is clear: Potential
life is no less
potential in the
first weeks of
pregnancy than it
is at viability or
afterwards.... The
choice of viability
as the point at
which the state
interest in
potential life
becomes
compelling is no
less arbitrary
than choosing
any point before
viability or any
point afterward.
Accordingly, I
believe that the
state's interest in
protecting
potential human
life exists
throughout the
pregnancy.4s
 Justice O'Connor
sharply located the problem with the court's decision. In
addressing a matter of life and death, the court ruled in an
arbitrary manner. The so-called point of viability is a highly
unstable point of reference. In the years since Roe v. Wade,
the point of viability has been moved several weeks earlier
and continues to change as medical technology raises the
survival rate of prematurely born infants.

Even more
problematic, the Roe v. Wade decision rested largely on a
perceived constitutional right to privacy guaranteed in the
Ninth and Fourteenth amendments. Robert Bork explains
that this "right" was created by mere judicial fiat. Justice
Harry Blackmun, in writing the majority opinion for Roe v.
Wade, nearly conceded this point: "This right to privacy,
whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's
concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state
action, as we feel it is, or, as District Court determined, in
the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is
broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or
not to terminate her pregnancy."46

Bork concluded:
"That is it. This is the crux of the opinion. The Court did not
even feel obliged to settle the question of where the right of
privacy or the subsidiary right to abort is to be attached to
the Constitution's text. The opinion seems to regard that as a
technicality that really does not matter, and indeed it does
not since the right does not come out of the Constitution but
is forced into it."47

The abortion
debate on the legal and judicial front seems destined to
continue. The dissenting opinion to Roe v. Wade, written by
justice Byron White, reflects the continuing concern:

I find nothing in
the language or
history of the
Constitution to
support the
Court's
judgment. The
Court simply
fashions and
announces a new
constitutional
right for
pregnant
mothers and,
with scarcely any
reason or
authority for its
action, invests
that with
sufficient
substance to
override most
existing state
abortion
statutes. The
upshot is that the
people and the
legislatures of
the 50 states are
constitutionally
disentitled to
weigh the
relative
importance of
the continued
existence and
development of
the fetus, on the
one hand,
against the
spectrum of
possible impacts
on the mother,
on the other
hand. As an
exercise of raw
judicial power,
the Court
perhaps has
authority to do
what it does
today; but in my
view its
judgment is an
improvident and
extravagant
exercise of the
power of judicial
review that the
Constitution
extends to this
Court .41
 As the debate on
the legality of abortion continues, the central issue will be
the question of when human life begins. So much is at stake
that we must ask, "What should we do if we remain unsure of
the answer?"

Summary
• The question of when life begins is made more difficult to
answer because it is linked tightly to
the meaning of life itself.

• Scripture does not offer an explicit statement as to when

life begins. Implicitly, Scripture
supports the idea that life begins at
conception.

• Science offers compelling evidence for the early personal

human development of the child in
the womb.

• The Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision arbitrarily fixed

"viability" as the point where the
state has important and compelling
reasons to protect human life.
 Discussion Questions

1. Why is the issue of when life begins so critical?

2. What impact does understanding early fetal development

have on our position?

3. How clear is the Bible on when life begins? How clear is

science?
4. Will the battle over abortion be finished if everyone
becomes convinced that life begins at
conception?

 
 People who worry about the moral danger of abortion do so because they
think of the fetus as a human being and hence equate feticide with murder.
Whether the fetus is or is not a human being is a matter of definition, notfact,
and we can define any way we wish.

-Garrett Hardin

Never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for the
murder of the helpless. In securing any kind ofpeace, the first essential is to
guarantee to every man the most elementary of rights: the right to his own
life. Murder is not debatable.

-Theodore Roosevelt
Though the two camps, the pro-abortion and pro-life positions, are adamant
and have a high level of certainty in their views, multitudes of people are still
seeking their own conclusions in the abortion matter. Even among those who
have reached a conclusion, it is frequently tentative at best. There remains an
openness to be persuaded of a different view. The fact that opinions on this
issue do change can be seen in the astonishing movement in public opinion
regarding abortion since 1973.

I think it is safe to assume that prior

to Roe v. Wade public opinion ran overwhelmingly against abortion. Through
the 1970s and '80s, societal attitudes shifted to a much more tolerant
position. From 1990 to the present, the trend has shifted back slightly, so that
a slim majority of Americans now oppose unrestricted abortion on demand.
Why is this?

Surely the issue has been discussed

more frequently and more deeply than at any time in history. This factor
might bode pessimism for the pro-life position. If increased discussion has not
served to stem the tide of public opinion substantially, could it be that the
case against abortion is weak and that the more we argue the pro-life
position, the more ground we lose? I doubt it. Another factor may be a
backlash against violence perpetrated by zealous pro-life activists. Yet
another reason may be that as the discussions continue and the complexities
of the issue become more apparent, more and more people seek the "safe"
pro-choice position because they lack sufficient certainty to decide for either
the pro-abortion or pro-life position.

Although all of these may be

contributing factors, I submit that the greatest cause of the change of public
opinion is the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. There is a strong
tendency among people of any nation to take their direction as to what is
ethically right from what the law allows or what the society condones. The
unspoken assumption is that if it is legal, it is therefore moral. Sadly, this
conclusion does not reflect much sober thinking or ethical analysis, yet the
syndrome is repeated in culture after culture. We still wonder how the people
of Germany could have been duped into supporting the programs of Adolf
Hitler, but it is a fact of history that they were. Once a decision has been
reached in a nation's highest court, that decision's subsequent influence on
the shaping of public opinion is enormous. We learned this painful fact in the
years that followed the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford
decision (1857), which perpetuated slavery in the United States.

The United States has reversed

itself on slavery, prohibition, racial discrimination, conscientious objection to
wars, capital punishment, and other issues of ethics and justice. Some people
regard these shifts in public policy as reflective of the dynamic character of
social mores and ethics. Those who are skeptical about the possibility of
discovering absolutes in the areas of justice and ethics view these shifts as
part of the process of sociological evolution. Thus, contemporary community
standards become the highest court of appeal, the ultimate norm of justice
and ethics.

Assuming that what is legal is

therefore right leads to some serious traps. The first pitfall involves a fallacy.
It is identified as the argumentum adpopulum, a fancy way of saying that
truth is determined by counting noses (or ballots). This fallacy assumes that if
a majority agrees that something is true, then it must be true. This is the type
of argument that ancient astronomers forgot to tell Copernicus, Kepler, and
Galileo.

Even though people ought not to

uncritically accept whatever the government declares is legal, the fact
remains that many people do. We cannot, therefore, ignore this as a powerful
factor in explaining the massive shift in public opinion on abortion in the past
decades.

Ethics, conscience, and abortion

Earlier in United States history, a folk hero who became a congressman

wrestled with the problem of making ethical choices. Davy Crockett once
declared, "Be sure you're right; then go ahead." This adage is both prudent
and dangerous. It is prudent in that it echoes a biblical principle that gives
guidance when we lack moral certainty. In his epistle to the Romans, the
apostle Paul gave extensive counsel to Christians regarding such matters. The
issue was the legality of Christians eating meat that had been offered to idols
in pagan rituals. Some believers were convinced such dining was wrong, while
others were persuaded it was acceptable. Paul gave this counsel:

I know and am persuaded in the

Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean
in itself, but it is unclean for
anyone who thinks it unclean. For
if your brother is grieved by what
you eat, you are no longer walking
in love. By what you eat, do not
destroy the one for whom Christ
died. So do not let what you
regard as good be spoken of as
evil. For the kingdom of God is not
a matter of eating and drinking
but of righteousness and peace
and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Whoever thus serves Christ is
acceptable to God and approved
by men. So then let us pursue
what makes for peace and for
mutual upbuilding.

D
o not, for the sake of food, destroy
 the work of God. Everything is
indeed clean, but it is wrong for
anyone to make another stumble
by what he eats. It is good not to
eat meat or drink wine or do
anything that causes your brother
to stumble. The faith that you
have, keep between yourself and
God. Blessed is the one who has
no reason to pass judgment on
himself for what he approves. But
whoever has doubts is
condemned if he eats, because
the eating is not from faith. For
whatever does not proceed from
faith is sin. (Rom. 14:14-23)

Eating meat offered to idols in itself

is not that crucial. It is a matter of ethical indifference, and Christians are free
to exercise their Christian liberty in the matter. But it becomes an ethical
issue when a person believes it is wrong.

What happens if someone performs

an action he believes to be wrong, even though it is not in fact wrong? In such
a case, Paul judges the action to be wrong. Why? It is wrong because it
involves acting in bad faith or against one's conscience. This cardinal principle
is found in verse 23: "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin."

For example, suppose God does not

consider dancing a sin, yet I am reared in a subculture that teaches that it is a
sin to dance. As a result, I am convinced that dancing is a sin. If I dance while
thus convinced, I sin. I am deliberately doing something that I think is
contrary to the law of God.

In this case, I am sure I am wrong.

On the other hand, if I am sure I am right before I proceed to do something, I
am not acting in bad faith. I am doing what I believe is the right thing.

The question remains: If I am not

sure I am right, should I go ahead? Davy Crockett seems to say no. Paul's
advice is even stronger: If it is not of faith, it is sin.

To be sure, there are occasions

when, after careful consideration of ethical principles, we are still not certain
what is the proper action. We are out of time or have exhausted our ability for
reflection, but we must make a decision and act. Either option before us may
be sinful or just-we simply cannot discern which. It is in these excruciating
circumstances that we remember the advice of Martin Luther to "sin boldly."
Luther meant that if we have done all we can to discern what is right and the
time has come to act, then, even if our actions are sinful, we should act with
boldness.
 How does this concept relate to the
question of abortion? If a woman is sure abortion is evil, and it is evil, if she
engages in it, she sins. If she is sure that abortion is evil, and it is not evil, if
she engages in it, she still sins.

Suppose, however, she is not sure

that abortion is evil. Suppose she is uncertain about whether it is a legitimate
moral option. Now what does she do? She must first consider her options:
abort the fetus or allow it to continue developing. Suppose she sees that
there is possible evil in the first option (abortion) and no evil in the second
option (proceeding with the pregnancy). Then she has only one legitimate
ethical option: to abstain from abortion. Here the uncertainty is in only one
direction-abortion. In such cases, the biblical mandate requires us to say no to
the uncertain option.

To summarize: If we face two

options, one of which clearly is legitimate and one that is possibly but not
certainly evil, we must refrain from the second or we inadvertently become
guilty of evil. The practical impact of this is clear: Before an abortion is
sought, a person must have compelling ethical justification to back it up.
Personal preferences, the desire to avoid inconvenience, and the social or
legal acceptance of such practices are not biblical warrants for acting without
faith. This means that the burden of proof in the abortion debate rests with
those who insist that abortion is something God allows. If there is evidence
that God might disallow it, we must have strong evidence to the contrary if
we are to act in good faith.

In this instance, Crockett's advice is

sound: "Be sure you're right; then go ahead." But we must not overlook the
expanded application of this maxim: "If you don't know what's right, then
don't go ahead, especially if you have another option that is right."
Should conscience be your guide?

What is dangerous about Crockett's advice? If a person is sure he is right, that

is no guarantee that he is right. We can sin mightily while thinking we are
acting in perfect virtue.

Though it is perilous to act against

conscience, we must remember that our consciences are not the final norm
by which our ethics are judged. A conscience may be uninformed, seared,
dulled, or distorted.

How our consciences are informed is

crucial. At the Diet of Worms, Luther was called on by church and state to
renounce his views. He declared, "Unless I am convinced by Scripture and
plain reason-I do not accept the authority of popes and councils ... my
conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot ... recant anything, for to
go against conscience is neither right nor safe."49 Luther was saying, "Show
me by the teaching of the Bible, or by clear and sound reasoning, or I will not
change my position." He was not willing to follow a certain path merely
because it was the conventional or socially acceptable path. He sought a clear
and certain basis for his conduct.
 In every ethical crisis, people argue
passionately and eloquently for both sides of the issue. Sometimes the
arguments on both sides are more emotional than rational. I went through a
major ethical struggle early in my career, when I was a college professor of
philosophy. Many of my students were wrestling with their consciences over
the rightness or wrongness of serving in the armed forces during the Vietnam
War. Some of them turned to me for advice. I was uncertain whether the
United States' involvement in Vietnam was just or unjust. I was not a pacifist,
but neither was I a warmonger. I believed in the classical just-war theory,
which declares that though all wars are evil, not everyone's involvement in
war is evil.

Because of my uncertainty about

the Vietnam conflict, I read everything I could find and listened to debates to
form my conclusions. The debates were emotional and strident, as the nation
was divided between hawks and doves. What alarmed me most were the
weak and often sloppy arguments used by both sides. The issue was complex,
but the public debates were simplistic. I heard hawks say, "My country, right
or wrong." This was a ghastly justification for an armed conflict. The doves
shouted, "Better Red than dead," a feeble argument for avoiding participation
in a just military struggle.

At one symposium, a professor of

ethics made an observation that sounded a bit like Crockett's maxim: "Before
we ever pick up a weapon to kill another human being, we must be quite sure
that we are acting justly." This professor understood that war is a life-and-
death matter and is not to be entered into without clear moral justification.

The analogy to the abortion debate

is clear. Before we ever pick up any surgical instrument to destroy a
developing human fetus, we must be certain we are acting justly.
What does your conscience say about abortion?

At this point I must ask: "What is your conscience telling you on abortion?
Why do you hold the position you hold? How did you arrive at your
conclusions?" Too much is at stake in this issue to approach it without sober
thinking and deep reflection.

Luther declared that to act against

conscience is neither right nor safe. We have seen why acting against
conscience is not right. Why did Luther add that it was not safe? Surely he
had a theological consideration in mind. He was a man who harbored a strong
fear of divine judgment. Luther believed in God and was persuaded that God
would hold him accountable for all of his actions in this life.

The fear of divine judgment governs

my actions regarding abortion. As a theologian, I am firmly convinced that
God hates abortion and will judge it thoroughly. I also recognize that not
everyone shares my view of God's opinions and intentions.
 If there is a God, and if we are
convinced that the evidence for His existence is compelling, then without
question we are accountable to Him for our actions. Before we choose to
participate in abortion, we must give serious consideration to what God's
views in the matter might be. To ignore this is to ignore the call of conscience
and to place ourselves in a perilous position. If an act against conscience is an
act against God, then we can easily see how dangerous such an action is.

This book is addressed primarily to

those who are not sure about the ethics of abortion. If you remain uncertain, I
urge you again not to engage in abortion unless you are absolutely certain for
clear and sound reasons (which I'm not aware of) that abortion is an ethically
justifiable action. The simple adage of common wisdom applies to you: "When
in doubt, don't."

Summary
• Public opinion on the abortion issue has changed in the direction of the pro-
choice or pro-abortion positions. The main reason for
this is that abortion was legitimized by the Roe v. Wade
Supreme Court decision.

• The New Testament teaches that conscience must not be violated in making
ethical choices.

• Good advice for any ethical choice, but in particular when making a decision
about abortion, is this: "When in doubt, don't."

Discussion Questions
1. Why are so many people unsure of their opinion on abortion?

2. How are our views of morality affected by law?

3. What does the apostle Paul mean by "whatever does not proceed from faith
is sin"? How would you respond to a Christian woman
who said that God was leading her to have an
abortion?

4. Why are some people convinced by simplistic slogans? How should we

respond to these slogans?

5. How did you reach your conclusions on abortion?

6. How does our understanding of God's justice affect our view of abortion?

 
The Constitution is what the judges say it is.
 -Charles Evans Hughes

Who's to say religion andpolitics shouldn't mix? Whose Bible are they reading
anyway?

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

These questions are at the core of the abortion debate: Is abortion a private
ethical issue or does it fall within the scope of government regulation and
control? To what extent should the government be involved? How we answer
these questions is determined in large measure by how we understand the
fundamental role and nature of government.

Closely related to the proper role of

government is the increasingly volatile relationship between church and state.
Since much of the opposition to legalized abortion comes from the
institutional church and its members, the issue of church and state has grown
to crisis proportions.

The matter is complicated by the

fact that many church members have a theologically oriented concept of the
nature and function of government. Since the Bible is not silent, let's examine
the biblical and theological understanding of government.

In the fourth century, Aurelius

Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, wrote a classic work that
highlighted the conflict between the authorities of this world and the rule of
the kingdom of God. In The City of God, Augustine described the tension that
Christians experience by living within two kingdoms.

Taking his cue from Scripture,

Augustine argued that government should not be viewed as a necessary evil
but rather as a necessity because of evil. It is because of sin that human
beings injure, kill, rob, or violate other human beings in other ways. The role
of government, then, is to restrain evil so that human beings can live in peace
and safety with each other.

The biblical concept insists that

government is ordained and established by God. In God's eyes, government is
a gift. Its institution makes life and society possible.

The first manifestation of earthly

government is found in the early chapters of Genesis: "He [God] drove the
man out, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a
flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life"
(Gen. 3:24).

This verse comes after the biblical

narrative that records the fall of man. After Adam and Eve were disobedient
and ate fruit from the forbidden tree, they were expelled from the garden of
Eden. A sentry was placed at the entrance to the garden to bar any further
access to it. The sentry was angelic and heavenly. His weapon was more down
to earth. The angelic guard held a flaming sword.

The flaming sword is the first

weapon mentioned in Scripture. It was an instrument for enforcement, so here
we see the origin of law enforcement. God issued a command that Adam and
Eve must leave the garden and not return. He established a guard with the
power to ensure that the law was not violated. We might also view this as the
first military force instituted by God. The angelic enforcer was given the
responsibility to guard the borders of Eden from invasion by unauthorized
individuals. The angel represented the government, an institution that was
established to enforce the law. By necessity, it was an institution of force.

The power of coercion

Perhaps the most fundamental of all government rights is the just use of
force. The entire concept of government could be reduced to legalized or
authorized force. In its pristine form, government functions as the legitimate
enforcer of law by which society is organized and maintained.
 I once had dinner with a well-known
United States senator. In the course of our conversation, the senator made a
comment that astounded me. He said,"I do not believe that any government
ever has the right to coerce any of its citizens to do anything."

I replied, "Do you mean, then, that

no government ever has the right to govern?"The senator admitted that he
had not considered the foundational reason for which governments exist.

His oversight is not astonishing. We

live in an environment where government is an established reality that is
exceedingly complex. This is not a period of governmental formation that
would call for reflection and discussion about the fundamental role and nature
of government. That occurred in the eighteenth century, when governments
in the West were going through radical transitions from monarchies to the
new models of republics and democracies.

If, as the senator suggested, no

government has the right to coerce its citizens to do anything, it follows
logically that no government has the right to enforce its laws. Laws are then
reduced to suggestions or advice. Without law enforcement, we could violate
government legislation recklessly. If we didn't feel like paying taxes, no one
could confiscate our money. If we decided to murder someone, no one could
forcibly arrest us. In such cases, the government could invite us to attend jail
for a season, but the invitation would have an RSVP that we could choose to
ignore.
 Upon further reflection, the senator
realized he had to amend his original statement. He said, "No government
ever has the right to coerce its citizens to do anything unjustly." With that
qualification, he got to the heart of the matter. The legitimacy of law
enforcement presupposes that the laws themselves are just. Any unjust use of
force is evil. It is a sign of tyranny.

In a democratically oriented society,

the potential for tyranny is often overlooked. Because we have free elections,
which most obvious tyrannies prohibit, we think we have an absolute
safeguard against tyranny. Every black person in the United States knows the
folly of that assumption. Alexis de Tocqueville, in evaluating the American
"experiment" of democracy, warned of the potential for the tyranny of the
majority. A majority can legislate laws as unjust as those announced by a
dictator.

A corresponding principle is that a

ballot is a bullet. Every time we cast a ballot in favor of a particular piece of
legislation, we are choosing a law that will be backed up by all the force
government has at its disposal. By law, government has the power and
authority to use force to ensure obedience to the law. With every law,
someone's freedom is restricted. For a society to be just, its laws must be just.
If an unjust law is passed and enforced, anyone who is coerced to comply with
the law is a victim of injustice.

If I think of the ballot as a potential

bullet, I will be more careful when I vote. The word vote comes from the Latin
word votum, which means "will." When I cast my vote, I express my will.
Indeed, if my vote is decisive or a part of the winning majority, then I am not
merely expressing my will but imposing my will on others.
 Many people think that the vote is
merely a means to express personal desires or to seek personal gain, usually
at the expense of others. On the contrary, to be ethically scrupulous in the
casting of votes, we must vote only for what is just. To vote for a vested
interest without just cause is to exercise tyranny.

The obligations of government

If it is the fundamental right of government to rule by force, then it is the

fundamental responsibility of government to exercise that rule justly. No
government ever has the moral right to be unjust. Consider the most
significant biblical teaching on the nature of government, found in Paul's
epistle to the Romans:
Let every person be subject to the
governing authorities. For there is
no authority except from God, and
those that exist have been
instituted by God. Therefore
whoever resists the authorities
resists what God has appointed,
and those who resist will incur
judgment. For rulers are not a
terror to good conduct, but to bad.
Would you have no fear of the one
who is in authority? Then do what
is good, and you will receive his
approval, for he is God's servant
for your good. But if you do
wrong, be afraid, for he does not
bear the sword in vain. For he is
the servant of God, an avenger
who carries out God's wrath on
the wrongdoer. Therefore one
must be in subjection, not only to
avoid God's wrath but also for the
sake of conscience. For because of
this you also pay taxes, for the
authorities are ministers of God,
attending to this very thing. Pay to
all what is owed to them: taxes to
whom taxes are owed, revenue to
whom revenue is owed, respect to
whom respect is owed, honor to
whom honor is owed.

O
we no one anything, except to
love each other, for the one who
loves another has fulfilled the law.
For the commandments, "You shall
not commit adultery, You shall not
murder, You shall not steal, You
shall not covet," and any other
commandment, are summed up in
 this word: "You shall love your
neighbor as yourself." Love does
no wrong to a neighbor; therefore
love is the fulfilling of the law.
(Rom. 13:1-10)

This passage begins with a

command of obedience to civil government. Though the Christian's highest
obligation and devotion is directed to God Himself, the Supreme Magistrate,
the Supreme Authority, indeed the Author of all authority, commands him to
be subject to civil authority. The Bible does not support the attitude that
declares, "I will obey God and ignore the state." Christians have a sober
mandate to bend over backward to be civilly obedient. (Of course, Christians
not only may but must exercise civil disobedience if the civil magistrate
commands what God forbids or forbids what God commands.)

The reason Paul gives for his

exhortation to obey civil authority is that the authority and power of the state
rest in the authority and power of God. Government exists by divine
institution; earthly government was ordained by God. To oppose government
per se is to oppose God.
 The fact that government is
instituted by God does not mean that every government is pleasing to God.
Like individuals, governments can rebel against God and become instruments
of evil. It is ironic that Paul is writing to Christians living in Rome, telling them
to be obedient citizens, as it was the government of the Roman Empire that
later unjustly executed the apostle himself.

Government is to be on the side of

good and not evil. Since government is instituted by God and is answerable
and accountable to Him, it always has the responsibility to act justly. When a
government acts unjustly, it becomes a terror to the good, and those who
pursue virtue have every reason to fear its awful power.

Even in the corruption of Rome,

there was some commitment to justice and virtue. As a general truth, people
who were just and virtuous were considered praiseworthy by the Roman state.
For example, Rome did not punish businessmen who used honest weights and
measures and fulfilled their contracts. To the extent that Rome's system was
just, it had the approval of God.

Paul refers to government

authorities as servants of God, or ministers. It may seem strange to think of
politicians as "ministers," yet the English language still carries that idea. For
example, the leading elected official in Great Britain and many other nations
is called the "prime minister." Even American politicians describe themselves
as "public servants." Elected officials are to serve and minister to the people
they represent. In a certain sense, Paul views them as "ordained ministers."
 Romans 13:4 declares that the civil
magistrate "does not bear the sword in vain." As in the case of Genesis 3, we
see that part of the role of government is to use force to maintain the law. In
Romans 13, as in Genesis, the sword is the sign of the authorized power of
enforcement. The government's power to use the sword is not just symbolic,
it is real. The state has nothing less than capital authority.

Paul explains why we are to pay

taxes: The government must have funds in order to perform its legitimate
tasks. The Christian is commanded not only to pay taxes but also to give the
state honor. On several occasions, the Bible requires that Christians pray for
those in governing positions.

The latter verses of this passage-

involving commands against such things as adultery-may indicate a change in
subject by the apostle. I have included them because of the accent given to
love, particularly to the love of one's neighbors. Paul does not necessarily
change his focus, but merely extends his discussion of the role of government
into the realm of the law of love. He says in verse 10 that love is the
fulfillment of the law.

The relationship of love and law is

connected to our understanding of government. Government is instituted by
God as an expression of His love for us, an expression of His grace and mercy
toward sinful humanity. When Augustine said that government is necessary
because of evil, he obviously understood that what drives the necessity of
government is love. If God loves us and we love our fellow men, we will want
to see justice established. Injustice is opposed to love; injustice violates love.
 The most fundamental expression of
love is care for, concern for, and protection of human life. The foundational
obligation of all government is to protect, sustain, and maintain human life.
This is the very reason for the existence of government.

The scope or sphere of government

involvement and enterprise is a matter of perennial debate. Should the
government be in the business of delivering mail? Should the government
subsidize private businesses? Should it bail out financial institutions, create
stimulus packages for consumers, or salvage insolvent mortgages? There is
one nonnegotiable issue, though, regarding government involvement:
Government must be involved in protecting people from murder. The
protection of human life is at the heart of the role of government.

Separation of church and state

Since the Supreme Court decisions of Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of
Education, the debate over the separation of church and state has escalated.
Legal battles have been fought about teaching creation in public schools,
displaying Christmas symbols in public buildings, praying before football
games, and a host of other church-state issues. Certainly the protests of
religious institutions and religious people against the legalization of abortion
have fanned the flames of this controversy.

The separation of church and state

does not necessarily mean the separation of the state and God. Though the
founding fathers of the United States were not all Christians, they did
acknowledge the existence of God. Neither the Declaration of Independence
nor the Constitution claims autonomy or ultimate sovereignty for the state.
The foundational premise of American government is that the state receives
its right to govern from the Creator. The United States was rightly conceived
as a nation under God, not over God or independent of God. To acknowledge
the existence of a Creator God is to implicitly acknowledge His sovereign
authority and ownership over all He creates. To be under God is to be under
His authority and power.

Though the United States puts "In

God We Trust" on its currency, it is committed by law to refrain from
establishing any particular religion. We have no state church in the United
States. This is spelled out in the First Amendment to the Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of
the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances."

This provision prohibits the state

from exalting a particular religion to a privileged or favored status. If a
building funded by public tax dollars is used to promote Christianity, a Jew, a
Muslim, or anyone else has the right to cry foul. At the same time, the law
guarantees the free exercise of religion. This applies to any and all religions.

Basically, the separation of church

and state means that these two institutions perform distinct and separate
functions. It is not the task of the church to provide for the national defense or
to bear arms. Conversely, it is not the task of the state to administer the
sacraments or to preach the gospel. Each institution has a distinctive role to
play. Ideally these roles are to be carried out with mutual respect and
cooperation. The state is to ensure that the church has the freedom to carry
out its mission, and the church is to be supportive of the state in carrying out
its mission. This separation was never intended to devolve into a rivalry for
power and control.

There are times when the two

institutions must interact. For example, if the church is guilty of
misappropriation of funds, the state has a right and a duty to become
involved. Likewise, if the state becomes involved in unjust actions, the church
has a right and a duty to exercise prophetic criticism toward the state.

Any adherent of a religious

institution is involved in both spheres. Because a person is a Christian, a Jew,
or a Muslim, he or she is not automatically disfranchised from the state.
Indeed, even if a person is ordained clergy, he is still able to run for public
office. However, a religious person does not have the moral right to use the
political arena for vested interests if those interests are unjust.
 What is an appropriate role, then,
for people and churches that wish to contest abortion laws? When the church
calls on the state to prohibit abortion, the state is not being asked to establish
a religion. Nor is the state being asked to be the church. The church is simply
asking the state to be the state. If it is the role of the state to protect, sustain,
and maintain human life, and if it is the conviction of the church that abortion
involves the destruction of human life, then it follows that the church has the
right to call the state to outlaw abortion. The church is not asking the state to
baptize human beings, but to protect the lives of unborn humans.

From a theological perspective,

abortion is a "common grace" issue; that is, it involves the common welfare of
humanity. When the church encourages the state to aid those suffering from a
natural disaster such as a hurricane or an earthquake, the church is asking
the state to assist in the common cause of meeting human need. Though
Christians and churches may at times overstep the boundaries and
improperly intrude their religious concerns into the public sphere, I do not
think this is the case with abortion. There is no greater arena of common
grace and common concern than human life.

It is clear that abortion is considered

by many to be only a moral issue. This has led to the prevalent opinion that
opposition to abortion involves an unwarranted intrusion of the church into
the public domain.
The legislating of morality

A frequently heard slogan is, "You can't legislate morality." This phrase has
undergone a strange evolution in meaning. The expression originally meant a
person's behavior cannot automatically be altered by simply passing laws;
legislation doesn't stop people from doing what they are determined to do.
However, the contemporary meaning of the phrase is that it is wrong or
illegitimate to enact legislation that restricts moral behavior.

This is a ridiculous notion. If it were

applied consistently, the government would enact very little legislation.
Perhaps Congress could spend its time debating the colors of the flag or
naming an official national bird. Virtually all government legislation has moral
ramifications. It is a moral question whether people are permitted to steal the
private property of others. Murder is a moral matter. How one drives a car on
the highway has moral implications, because reckless driving represents a
clear and present danger to the welfare of other people. Ecological
considerations in legislation have moral import. The list could continue almost
indefinitely. To argue that the state should not legislate moral behavior is silly
and thoughtless.

Perhaps the intent of "you can't

legislate morality" is that the state should not interfere in matters of private
morality as distinguished from public morality. We hear strident appeals that
government should ignore the private behavior of consenting adults.
However, the moment the consenting adults involve someone else, the
matter is no longer private but by definition social. Since the question of
abortion involves at the very least the destiny of a potential human being
other than the consenting adults, it is a societal and public matter.

A fundamental concern of law is the

protection of the weak against the strong and powerful. Such weakness is
vividly seen in the utter helplessness of the unborn baby. The unborn have no
voting rights and no physical power to avert their destruction. If their interests
are to be served and protected, it must be by adults in general and by
government in particular. The Supreme Court decided that the state has no
compelling interest in the fetus until viability. (One wonders at what point the
fetus has a compelling interest in the state.) By denying the unborn the
fundamental right to live, the state has reneged on its solemn duty.

The Roe v. Wade decision has

provoked the most serious ethical crisis in the history of the United States.
This is the nadir in American jurisprudence, the moment of the state's
greatest failure to be the state.

Summary

• Government is a divine gift. Its role is to restrain evil so that human beings
can live in peace and safety.
• The most fundamental right of government is the just use of force.

• According to Scripture, the authority and power of the state rest in the
authority and power of God.

• The protection of human life is at the head of proper governmental concern.

• The foundational premise of the United States government is that the state
receives the right to govern from the Creator.

• Separation of church and state means that the two entities perform distinct
and separate functions. The separation does not
necessarily mean the separation of the state and God.

• Because moral issues are at the center of all human endeavors, government
inevitably is involved in "legislating morality."
 Discussion Questions

1. Why do some in society think that the church should not speak out on
political issues? Why do some in the church think that
the church should avoid political or legislative affairs?

2. What is the state's responsibility in the abortion debate? What is the

church's responsibility?

3. What do you fear most when you or your church become involved in
governmental or legislative affairs?

4. When must Christians disobey the governing authorities?

5. What is the best possible relationship between church and state?

6. Is abortion a matter of private morality? Why or why not?

 
 
Every man ... is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake,
and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest
moral purpose.

-Ayn Rand

Feminists need to ask why the "sexist" establishment

supports abortion. It may be that abortion enhances the
male's freedom to exploit by sparing him from the worry
ofpaternity.
 -Bill Crouse

One of the most frequent arguments heard in favor of legal

abortion is that a woman has a right to her body. What does
this mean?

The current debate

is not over whether or not a woman in the United States has
the legal right to her body with respect to abortion. Since the
Roe v. Wade decision, she has that right. But should she
have that right?
The right to privacy

The closest the Constitution comes to affirming a woman's

right to her body is an implied "right to privacy." Roe v. Wade
utilized the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to make this
claim. Among abortion adherents, there is a strong
sentiment that abortion legislation improperly intrudes into
the privacy rights of people and families. In simple language,
they plead that it is none of the state's business whether a
woman terminates her pregnancy or chooses to carry it to
term.

The relevant
portions of the United States Constitution are as follows:
The enumeration
in the
Constitution of
certain rights
shall not be
construed to
deny or
disparage others
retained by the
people. (Ninth
Amendment,
1791)

Section 1. All
persons born or
naturalized in the
United States
and subject to
the jurisdiction
thereof, are
 citizens of the
United States
and of the State
wherein they
reside. No State
shall make or
enforce any law
which shall
abridge the
privileges or
immunities of
citizens of the
United States;
nor shall any
State deprive
any person of
life, liberty, or
property, without
due process of
law; nor deny to
any person
within its
jurisdiction the
equal protection
of the laws.
(Fourteenth
Amendment,
1868)

Immediately
evident from even a cursory reading of these amendments is
the absence of a single explicit word about privacy rights.
The concept of the right to privacy, on which legalized
abortion is based, is not mentioned explicitly anywhere in
the Constitution. Without analysis, the majority opinion in
Roe v. Wade decided the issue by simple assertion: "This
right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth
Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions
upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court
determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights
to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's
decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.""

The Supreme Court

should not be faulted for being jealous to protect the privacy
rights of citizens from the unwarranted invasion or intrusion
of the state. Few of us have a desire to live with Big Brother
monitoring our every action and eavesdropping on our every
word. The specter of such a society is hideous. We should be
thankful we have such things as locks for our bedroom
doors. But this question remains: Is there any ethical or
moral justification for including the right to have an abortion
under the broader category of the right to privacy?

From an ethical
perspective, we must raise this question: Is the right to
privacy an absolute right? Does God, for example, give us
the right to blaspheme Him as long as we don't do it
publicly? Do I have the right to murder someone or disfigure
his property as long as I do it in privacy? Obviously not.
There are moral limitations to the right of privacy. How far do
those limitations extend?

Once again, the

debate returns to the question of when life begins. If the
justices of the Supreme Court had been convinced that the
fetus is a living human person, it is highly unlikely that they
would have included destroying the fetus within the right to
privacy. Surely the right to privacy is not a higher or greater
right than the right to life. If it were, I would have the moral
right to take the life of anyone who invaded my privacy.

Because I speak
nationally and have a national radio ministry, I have
experienced a substantive loss of privacy. Though I am not
hounded like movie stars or famous athletes, nevertheless I
know what it means to have my dinner interrupted in a
restaurant by someone who wants me to autograph a book.
These interruptions are infrequent and mild, but real
nevertheless. Any person who works in the public eye knows
some sense of the loss of privacy. We rarely understand how
important privacy is until we lose some of it.
 We can understand
a celebrity's annoyance when he or she is disturbed in a
public place, but we would hardly argue that in such
instances the celebrity has the right to kill the fan or the
news reporter. We understand that the right to life
transcends the right to privacy. If a fetus is a human life,
then the Supreme Court erred in allowing the destruction of
the fetus under the application of the right of privacy.

A woman's moral rights to her body

Most people agree that a woman certainly has a
considerable number of rights to her body. She has a right
not to be subjected to rape or malicious physical injury, for
example. But is the woman's right to her body absolute? In
addition to the legal right related to abortion, does a woman
have the moral right to do anything she pleases with her
body? For example, can a woman use her body as a
battering ram to injure others? Does she have a moral right
to sell her body in prostitution? Is she free to mutilate her
body or to destroy it through suicide? These questions reveal
that the issue of a woman's right to her body is more
complicated than it first appears.

Whatever moral
rights a woman has to her body must be grounded in some
norm; otherwise, the claim is arbitrary. From where does a
moral right to one's body with respect to abortion come? Is it
given by God? That would be exceedingly difficult to prove.
Does it come from some other ethical norm? If so, which
one?

A woman does
have some rights to her body. However, it is not evident that
she has an absolute right to her body. The right to abortion,
based on the right to one's body, demands justification
beyond mere assertion.
Is the fetus a part of the woman's body?

Contained within the argument concerning the rights a

woman has to her body is an assumption that must be
challenged-that the fetus is a part of the woman's body. The
fetus is contained within the woman's body and is connected
to it, but that does not mean the fetus is a part of the
mother's body. It is more accurate to say that though the
fetus shares the same geographical location of the woman's
body, the fetus is not essentially a part of her body. We can
distinguish between the essence of the woman's body and
the essence of the fetus. Given the gestation process, the
fetus is neither the product essentially or organically of the
mother's body alone, nor is the fetus a permanent fixture of
the woman's body. Left to the natural course, the unborn
baby will leave the mother's body to carry out his or her own
life. As such, the fetus is capable of being essentially distinct
from the essence of the mother. The fetus has a brain, a
heart, and fingerprints-a unique identity, which is not merely
personal but is also physical. The biological structure and
essence of the fetus is not exactly the same as the biological
structure and essence of the mother.
 The discovery of
genetic fingerprinting added important information to this
discussion. In the early 1980s, a British geneticist named
Alec Jeffries made a surprising discovery in the process of
mapping human genes. Jeffries extracted DNA molecules
from a sample of blood cells and cut them into unequal bits
by adding enzymes. The fragments were put into a gel,
where an electrical field caused the larger fragments to
separate from the smaller ones. The DNA fragment pattern
was transferred to a nylon membrane. Jeffries then added
radioactively labeled pieces of DNA to act as probes. The
membrane was then subjected to X-ray analysis. The X-ray
film revealed vast numbers of genetic markers that exhibited
an amazing degree of individual specificity.

Later experiments-
both in England and in the United States-confirmed that each
person, with the exception of identical twins, has a unique
genetic fingerprint. In 1985, Jeffries declared: "You would
have to look for one part in a million million million million
million before you would find one pair with the same genetic
fingerprint, and with the world population of only five billion
it can be categorically said that a genetic fingerprint is
individually specific and that any pattern, excepting identical
twins, does not belong to anyone on the face of this planet
whoever has been or ever will be.""
 If any single cell of
a woman's body is analyzed to find its essential biological
structure, each and every cell will have the same genetic
fingerprint. Likewise, an analysis of the cells of the fetus will
determine that each cell has the same genetic fingerprint-
which is different from that of the mother. This indicates that,
at the physical biological level, there is a clear line of
demarcation between the body of the fetus and the body of
the mother. Two distinct sets of human tissue reside in the
pregnant woman's body.

How about the

father? Does he have any rights related to the fetus?
Although the father does not carry the fetus in his body, he
has contributed half of the substance that is the genetic
structure of the fetus. In the case of abortion, at least three
people (not to mention grandparents and other ancestors
who contributed to the unique genetic structure of the fetus)
have a stake in the woman's decision about "her body."

Without a solid
justification, is the argument for the right to one's body just
another way of obtaining personal preference? The least
charitable interpretation is to say it is a thinly veiled tactic to
earn the right to do what one wants.
 I do not want to
imply that selfishness is the only reason behind the
argument for a woman's right to her body. It is important,
however, that those who advance this argument be careful
to clarify their precise meaning. Because of the various
possible interpretations and their inherent weaknesses, the
argument, as it is so frequently and simply stated, is
insufficient ground for justifying abortion.

Summary
• Women were granted the legal right to their bodies as it
relates to abortion by the Roe v. Wade
Supreme Court decision. The court
ruled that this right was implied by the
Constitution's Ninth and Fourteenth
amendments.

• The right to life transcends the right to privacy.

• No people, including women, have an absolute right to do

anything they wish with their bodies.

• The fetus, although sharing geographical space within a

woman's body and connected to her,
has a distinct genetic imprint and in
essence is a separate entity, not a
part of the woman's body.
 Discussion Questions

1. Why is it seemingly so easy for people to get away with

invalid arguments in the mass media?
Why do many people so easily miss
the logical fallacies in invalid
arguments?

2. What restraints are placed on our rights to our bodies (see

1 Cor. 6:9-10)?

3. What kind of right do most people mean by a "right to

one's body"? Where does this right
come from?
4. Is the fetus a part of the woman's body? Why or why not?

5. Do we have any right to privacy? How would you frame

that right if you were writing a
constitution?

6. How does a woman have a right to choose regarding

pregnancy?

 
 Duty is ours; consequences are God's.

-Gen. Thomas "Stonewall"Jackson

Men no longer are bound together by ideas, but by interest.

 -Alexis de Tocqueville

Pro-abortion and pro-choice activists often rely on three

basic arguments:

• If abortion is
made illegal, women will have dangerous backalley
abortions.
 • It is inconsistent
to be anti-abortion and pro-capital punishment.

• Men should not

speak about abortion because it is a women's issue.

Each of these
arguments can be answered without hesitation or apology.
If abortion is made illegal, women will have dangerous back-
alley abortions

Pro-abortion activists predict there will be a carnage of

human life if existing abortion laws are changed. How valid is
this argument, which is based ultimately on the "lesser of
two evils" principle? The thinking is that though legal
abortion may not be entirely desirable, it is more desirable
than the alternative. If abortion is outlawed, it is said, women
will be forced to place their lives in the hands of unskilled
and unscrupulous back-alley butchers.

This argument
assumes that if abortion is made illegal a significant number
of women will still have them. Instead of being performed by
qualified physicians in antiseptic environments, abortions will
be performed in dingy criminal settings or by rank amateurs
armed with coat hangers. Though this scenario may seem
overly dramatic, it does have historical precedent and is
therefore realistic.

The argument rests

on a fairly sound premise. In all likelihood, if the law
prohibited abortion, some women would still seek them and
might even have them in perilous circumstances. Some
women would become the victims of gynecological butchery.
This is no small horror to contemplate.

More women have

died from abortions in the United States since abortion was
legalized than in the preceding times of illegal abortion. This
is due not to the incompetence of the physicians but to the
huge increase in the number of abortions performed. Pro-life
activists tend to assume that if abortion is once again made
illegal, the number of women who die or are permanently
injured from abortions will dramatically decrease to pre-Roe
v. Wade levels. This assumption probably makes an
enormous leap of faith. If Roe v. Wade were reversed, it is
highly unlikely that the number of deaths would revert to
what it was before.
 Our culture has
gone through nearly four decades of legal abortion. Now it is
a widely accepted practice, and the strong social taboos that
exercised restraint on abortion prior to Roe v. Wade will
probably not make a swift or certain comeback. Whether we
like it or not, abortion on demand is part of the fabric of
current experience. Here we see evidence of the original
meaning of "you can't legislate morality." This makes the
practical consequences of the reversal of abortion law a very
serious matter. Whether abortion remains legal or is made
illegal, women are going to continue to have abortions-and,
as a result, risk death.

The ethical issue at

stake, however, is not only the women who are dying or who
may die, but also the unborn babies who are killed every
year-one and a half million in the United States alone. This
remains the focal point of the debate. For those convinced
that abortion involves killing living human beings, the
continuation of it to protect those who are having the
abortions is ethically intolerable. The loss of a woman's life in
abortion is a tragic thing; but if abortion is evil, then the life
lost is that of the guilty party. The destruction of the unborn
baby is the loss of the innocent party. Ideally, we should
refrain from abortion altogether, because then neither the
woman nor the baby would die.
 If the practice of
abortion is unjust, then the protection of those who engage
in the practice is not the duty of the state. Concern for them
is certainly the duty of the church, but to protect a criminal
in the course of committing a crime is not the responsibility
of government.

Again, the
argument based on the concern for the harm that will come
to women who have illegal abortions presumes that aborting
unborn babies is a legitimate practice. In all likelihood, if the
pro-abortion activist who uses this argument were to be
convinced that the unborn are living human beings, this
argument from practical expediency would vanish in view of
the greater evil of the destruction of babies.
It is inconsistent to be anti-abortion and pro-capital
punishment

Pro-abortion activists repeatedly have charged pro-life

activists with a hypocritical inconsistency. The argument is
that if prolife activists are so stirred up about the loss of the
life of unborn babies, why are they not equally concerned
about the fate of men and women who are executed by the
criminal justice system? Even talk show host Larry King
made this charge, saying that he would give no credence to
pro-life supporters until they became more consistent in
their two positions.

There are two

responses. The first has to do with the logic of King's
complaint. Even if pro-life activists are wrong about their
view of capital punishment and are utterly inconsistent in
their views on the two matters, that does not disqualify their
grounds for objection to abortion. A person may hold
inconsistent views on two subjects and still be correct on one
of them. King must allow logically for the possibility of the
happy inconsistency. No one is right in all of his or her
thinking, and each person has some points of inconsistency.
That does not invalidate everything we believe.

Second, are anti-

abortion and pro-capital punishment views in fact
inconsistent? The biblical view of the overarching sanctity of
life is the same principle that leads people to be both anti-
abortion and pro-capital punishment. The biblical reason for
the institution of capital punishment is that murder is an
intolerable violation of the sanctity of life. The murderer who
willfully and maliciously takes a life thereby forfeits his right
to his own life.

Whether King or
others agree with this position, its weakness is not one of
inconsistency. Advocates of capital punishment cannot
rightly be charged with espousing a principle of injustice. If a
murderer is killed as a penalty for killing someone else, the
punishment is perfectly just. The penalty may not be
merciful, but it is not unjust. An injustice would be done to
the murderer only if his penalty were more severe than his
crime.
Men should not speak about abortion because it is a
women's issue

It is a specious argument to say that men should not speak

about abortion because it is a women's issue. Some people
include it as an extension of the argument for a woman's
right to privacy. That is, since childbearing is exclusive to
women, men have no right to address moral issues
connected to it. Such statements as, "If men had to carry
babies in pregnancy, there would be no laws against
abortion," reflect this radical view.

I once received a
letter from a Christian woman who chided me on precisely
this point. She maintained that I had no right to speak or
write on abortion because I am a man. Since she was a
professing Christian, I wondered what she would say if the
Lord Jesus Christ were to appear and begin speaking about
abortion. Would she disqualify Him as well simply on the
basis that He is male?

This argument is a
crass form of reverse sexism and female chauvinism. It is
unworthy of the feminist position, slanderous to men, and
trivial in its conception. If we followed this principle to its
logical conclusion, we would have to dismiss Moses, Paul,
Socrates, Plato, Confucius, or any other male teacher of
ethics from the discussion. Ultimately, we would have to
disqualify seven of nine of the current justices of the
Supreme Court, leaving Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Sonia Sotomayor to decide the matter by themselves.

More soberly, it is
important to realize that the current division over abortion is
not simply a division between men and women. Women are
at the forefront of the pro-life movement, and countless men
are involved in the pro-choice ranks. A common tactic in
debate or discussion is to attack the soundness of an
argument by attacking the person who espouses it. If
abortion is just, then it doesn't matter who argues for it-male
or female, black or white, Asian or European. The argument
must be decided on its own merits, not on the personalities
involved.
 Summary

• It is likely that abortion will continue to be in high demand

even if it becomes illegal.

• Although the death of a woman in any abortionlegal or

illegal-is tragic, the focal point of the
abortion debate must remain the
unborn child.

• Anti-abortion and pro-capital punishment views are not

biblically inconsistent. A high view of
the sanctity of life is foundational to
both positions.
• Abortion is not just a women's issue. Since the father
contributes one-half of the genetic
structure of the fetus, men should be
involved in the abortion discussion.

Discussion Questions
1. Is legalized abortion the lesser of two evils?

2. What unspoken assumptions are part of the "backalley

abortion" arguments?

3. If abortion were illegal, what could be done to minimize

the number of illegal abortions?

4. What is the government's responsibility concerning the

safety of lawbreakers?

5. Must those who are pro-life be against capital punishment

in order to be consistent?
6. If men were disallowed from dealing with the abortion
issue, what issue would that exclude
women from?

7. How can pro-life activists exhibit an image of consistent

reasoning and concern?

 
If we don't know, then shouldn't we morally opt on the side
that is life? if you came upon an immobile body and you
yourself could not determine whether it was dead or alive, I
think that you would decide to consider it alive until
someone could prove it was dead. You wouldn't get a shovel
and start covering it up. And I think we should do the same
thing with regard to abortion.

-President Ronald Reagan

In the ongoing debate about abortion, the pro-choice

position has become pivotal to public opinion. Over the past
four decades, poll after poll has shown that anywhere from
half to three-fourths of all Americans agreed with this
statement: "I personally feel that abortion is morally wrong,
but I also feel that the decision as to whether to have an
abortion has to be made by every woman herself."
 Why is the pro-
choice position so attractive and vigorously guarded? To
learn why, it is important first to review the historical
strategy of the militant pro-abortion groups.

In the early 1970s,

prior to Roe v. Wade, militant advocates of legalized abortion
met to plan and adopt a strategy for changing the abortion
climate in the United States. Their strategy later was made
public by defectors whose thinking on abortion changed. Dr.
Bernard Nathanson, a physician who performed thousands of
legal abortions before he became utterly convinced that he
was destroying human life, made public the initial pro-
abortion plan.

The strategy was

as old as it was effective-the classic "divide and conquer"
plan. First the pro-abortion activists asked themselves, "From
where will the fiercest opposition to abortion come?" They
rightly concluded it would be from the Roman Catholic
Church. In order to counterbalance this powerful influence,
they sought to enlist the support of mainline Protestant
denominations. Pro-abortion activists did not ask these
denominations to openly endorse the pro-abortion position;
rather, they suggested a less-offensive middle-ground
position called "prochoice." They appealed to a sense of fair
play in overcoming what they perceived as tyranny
emanating from Rome.

At this same time,

many of the mainline churches were involved in
controversies on vital issues relating to feminism. The
barriers against the ordination of women were crumbling,
and women had won unprecedented positions of church
authority and power. These sweeping gains had been won at
painful cost, but many women were fearful that their gains
were not secure. By linking the pro-choice position to that of
women's rights, the pro-abortion activists' strategy was
effective in gaining widespread endorsement for the pro-
choice cause from Protestant denominations. In a vital sense,
the pro-choice position rode the coattails of the women's-
rights position in the churches. Those who were struggling
for the consolidation of women's rights in the church
perceived that adopting the pro-choice position was critical,
or their activism for other rights might be weakened.

Outside the church,

the secular public was encouraged to adopt pro-choice views
because of the link to feminism and the cherished principle
of freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is as American as
baseball and apple pie.
 The emphasis of
the pro-abortion strategy was not to convert people to a
clear position in favor of abortion, but merely to get them to
affirm each person's inalienable right to choose without
government intervention or coercion. This was a standard
statement: "I'm personally not in favor of abortion, but I
don't want to impose my view on others. It's a matter of
individual liberty and private conscience."

While the pro-

abortion strategy focused attention on women's dignity and
rights, individual liberty, private matters of conscience, and
the freedom of the state to ignore the church's morality, the
cardinal issue of abortion-the rights of the unborn-receded
into the background, slowly obscured by side issues.
Legal allies: pro-abortion and pro-choice positions

What the pro-abortion strategists clearly understood was not

so clearly perceived by those standing on the "middle
ground" of the pro-choice position. The pro-choice position
may seem safe culturally, socially, and ethically, but it is not
a middle ground on the legal front. This was the brilliance of
the pro-abortion strategy: From a legal perspective, a vote
for choice is a vote for abortion. The difference between the
two positions is inconsequential, and legally, they are allies
in the same camp.

This is so because
the present laws do not mandate abortion; they allow it. As
long as the law does not prohibit abortion, it serves the
cause of both the pro-abortion and pro-choice camps. When
individuals vote "pro-choice," they vote to allow abortion,
which is the exact goal of the militant pro-abortionist.
 The pro-abortion
activists parlayed their small number into a national majority
of public opinion by gaining the silent majority as their ally.
Although the pro-abortion activists were (and are) far
outnumbered by the anti-abortion, pro-life activists, they
were able to swell their ranks dramatically by gathering all
who are pro-choice. A significant shift occurred in the
terminology used in the debate: Pro-abortion activists
adopted the label of pro-choice for themselves. Time will tell
whether this will provoke a backlash from the middle-of-the-
road pro-choice activists, who may rebel if the pro-choice
position becomes clearly identified with pro-abortion. Indeed,
recent debates over health-care reform and taxpayer
subsidies for abortion have already begun to erode the pro-
choice/pro-abortion coalition.

A person who is
conscientiously pro-choice must understand that he or she is
a legal ally, willingly or unwillingly, with the pro-abortion
position. If you the reader have taken a prochoice position to
avoid either extreme camp, you must squarely face the
reality that from a legal standpoint you have chosen the pro-
abortion camp.
The meaning of pro-choice

What is the substance of the pro-choice position? If a woman

says that she personally would not have an abortion but
does not want to deny someone else's right to do it, on what
grounds would this woman hesitate to get an abortion?
Perhaps she simply wants to have as many babies as
possible and doesn't anticipate ever facing an unwanted
pregnancy. Maybe this person thinks a fetus is a living
human being or is not sure about the fetus'status. Perhaps
she believes that the fetus is a living human being but does
not want to impose this view on others. Here we reach the
crux of the pro-choice position. Is the right to choose an
absolute right? Do we have the moral right to choose what is
morally wrong? To ask such a question is to answer it.

Again, every law

enacted limits or restricts someone's choices. That is the
very nature of law. If we do not wish to restrict other people's
choices through legislation, we must stop legislating and
cease voting. I think that most people will grant that freedom
of choice is not an absolute freedom. No human being is an
absolute law unto himself. Unless we are prepared to buy
into an ethical system of pure relativism by which law and
society become impossible, we must flee as the wind from
the proposition that the individual is autonomous.

To move from the

abstract into the concrete, I wonder whether pro-choice
activists object to laws protecting their personal property
rights? Does the thief breaking into a home to steal
someone's television have the inalienable right to make that
choice? Does a man have the right to choose to rape a
woman? These extreme examples make it obvious that
freedom of choice cannot be considered an absolute right.

At what line must

freedom of choice end? I believe it ends where my freedom
of choice steps on another person's inalienable rights of life
and liberty. No unborn baby has ever had the right to choose
or deny its own destruction. Indeed, as others have said, the
most dangerous place in the United States for a human
being is inside the womb of a woman. For millions of unborn
babies, the womb has become a cell on death row. The
inmate is summarily executed without benefit of a trial or a
word of defense. This execution literally involves being torn
limb from limb. Is this description too graphic? Is it too
emotionally provocative? No. It would be only if the
description were untrue.

The right to
choose, as sacred as it may be, does not carry with it the
arbitrary right to destroy a human life. This is as much a
miscarriage of justice as it is a miscarriage of a human baby.

What is it about
the freedom to choose that makes it so precious? What
provoked Patrick Henry to cry, "Give me liberty or give me
death"? Certainly we desire some self-determination, and the
idea of living under external coercion is abhorrent. We are
thinking creatures, and we value our freedom to make
choices. Most of us would hate being imprisoned, but even in
a maximum-security penitentiary, a person's right to choose
is not totally stripped away.
 It is this principle of
self-determination-having a say in my own condition and
future-that is brutally denied to every unborn, aborted child.
I had no say in my mother's decision whether to have an
abortion or to carry me to term. My entire life was in her
hands. Had she chosen abortion, my life would have been
snuffed out before I was born. You and I are real human
beings. We were once helpless to exercise our own precious
right to choose. We were once totally dependent on
somebody else's choice for our very existence.

A second crucial
dimension of the right to choose is the question of when to
make the moral choice concerning the baby's life. (Because
this involves sexual morality, it is a very unpopular subject in
the discussion.) The time to choose whether or not to have a
baby is not after the baby has been conceived and begun its
development. Except in cases of rape, sexual intercourse
with or without means of contraception is still a matter of
choice. Choices we make, whether of a sexual or nonsexual
nature, always have consequences. It is an axiom of ethics
and of law that we are responsible for the consequences of
our choices.

When we have
sexual intercourse, we may not intend or desire to produce
another human life. We are aware, however, that intercourse
begins the reproduction process and can produce such
offspring. To kill the offspring is hardly a responsible or moral
method of handling this decision.

Pro-choice and women's-rights positions

The close link historically between the pro-choice and
women'srights positions already has been explained. To be
anti-abortion does not equal being anti-women. On the
contrary, I am persuaded that being pro-life equals being
radically pro-women. Women have value and dignity
because of their basic humanity, not because of their
gender. A vote for abortion is a vote against the sanctity of
life-the sanctity of female life as well as the sanctity of male
life. Abortion is not a gender issue, it is a human life issue.

The feminist
movement is driven by the relentless pursuit of human
dignity. That is why it seems a radical distortion and gross
inconsistency to link feminism with the pro-abortion or
prochoice positions. The pro-abortion and pro-choice
positions do little for the cause of human dignity. On the
contrary, they demean human dignity and, by implication,
the dignity of women.
Are you pro-choice or undecided?

In conclusion, if a woman avoids abortion personally because

she is convinced abortion takes a human life, but she does
not want to violate someone else's right to choose, she has
made the fatal ethical error of promoting the right to choose
above the more fundamental right to life. If I lose my right to
live, my right to choose becomes moot. The right to choose
is grounded on the right to life. Therefore, I urge you, if you
hold the pro-choice position on these grounds, to change
your vote to pro-life.

I recognize,
however, that many who are pro-choice are basically
uncertain. This is primarily why I have written this book. My
purpose has been to convince the undecided that the pro-life
view is the proper ethical option. I believe the evidence is
overwhelming that an embryo or fetus is a living human
being.
 However, even
after weighing the evidence, some of you will wonder
whether a fetus is a living human being. If that describes
you, I urge you to review chapter 5 on what to do in the case
of moral or ethical uncertainty. It is understandable that if
you are unsure of your own opinion, you would be reluctant
to impose that view on others.

I must state again

forcefully that the pro-choice view is not an undecided or
middle-ground position. It supports the view that freedom of
choice includes the freedom to choose an abortion. It lands
on the "pro" rather than the "con" side of the abortion issue.

Are you inclined to

the pro-choice position on the grounds of moral uncertainty?
I believe you have another alternative, one that will remove
you from an ethically questionable position. Why not simply
declare that you are undecided? To be undecided is to not
opt for the pro-abortion, pro-life, or pro-choice positions.
 Summary

• The current abortion situation in the United States is to

some extent the result of a carefully
planned and executed strategy of pro-
abortion groups.

• The "pro-choice" middle-ground alternative is a proabortion

position from a legal perspective.

• The right to choose is not an absolute right that outweighs

the more fundamental right to life.
• The legitimate moral and ethical choice as to whether or
not to produce or prevent human life
is made prior to sexual intercourse.

• For those who are uncomfortable with the prolife, pro-

abortion, or pro-choice positions,
there is another possibility:
undecided.

Discussion Questions
1. What is the appeal of the pro-choice position?

2. What kinds of strategies do pro-life supporters use?

3. Why would the pro-abortion or pro-choice positions be

considered pro-women?

4. What is wrong with the statement "I'm personally not in

favor of abortion, but I don't want to
impose my view on others"?

5. Why are the pro-abortion and pro-choice positions really

anti-women?
6. What kinds of choices do fetuses have?

 
 Our whole life would proceed in keeping with nature, if we
would but control our desires at the outset and refrain from
taking away with oils and vicious techniques the human
progeny born by the providence of God.

-Clement of Alexandria

In the simplest terms, a woman has an abortion because she

does not desire to have the baby. This decision is
precipitated for many reasons. The woman may be pregnant
because she is the victim of an involuntary event, such as
rape or incest. Preliminary medical reports may indicate that
the fetus, if left to develop to term, may be born deformed or
suffer from some serious medical disorder. It may be that the
anticipated birth would bring severe economic hardship to
the woman, and possibly to the rest of her family as well.
Perhaps the expectant parents want a boy rather than a girl,
or vice versa. Quite simply, the mother or both parents may
not want to have children. Surely one of the most frequent
situations is pregnancy out of wedlock. The social or familial
embarrassment or trauma may loom so large that abortion
offers a way of escape. These are only a few of the
motivations for choosing abortion.

A common thread
in all of these motivations is the perceived pain that a child's
birth will bring. Abortion seems a quick and clean solution to
that perceived pain, though a radical one.
Abortion and hedonism

Some people have characterized the culture in the United

States as neo-hedonistic or the golden age of hedonism.
Hedonism is often defined as a worldview or lifestyle marked
by a vigorous pursuit of pleasure. More accurately, hedonism
is an ethical philosophy in which the good is described as the
maximum achievement of pleasure with the maximum
avoidance of pain. It means grabbing all the gusto while
having as few aches and pains as possible.

As a philosophy,
hedonism has long had problems. Realizing that an unbridled
pursuit of pleasure may bring as a consequence an
abundance of undesired pain (for example, a pounding
headache may follow overindulgence in the pleasures of
alcohol), the ancient Epicureans sought to achieve a
moderated and balanced quest for pleasure. There is a
paradox in hedonism, because if we fail to achieve the
pleasure we seek, we are frustrated, and if we gain the
pleasure we seek, we tend to be bored. Thus, the pursuit of
pleasure may be doomed to either frustration or boredom.

Hedonism as a
formal ethic has few serious advocates beyond the likes of
Hugh Hefner, but at the practical level we are all influenced
by it. Unless we are masochists, most of us do not enjoy
pain, so we eagerly seek ways to escape or at least diminish
it. This is why the temptation to opt for abortion is so
powerful. It is a way of escape.

Most pastors and

physicians find it difficult to counsel a person to take a
course of action that will be painful. This is perhaps the most
demanding call of virtue. It is one thing to know what the
good is; it is quite another to have the moral courage to
pursue it while facing some kind of personal pain or loss. Yet
selfsacrifice is at the heart of true virtue: Suffering pain in
order to do what is right is the mark of a virtuous person.
Doing what feels good is often easy. It's not so easy to do
what is good. Cultural mores reach the bottom when an ethic
like "If it feels good, do it" is embraced. Such slogans
become the epitaphs of a corrupt society.
 Not all concern for
avoidance of future pain is selfish. Where there is a strong
likelihood that the yet-to-be-born infant may face physical
suffering due to disease or malformation, the concern may
be directed toward the child.

Before further
discussion of specific motives for abortion, it is important to
make clear that the current national debate does not focus
on therapeutic abortion or on abortion in the case of rape or
incest. The great controversy concerns abortion on demand.
Of course, therapeutic abortion and abortion in the case of
rape or incest are important matters, but these particularly
complex ethical issues should not cloud the central debate.
Only a small number of abortions involve rape or incest, as
we will see later in this chapter. Likewise, abortions
performed to save the lives of women are exceedingly rare.
The real issue is abortion for convenience or because the
child is simply not wanted.

Justifying abortion
on the grounds that the baby is unwanted is a perilous tack.
If this motivation ignores the rights of the fetus, then the
same reasoning could justify infanticide or other forms of
homicide. I'm not suggesting that those who favor abortion
when the baby is unwanted also advocate infanticide or
homicide. The point is merely that if the undesirability of a
living fetus is a just ethical ground for its destruction, the
same principle would apply to other living humans. In other
words, if it is unjust to kill a three-year-old child or a three-
day-old child because he or she is undesired, then it is
likewise unjust to kill a living human before birth. The bottom
line is that undesirability is not a just moral basis to kill a
human being.

Frequently, when a
woman struggling with the question of abortion decides to
continue her pregnancy, even though she does not want a
baby, her thinking changes dramatically after her child's
birth. When a mother sees and holds her offspring, a bonding
often takes place that makes her wonder why she ever even
considered abortion. Obviously, after an abortion it is too late
for a woman to change her mind about the desirability of the
child.

Some people
justify abortion, even though the developing fetus may be
alive or at least has potential life, since the child is destined
to live in poverty or with some other social handicap. They
say it is better to destroy the unborn baby before birth.
 Certainly many
people throughout history have despised the day they were
born. Even biblical characters have cursed their births, Job
and Jeremiah being the classic examples (Job 3:1-4, 11, 16;
Jer. 20:18). Their lives involved such pain and torment that in
crisis moments they wished they had never been born. Yet
they went on to be people of great historical significance. As
another example, anyone looking at the life prospects for
Ludwig van Beethoven never would have guessed he had a
chance to contribute much to human culture after he went
blind.

Suicide is another
indicator of extreme frustration with life. The number of
suicides has risen in the United States, particularly among
teenagers, among whom it is the second leading cause of
death. Suicide, whatever its moral consequences, differs
sharply from abortion in one critical respect-the suicide
victim makes his or her own choice to live or die. As a living
human being, I do not want someone else to decide whether
the quality of my life is such that I should be destroyed.
The adoption option

As in any discussion of a highly charged issue, mistakes in

logic are common in the abortion debate. One of these is the
tendency for pro-abortion activists to commit "the false
dilemma," often called the either/or fallacy of reasoning. In
plain terms, this means that several options are incorrectly
reduced to but two options. Of course, some questions
clearly are limited to two options. For example, there either
is a God (or gods) or there is not; either God exists or He
does not-there is no middle alternative. However, just
because some issues have only two options does not mean
that all issues can validly be reduced to two options.

The either/or
fallacy in the abortion question often joins with another false
principle: the lesser of two evils. It goes like this: "Though
abortion admittedly is not a pleasant option, it is preferable
to the worse evil of having an unwanted child or a child
whose quality of life may be undesirable." Therefore,
abortion is justified as the lesser of two evils, and the fact
that there are other alternatives is lost in the process.

The most obvious

alternative to abortion is to put the baby up for adoption. In
this way, the burden of having to care for an unwanted child
after birth is removed from the pregnant woman. She still
must face the considerable discomfort of pregnancy and the
pain of childbirth. She may face parental disapproval, public
shame, or scandal. Choosing the alternative of adoption may
cost her a large price, but it is an honorable price. She will
have acted justly and not compromised her integrity.

I chose the term

integrity carefully. To have an abortion to avoid shame or
scandal is not an act of integrity. Integrity is very much at
the heart of this debate. To destroy a living fetus shows a
lack of personal integrity.
 Regrettably, the
option of adoption currently is fraught with serious
sociological problems. On the one hand, white couples face a
desperate lack of adoptable white babies. Countless white
couples, who earnestly desire to adopt, cannot find babies
unless they are willing to adopt biracial or minority babies.
Conversely, there are more minority and biracial babies
being put up for adoption than there are families willing to
adopt them. What is needed is not a decrease in the number
of babies for adoption, but an increase in the demand. Pro-
life activists need to model a willingness to adopt children of
races different from their own.

Families who adopt

children provide a model for pro-life activists. People who are
deeply concerned about the abortion issue can accomplish
something by going beyond protesting to the loving action of
adopting unwanted children.
The problems of rape and incest

Abortions to end rape- and incest-caused pregnancies

represent a very small number of cases and should be dealt
with separately from the broader question of legalized
abortion. As in all issues of human need and suffering, this
requires absolute compassion. It is a small consolation to a
rape victim who is pregnant to be told that she represents a
tiny minority. Her problem is real.

In 2008, nearly
ninety thousand forcible rapes were reported to authorities
in the United States. Officials estimate, however, that the
actual number of rapes is about four times as high as the
number that is reported. If that is true, somewhere around
three hundred and sixty thousand rapes occur in the United
States every year.
 Studies indicate
that the rate of pregnancy from unprotected intercourse
between fertile people is about three percent. If we apply
that figure to the annual rape estimate, approximately ten
thousand pregnancies occur each year from rape. However,
the actual number is probably significantly lower.

Dr. Carolyn
Gerstner offers reasons why the pregnancy rate in rapes is
lower: (1) traumatic situations often immediately stifle
ovulation; (2) the egg is fertile for only about twentyfour
hours after ovulation; (3) the sperm remains viable for only
forty-eight hours; (4) there may have been no actual
penetration in the rape assault; (5) even if there was
penetration, ejaculation may not have occurred; (6) rape
victims range in age from infancy to one hundred years of
age; only an unknown percentage fall into the fertility range
of twelve to fifty years of age; (7) some victims of rape are
infertile, sterile, or have had tubal ligation (many women use
some form of birth control and are protected from
pregnancy); and (8) the rapist may be sterile or have had a
vasectomy. For these reasons, pregnancies from untreated
rapes are rare.52

I want to point out

that proper medical treatment administered immediately
following a rape has a high degree of success in preventing
pregnancy. The Journal of the American Medical Association
of October 1971 documented 4,500 medically treated rape
cases over a ten-year period in Minneapolis and Saint Paul,
Minnesota. In these cases, there were no resulting
pregnancies.

A more severe
trauma is hard to imagine than that rare occasion when a
woman becomes pregnant as a result of being raped. The
victim had no choice in the matter of her pregnancy, and
now she is left with a decision with respect to an undesired
child. If the victim were my own daughter or a member of my
church, I would counsel her to maintain the pregnancy on
the grounds that the developing baby within her is a co-
victim of the rapist's heinous crime. To kill the fetus, who is
innocent of the offense, is to add insult to injury. I would
want to move heaven and earth to secure an extraordinary
support system for any woman put in this dreadful position
and to seek compensation for her injury.
Therapeutic abortions

Abortions performed to save the life of a mother are almost

nonexistent, because advances in medical technology now
largely prevent such situations. Yet it is possible that such an
agonizing dilemma could happen. This brings the awful
choice of deciding between the lesser of two evils. Do we
destroy the baby to save the mother or risk the life of the
mother to save the baby?

In principle, I opt
for saving the baby, but I am not zealous to make that a
matter of national law. This is an extremely vexing problem.
If the choice is between allowing "nature" to kill the mother
or "man" to kill the baby, I would choose the passive action
of possibly letting a woman die from natural consequences
rather than intervening to directly kill the unborn child. The
excruciating issue is "passive" or "active" killing. Another
reason to choose not to kill the child is the possibility that
God will sustain the mother's life.

Other serious and

difficult medical circumstances require complex ethical
answers. It is beyond the scope of this book to address them.
The central issue, however, must not be obscured or eclipsed
by extreme cases of special difficulty. The national debate is
not focused on such instances, nor should it be. The national
issue is abortion on demand. Even if it were decided in
extreme cases that abortion is an ethical option, the extreme
cases should not dictate the general law.
 Summary

• Some of the reasons given for abortion include anticipated

economic hardship for the newborn
child, the mother, or the family
members; possible birth defects or
other medical disorders; no desire to
have children out of wedlock; and
pregnancy as a result of rape or
incest.

• Regardless of the reason for abortion, in all cases abortion

is perceived as a "quick and clean"
solution to anticipated pain.
• Only a small number of abortions are performed as a result
of rape or incest. Therapeutic
abortions-those done to save the life
of the mother-are also rare.

• Adoption is one alternative to abortion. Because there is an

oversupply of unwanted biracial and
minority babies, pro-life adherents
need to seriously consider adoption of
such children.

• Extreme cases should not shift the focus of the abortion

debate: The national issue is abortion
on demand.

Discussion Questions
1. If abortion is homicide, can we ever allow it?

2. Is it wrong to seek pleasure and to avoid pain? Why or why

not?

3. How can we show compassion and affirm the unborn

baby's right to life in problem
pregnancy situations?

4. Why are pro-abortion activists adamant in framing their

argument around extremely rare
pregnancy situations?

5. Who should decide whether a life with handicaps is worth

living?
6. Are people with mental or physical disabilities
fundamentally more unhappy than
others?

7. Why is the Christian community reluctant to adopt

"difficult to place" babies? What can
be done to change this?

 
 
 A woman on welfare who has six children and no husband
and who is desirous of an abortion does not have an
immediate need for a lecture on morals! ... She of course
needs to know of the reconciling work of Christ, and when
she responds to His love, the Holy Spirit will quicken her to
moral issues.... Often by ministering to the physical, tangible
need we are privileged to meet the deeper spiritual one as
well.

-Bill Crouse
 The Christian church is the only army that shoots its
wounded.

-Unknown

Since the Bible mentions an unforgivable sin, there has been

much speculation concerning its specific identity. Some
people have jumped to the conclusion that abortion is the
unforgivable sin, because murder is one of the most heinous
of sins and abortion has been considered a form of murder. Is
this a valid conclusion concerning the unforgivable sin? No.
 Without delving
into the theological technicalities, let me say categorically
that there is no biblical evidence to support the idea and
considerable evidence to deny that abortion is the
unforgivable sin.

King David was

guilty of murder; for his personal gain, he conspired to have
Uriah killed. David wanted to marry Uriah's wife, Bathsheba.
David's remorse over his sin is a model of biblical contrition.
His prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 is classic. We have
every reason to believe that, even after his compound sins of
adultery and murder, David was forgiven and restored to
fellowship with God. There is no less reason to believe that
those who undergo abortions may be forgiven, too.
How God deals with sin and guilt

Personal guilt may be the reason some people are concerned

about the possibility that abortion is unforgivable. People
who are devoutly religious and who endeavor to follow the
ethics of the Bible struggle with the same sins that
everybody else does. It would be foolish to assume that
abortion occurs only outside the membership of the church. I
do not know about specific behavior in all church groups, but
I do know that within the circle of so-called evangelical
churches, abortion is more than an isolated reality. It may
even be at epidemic levels. Since evangelical Christians
have often been at the forefront of the pro-life movement,
we see an immediate moral contradiction. With the
contradiction come severe moral conflict and much
unresolved guilt.

I vividly recall a
sad episode that occurred when I was called to the bedside
of a Christian woman dying of uterine cancer. She was in the
final stages of her illness and had requested the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper. I went to the hospital to comfort her
and to administer the sacrament. During our meeting, she
expressed great emotional distress and concern about her
soul. She told me she had carried a secret guilt for a long
time, something she had not told even her husband-she had
had an abortion. She asked me whether I thought her cancer
was a punishment sent from God because of her sin.

In such a situation,
a pastor often gives the patient unqualified assurance that
God would never do such a thing as inflict cancer on a
person as punishment for sin. Such consolations, however,
are not grounded in truth. The Bible reveals that God may
and sometimes does administer temporal punishment for
temporal guilt in the form of disease or even death. God
afflicted Miriam and King Uzziah with a disease for their sins.
Both were stricken by leprosy as acts of divine judgment
(Num. 12:1, 9-11; 2 Chron. 26:16,19-21).

On the other hand,

the Bible also warns against assuming that an affliction is a
sign of divine discipline. The entire book of Job dispels that
notion, as well as Jesus' teaching in John 9 regarding the man
who was born blind. (I have written a book on this perplexing
subject titled Surprised by Suffering.) It is wrong to conclude
that suffering is always an indication of divine punishment.
We are equally wrong to assert that it is never an indication
of divine punishment. All that can be said for sure is that it
may be an indication of divine punishment.

I explained to the
dying woman that I did not know the secret counsel of God
and could not say what His purpose was for her affliction. I
could tell her with certainty, however, that God forgives
anyone who repents. I mentioned the comforting promise of
1 John [Link] "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
Here God promises to forgive and cleanse our sins if we
confess them to Him in a repentant spirit.

This verse echoes

similar promises in the Bible:
 In the passage
from Isaiah, God promises to change the sins of His people
from the stain of scarlet and crimson to the whiteness of
snow or wool. This brings to mind the torments of guilt that
plagued Lady Macbeth. She could not find soap strong
enough to remove the stain of guilt from her bloody hands.
Yet God's forgiving grace is able to remove that stain
completely.

David understood
that guilt is not removed by offering sacrifices or by trying to
make up for it by good works, but that God requires a broken
and contrite heart. God does not grant forgiveness without a
condition. We often hear that God gives unconditional
acceptance and forgiveness. Such an idea is totally foreign
to the biblical teaching on forgiveness. God demands that a
condition be met. He requires earnest repentance and
confession as the terms by which He will fully and freely
forgive.

Thousands of
people struggle with guilt connected with abortion. It haunts
women who have had them, men who have encouraged
them, and doctors who have performed them. One doctor
reported in The New York Times that she had to prepare
herself emotionally and often endured sleepless nights
before performing abortions: "It's a very tough thing for a
gynecologist to do," she said. "The emotions it arouses are
so strong ... that doctors don't talk to each other about it."
On one occasion, this doctor collapsed on the floor,
overcome by emotion, after performing an abortion.s3

Guilt is a powerful
emotion, one that has the capacity to inflict severe
psychological paralysis on people. I once was approached by
a practicing psychiatrist with an offer to join his staff. He
explained that a large number of his patients were suffering
from problems related to severe guilt. "These people don't
need a doctor, they need a priest," he said. "They need
someone to tell them they are forgiven."

This psychiatrist
had no loyalty to Christianity; he was simply concerned
about the mental health of his patients. He understood the
devastating power of unresolved guilt, and he recognized
that denial and rationalization were not effective means of
dealing with real guilt. The only effective cure for real guilt is
real forgiveness. To try to cover the stain on our hands is a
poor substitute for having the stain removed.
Experiencing God's forgiveness

To experience the profound liberation of forgiveness, one

must simply go to God and confess the sin with a humble
heart and a contrite spirit. Contrition involves a genuine and
godly sorrow for having disobeyed God. It differs from the
repentance of attrition, which is a false form of repentance
motivated by a fear of punishment. Attrition is seen in a child
who, when he sees a paddle in his mother's hand, is sorry
that he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. True
repentance acknowledges the reality of the guilt and does
not try to justify it. Anyone who approaches God with true
humility, contrition, and an earnest resolution not to commit
the sin again will surely receive the forgiveness of God.

We often hear the

question, "If you had the opportunity to live your life over
again, what would you do differently?" Sometimes people
answer by saying they would do everything exactly the
same. I have a hard time believing that. All of us have things
in our past for which we are ashamed. In my case, there are
things I have said that I wish I hadn't spoken. But once a
word escapes from my lips, I cannot call it back. It is like an
arrow released from a bow. I can change my words or
apologize for my words, but once they are uttered they
cannot be recalled. What has been done cannot be undone.
It is a matter of history.

Though what I
have done cannot be undone, I can be forgiven. Forgiveness
is one of the marvels of God's grace. Its healing power is
magnificent. If a woman has been involved in abortion, God
does not require that she spend the rest of her life walking
around with a red "A" on her chest. He does require that she
repent of her sin and come to Him for the cleansing of
forgiveness. When God forgives us, we are forgiven. When
God cleanses us, we are made clean. That is a cause for
great celebration.
 Summary

• There is no biblical evidence to support the idea that

abortion is the unpardonable sin.

• God forgives anyone who humbly and contritely repents of

sin-even the sin of abortion.
 Discussion Questions

1. How do non-Christians deal with guilt?

2. If God will forgive, why shouldn't a Christian have an

abortion?

3. How do Christians usually respond to women who seek or

have had an abortion?
4. What are the psychological effects of having an abortion?
Of performing one?

5. What role in the abortion issue can the Christian church

uniquely fulfill?

6. How can we know that we are forgiven?

 
Not only for every idle word but for every idle silence must man render an
account.
 -Ambrose of Milan

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

-Edmund Burke

Those who are alarmed by legalized abortion and who are devoted to the pro-
life position frequently ask,"What can I do?" Dedicated people and groups
have been working on this issue ever since the Supreme Court legalized
abortion. Considerable public interest in the issue has been aroused, but
abortion remains legal. There is much to be done if the situation is ever to be
rectified.

Those struggling for the unborn's

fundamental right to live should be encouraged by William Wilberforce's
struggle to abolish slavery in the British empire. Year after frustrating year, his
efforts were defeated by Parliament. He was harassed, maligned, ridiculed,
and slandered. Wilberforce was sharply criticized for raising religious
objections against the slave trade. On one occasion, Lord Melbourne stated,
"Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade public
life."" Doesn't that sound like today's media quotes in the United States?

Wilberforce, in the heat of his

struggle against slavery, received the following encouraging letter from John
Wesley:

My dear sir,
 U
nless the Divine power has raised
you up as Athanasius contra
mundum, I do not see how you
can go through your glorious
enterprise in opposing that
execrable villainy, which is the
scandal of religion, of England,
and of human nature. Unless God
has raised you up for this very
thing, you will be worn out by the
opposition of men and devils, but
if God is for you who can be
against you? Are all of them
together stronger than God? Oh,
be not weary of well-doing. Go in
the name of God, and in the power
of His might, till even American
slavery, the vilest that ever saw
the sun, shall vanish away before
it. That He that has guided you
from your youth up may continue
to strengthen in this and all things,
is the prayer of

Y
our affectionate servant,

J
ohn Wesley"
 Wilberforce died on July 29, 1833-
three days after the Bill For the Abolition of Slavery passed its second reading
in the House of Commons, sounding the end for slavery. "Thank God," he
whispered on his deathbed, "that I should have lived to witness a day in which
England was willing to give twenty million sterling for the abolition of
slavery."56

Wilberforce's example of
steadfastness across more than three decades illustrates not only a heroic
victory against an unspeakable crime, but also the cost of such a mission. The
pain Wilberforce endured in his struggle against slavery was immeasurable.

Resistance to unjust laws and

dehumanizing practices may be costly. Those who resisted Adolf Hitler's policy
of genocide in Germany often paid with their lives. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the
pastor who wrote The Cost of Discipleship, was one who paid such a price. The
world still recoils in horror at the reality of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Yet I
believe we are in the midst of a new and more evil holocaust, which sees the
destruction of 1.5 million unborn babies every year in the United States alone.
This situation calls to mind the words of a German pastor imprisoned for
opposing Hitler. Martin Niemoller said:
 In Germany they came first for the
Communists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist.
They came for the Jews, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a
Jew. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I
was a Protestant. Then they came
for me, and by that time no one
was left to speak up.57

If you care about the slaughter of

the innocent, then for God's sake, speak up. Speak to your family. Speak to
your neighbor. Speak to your friend. Speak to your doctor. Speak to your
minister. Speak to your congressman. Let your voice be heard in a chorus of
protest. Yours is only one voice, but it is a voice. Use it.

Strategic target: pro-choice adherents

In the past, the number one target of anti-abortion activists has been the
abortion clinic. The advantage of this strategy is that it presses the issue and
focuses public attention on the point where the offense occurs. The
disadvantage of this target is that it involves people who are firmly convinced
of their pro-abortion position.

As we have already seen, the pivotal

group in shaping cultural opinion is the middle-ground, pro-choice group. Here
is the most fertile field for finding people who will cross over to the pro-life
position. It is always a good strategy to concentrate efforts on the most likely
prospects.

Strategic target: liberal churches and liberals

Though much public protest has taken place around abortion clinics, little or
no public protest has occurred around churches where the pastors have
adopted the pro-choice position. Sadly, the organized church-more than any
other institution apart from the Supreme Court-has neglected its duty to
inform the public conscience.

One reason pro-choice churches

have not been targeted is because of the perceived cleavage between
conservative and liberal Christians. The split on the abortion issue between
conservative and liberal churches is a strange phenomenon. In the past, the
two groups have tended to divide over personalredemption agendas versus
social-action agendas. In the case of the abortion dispute, conservative
churchmen have been at the forefront of the pro-life movement while the
liberal churches have tended to be pro-choice.

As I discussed in chapter 9, this

division is due largely to the pro-abortion activists' successful linkage of the
abortion issue with feminism. Liberal churches have so vigorously supported
the women's-liberation movement that they have accepted the pro-choice
position as part of the package. This has created an almost bizarre liberal
contradiction.

Historically, liberals have been at

the forefront of human-rights issues. Traditionally, they have opposed slavery
and racial discrimination, and they have been zealous in the cause of human
dignity. However, when the crucial issue of the dignity of life pertains to the
unborn, the liberal community is strangely absent or on the wrong side of the
issue, largely because of the perceived strategic link abortion has with
feminist issues. In their zeal to protect women's rights, liberals have sacrificed
the rights of the unborn.
 The multitudes of honest liberals
who have strong convictions about human dignity and foundational human
rights would seem to be ripe for reversal of their position on abortion. These
people need to be encouraged to look more deeply into the underlying human
life issue that is central to the abortion debate.

Strategic target: the medical community

Unlike ancient Greece, where the physicians led the public outcry against
abortion, the medical community in the United States often has been either
tacitly supportive of abortion or strangely quiet. The medical community has
the greatest financial vested interest in abortion, which has become at least a
billion-dollar business. Abortion has brought a shadow of doubt across the
landscape of the medical profession. Doctors once enjoyed a high degree of
respect as the heroic protectors of human life. Now in some quarters many
doctors are viewed as crass money grubbers who destroy human life in
exchange for money.
 Doctors who regularly perform
abortions are receiving some backlash from their colleagues. The New York
Times reported the following:

Under siege from protestors and

largely isolated from medical
colleagues, doctors who perform
abortions say they are being
heavily stigmatized, and fewer and
fewer doctors are willing to enter
the field. Reflecting the pub- lic's
ambivalence about abortion, many
doctors on both sides of the issue
say they find abortions
emotionally difficult and
unpleasant.

A
1985 poll by the American College
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
of 4000 of its 29000 members
reported that 84% said they
thought abortions should be legal
and available, but only a third of
the doctors who favored abortions
actually performed them and
twothirds of those who did
abortions did very few.

A
bout four percent of those polled
performed 26 or more abortions a
month. The researchers did not
ask the doctors why they did or
did not perform abortions. "The
term abortionist still has a very
heavy stigma," said Dr. Curtis E.
Harris, an obstetrician in
Oklahoma City who heads the
American Academy of Medical
Ethics, a group of 21,000 doctors
that favors greatly restricting
availability of abortions.

"
Most gynecologists work to bring a
child into the world in a healthy
state," Dr. Harris said, adding that
performing an abortion "is a real
contradiction."

W
ith few incentives to perform
abortions, most obstetricians and
gynecologists avoid them, medical
experts say and surveys of doctors
report. Those who support
abortion rights say the shortage of
 willing doctors makes it harder for
women, who sometimes have to
travel hundreds of miles to find a
doctor to abort a fetus....

D
r. Warren Hern, who directs the
Boulder Abortion Clinic in
Colorado, said, "Abortion doctors
are treated as a pariah by the
medical community," adding, "At
best, we are tolerated."58

For those of us who are vigorously

opposed to abortion, this report is good news. A serious ethical and
professional struggle is going on within the medical community. At this level,
pro-life strategists need to turn up the heat. Every pro-life activist should
make it a point to ask his or her physician whether he or she does abortions or
refers patients to abortionists. If the answer to either question is yes, a
boycott is in order.
 A boycott could be justified not only
on strategic anti-abortion grounds, but also on the grounds of common sense
in the area of medical care. Though the Third Reich's Joseph Mengele may
have been a brilliant experimental physician, I would not have wanted to place
the life of my wife in his hands. Though doctors who perform abortions may
have a high degree of technical medical skill, their practice betrays their less-
than-adequate respect for the sanctity of life. Personally, I wouldn't risk my
body or the bodies of my family to anyone who exhibits such a low view of life.

Strategic target: politicians and public officials

Pro-life activists need to pressure politicians who are so directly responsible

for legislation. Candidates for office need to hear from us. There have been
bold and courageous elected officials who have suffered for the cause of the
rights of the unborn. They need our encouragement and support. Likewise, the
president of the United States needs encouragement for his leadership in this
struggle.

Dr. C. Everett Koop, the former

surgeon general of the United States, was positively heroic in his outspoken
opposition to abortion. Presidential administrations have come and gone, but
quite frankly, the pro-abortion presidents have had far more effect on the
issue than the pro-life presidents.

Strategic target: parents and the family

Since a high percentage of abortions are sought by teenage unwed mothers,

the role of parents in the decision-making process is important. In many
cases, parents are not involved because they have no knowledge of the
situation. One motivation for abortion among young women is to conceal their
pregnancies from their parents out of fear of punishment.
 In other cases, parents urge young
women to choose abortion. The motivations for such counsel vary. Sometimes
the goal is to ease the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. Other times,
however, the parents' counsel is motivated by a desire to escape or avoid
scandal or embarrassment in the parents' own social sphere.

As a pastor, I have encountered

parental pressure for abortion in homes where the parents profess to be
Christians. This indicates a need for Christian parents to be educated in the
ethics of abortion and to teach the biblical ethic to their children. God does
more than encourage such instruction-He commands it (see Deut. 6).

The strategy of civil disobedience

Attempts at abortion clinics to rescue the unborn from destruction have
received widespread media coverage. The strategy involves the intentional
violation of trespassing laws in order to peaceably block the entrances to
abortion clinics. Thousands of Americans have been arrested for participating
in these rescue events, including my own son, who cooled his heels in a
Mississippi jail. This practice-which involves intentional civil disobedience-is
hotly disputed even within the ranks of pro-life activists.

Is this activity a legitimate form of

civil disobedience? Some pro-life activists seek to justify it on the grounds of a
"necessary defense" plea. They argue that if a person runs into a burning
building to save someone who is trapped inside, under the law he cannot be
convicted for trespass violations. The problem with this argument is that when
someone is rescued from a fire, the law recognizes the trapped person as a
living human being. Unfortunately, when a baby is rescued from death by
abortion, the law does not recognize the unborn person as a living human
being.

The Bible has a high view of the

sanctity of life and of civil obedience. This is the issue that divides Christians.
It's the same issue that Bonhoeffer had to struggle with when he was invited
to join a plot to assassinate Hitler. We must draw the line between what is a
legitimate form of protest and what is not. It is no easy question to solve, and I
must confess that I have not resolved it in my own mind. However, the
urgency of the abortion issue requires us to protest to the very limit that our
consciences allow.
The struggle must continue

The struggle against abortion is difficult, but it is worthy. The longer it lasts,
the more babies will be slain. The longer laws allowing abortion on demand
remain in effect, the more likely it is that society will become hardened in
heart. Continuing the struggle against abortion is not enough. We must
accelerate our efforts until no human child is destroyed under the sanction of
law.

Summary
• The struggle against abortion is difficult and may require significant personal
sacrifice.

• The middle-ground, pro-choice advocate may be the best strategic target for
the pro-life movement.

• Other targets for pro-life activity include liberal churches, liberals who
support human-rights issues, physicians and other
medical personnel, politicians and public officials, and
Christian parents and their children.

• The degree to which any person will go to protest abortion is a matter of

personal conscience. However, everyone who is pro-life
can at least speak out and make pro-life opinions
known.
 Discussion Questions

1. What strategies have been most effective for the pro-life movement? What
strategies have been least effective?

2. What are our responsibilities to pregnant women who opt against abortion?

3. Should pro-life activists hold protests at churches that are pro-choice? What
kind of impact would this have?

4. What place does emotion properly have in regard to the abortion issue?

5. What kinds of pressure can be put on the medical community?

6. What can Christian parents do to educate their children regarding abortion?

7. Why are we reluctant to be active in this cause? What would inspire greater
activity?

 
As medical technology advances and becomes more
complex, our ethical questions tend to become more
complex as well. One breakthrough, in-vitro fertilization,
which allows previously barren women to have children, has
been a particularly difficult ethical issue. More than two
decades ago, a Tennessee court heard a case in which a
divorcing couple argued over rights to their frozen embryos.
While this case does not deal directly with the issue of
abortion, it does address a foundational issue: some of the
scientific discoveries on the beginning of human life.

The following
transcript is a portion of the court proceedings (Circuit Court
Blount County, state ofTennessee, Maryville, August 10,
1989) in which Jerome Lejeune, M.D., Ph.D., testified. (Some
testimony that was not relevant to the main issue was
deleted.) Dr. Lejeune (1926-94) was professor of
fundamental genetics on the faculty of Medicine of Paris,
held the Kennedy Prize (for being first to discover a disease
caused by chromosomal abnormality-Down's syndrome), and
was a member of a number of prestigious medical and
scientific organizations.

Dr. Lejeune's
native language was French. His testimony was recorded as
he spoke in English, a foreign language to him.
 Mr. Christenberry,
Mr. Clifford, and Mr. Taylor were the lawyers. "The Court"
indicates statements made by the judge. "The Witness"
indicates testimony given by Dr. Lejeune.

MR.
CHRISTENBERRY: I believe at this time, your Honor, I would
ask the Court to recognize Dr. Lejeune as an expert witness
in the field in which he's here to testify.

THE COURT: Any

objection?
 MR. CLIFFORD:
Your Honor, we certainly recognize Dr. Lejeune's expertise in
the field of genetics.

MR.
CHRISTENBERRY: Thank you, your Honor.

Q. Thank you. With

respect to the issues in this case, you understand the-what
we would say is the factual understanding of how Mr. Davis
feels and how Mrs. Davis feels. There has been some
publicity about this, has there not, Doctor? You have heard
something about their dilemma?

A. I heard
something, but very little. I must be very honest, I don't look
at television, I don't listen to the radio, and I only knew when
Mr. Palmer telephoned to me, that was the first time I heard
about it. So I would not say I'm really knowing the
whereabouts, no. I know there are babies, there are human
beings in the fridge, this is the only thing I know.
 Q. Thank you,
Doctor. So let's start with that aspect of this case. You're
familiar with in-vitro fertilization?

A. Yes.

Q. When did you

write your first article about it, if you recall?

A. Oh, you are

terrible with dates; I'm not good with the answers. It must be
fifteen years ago, something.

Q. Okay.
 A. Before it was
used.

Q. Before it was
used. So before it was used it had been conceived in man's
mind, had it not?

A. Well, you have

to understand that artificial fertilization is something rather
old in biology, and it was used for animals long before it was
applied to man. And what seems today extraordinary, that is
freezing a human embryo, it was not extraordinary for a cow.
There is a lot of time that cows have been frozen and used
and sent by air mail in little containers. And the novelty is to
consider that the technique, which was devised for
husbandry, was good enough for mankind.

Q. Tell us about in-

vitro fertilization and your view of it and your perspective
that you could offer today.
 A. Well, could I
speak more about nature-

QQ Yes.

A. -of the human

being, than specifically the condition invitro, because to
understand what means the fertilization in-vitro, we have to
understand what means fertilization at the beginning of a
human being.

Q. All right.

A. And if I can say

so, I would say that life has a very long history, but each of
us has a unique beginning, the moment of conception. We
know and all the genetics and all the zoology are there to tell
us that there is a link between the parents and the children.
And this link is made of a long molecule that we can dissect,
the DNA molecule, which is transmitting information from
parents to children through generations and generations. As
soon as the program is written on the DNA, there are
twentythree different pieces of program carried by the
spermatazoa and there are twenty-three different
homologous pieces carried by the ovum. As soon as the
twenty-three chromosomes carried by the sperm encounter
the twenty-three chromosomes carried by the ovum, the
whole information necessary and sufficient to spell out all
the characteristics of the new being is gathered.

Q. Is what, sir?

A. Gathered.

Q. Gathered.
 A. Gathered. And
it's very interesting, if I can say, your Honor, to remark that
natural sciences and science of the law, in fact, speak the
same language. In that sense that when we see somebody
healthy, well built, we say he has a robust constitution, and
when we see a country in which every subject is protected
by the law, we say it has an equitable constitution. In the
phenomenon of the writing a law, you have to spell out every
term of the law before it can be considered to be a law. I
mean in the science of the law. And secondarily, this
information written in the law has to be enacted, and it
cannot be before it has been voted for.

Now, life does

exactly the same thing. Inside the chromosomes is written
the program and all the definitions. In fact, chromosomes
are, so to speak, the table of the law of life. If you get the
right number of your table of the law of your life, then you
begin your own life. Now, the voting process does exist as
well. It is the fertilization itself, because there are a lot of
proposals, many, many sperms. Only one got in; that is the
voting process, which enacts the new constitution of a man.
And exactly as would say a lawyer, once a constitution exists
in a country, you can speak about it in the same way, when
this information carried by the sperm and by the ovum has
encountered each other, then a new human being is defined
because its own personal and human constitution is entirely
spelled out.
 There exists a lot
of minute differences in the message given by father and the
one given by mother, even by the same person; we do not
give exactly the same minute information in each sperm or
in each egg. It follows that the voting process of the
fertilization produces a personal constitution which is entirely
typical of this very one human being which has never
occurred before and will never occur again. It's an entire
novelty. That was sure-that was known for let's say not a
hundred years but more than fifty years. But the bewildering
was the minuteness of the writing of those tables of the law.

You have to figure

out what is a DNA molecule. I would say it's a long thread of
one meter (sic) of length, cut in twenty-three pieces. Each
piece is coiled on itself very tightly to make spiral of spiral of
spiral so that finally it looks like a little rod that we can see
under the microscope that we call a chromosome. And there
are twenty-three of them carried by father, twenty-three of
them carried by mother. I said the minuteness of the
language is bewildering because if I was bringing here in the
Court all the one-meter-long DNA of the sperms and all the
meter-long of the ovums which will make every one of the
five billions of human beings that will replace ourselves in
this planet, this amount of matter would be roughly two
aspirin tablets. That tells us that nature to carry the
information from father to children, from mother to children,
from generation to generation has used the smallest possible
language. And it is very necessary because life is taking
advantage of the movement of the particles, of molecules, to
put order inside the chance development of random
movement of particles, so that chance is now transformed
according to the necessity of the new being.

All the information

being written they have to be written in the smallest
language possible so that they can dictate how to
manipulate particle by particle, atom by atom, molecule by
molecule. We have to be with life at the real cross between
matter, energy, and information.

Now, I would like,

your Honor, to give you an impression of what happens
normally. Most of the human beings have been conceived
before the fertilization in-vitro was used, and most of the
humanity will still be made the old good days' fashion for a
long time I do hope. Normally, when the ovum is ripe, that is,
once a month, fifteen days after the menses, there is a
rupture of the follicle, and the ovum is so to speak taken by
the fallopian tube, which has a special expansion-we call it le
pavilion-I don't know the name in English. And it can move,
and if you take a picture it looks like as a hand making a slow
palpation of the ovary to find where the egg will be laid and
to take it.
 Normally, the egg
is a big cell, round, not mobile, floating quietly inside the
fluid in the tube, and the tube will manage to carry this big
cell towards the uterus by ciliate movements. On the
contrary, the sperm is an indefatigable navigator. It has been
deposited in the entry of the genitalia of the mother, and
normally it goes up through the cervix of the uterus, he
swims during the whole uterine cavity, and it is inside the
fallopian tube that the encounter between few thousands,
ten thousands, hundred thousands of sperm and the one egg
can occur. And it is because every human being has been
conceived in nature inside the little tube, a tube of flesh that
we call the fallopian tube, that test tube babies are indeed
possible. The only difference is that sperm and egg are
meeting inside a tube which is now a tube of glass because
the egg has been removed from the body of the woman, and
the sperm has been just added to the little vessel. And it's
because normal fecundation-I should say fertilization in
English-normal fertilization is occurring inside a tube that if
you put the proper medium ... It is not at all the inseminator
who makes fertilization, he just puts on the right medium, a
ripe ovum, active sperm, and it is the sperm who made the
fertilization. Man would be unable to make a fertilization. It
has to be done directly by the cells. And it's because they
were normally floating in the fluid that this extracorporeal
technique is at all possible.

Now, the
reproduction process is a very impressive phenomenon in
the sense that what is reproduced is never the matter, but it
is information. For example, when you want to reproduce a
statue, you can make a mold and there will be an exact
contiguity between the atoms of the original statue and the
atoms of the mold. During the molding process there will be
again between the plaster and the mold contact atom by
atom so that you reproduce the statue. But what is
reproduced is not the original because you can make it out of
plaster, out of bronze, about anything. What is reproduced is
the form that the genius of the sculptor had imprinted in the
matter. The same thing is true for any reproduction, whether
it is by radio, by television, by photography, what is printed
or reproduced is the information and not the matter. The
matter is a support of the information. And that explains to
us how life is at all possible, because it would be impossible
to reproduce matter. Matter is not living, matter cannot live
at all. Matter is matter. What is reproduced and transmitted,
it's an information which will animate matter. Then there is
nothing like living matter, what exists is animated matter.
And what we learn in genetics is to know what does animate
the matter, to force the matter to take the form of a human
being.

To give you an
idea, I would take a very simple example, I would take the
example of this little apparatus here, a recorder.

QQ Yes, sir.
 A. Now,
chromosomes are a long thread of DNA in which information
is written. They are coiled very tightly on the chromosomes,
and, in fact, a chromosome is very comparable to a mini-
cassette, in which a symphony is written, the symphony of
life. Now, exactly as if you go and buy a cartridge on which
the Kleine Nachtmusik from Mozart has been registered, if
you put it in a normal recorder, the musician would not be
reproduced, the notes of music will not be reproduced, they
are not there; what would be reproduced is the movement of
air which transmits to you the genius of Mozart. It's exactly
the same way that life is played. On the tiny mini-cassettes
which are our chromosomes are written various parts of the
opus which is for human symphony, and as soon as all the
information necessary and sufficient to spell out the whole
symphony, this symphony plays itself, that is, a new man is
beginning his career.

In-vitro fertilization
does not change at all what I have said. It's just a technique
sometime used to bypass a difficulty in the encounter of the
egg and the sperm, so it's a-it's a derivation. It does not
change at all the basic mechanism, the basic mechanism is
just the same.
 Now, if I could
continue a little more, it's not about fertilization that we are
discussing. It's about freezing of embryos. I'm not a
specialist at freezing embryos. Your Honor, I have never
played with embryos. But in my laboratory we are freezing
cells, we are thawing them, we are using a lot of those
processes, so we know about it, we use it on another system
than embryos, but all cells are very similar in their reactions.
Now, you have to realize-I don't know if it is true in English,
but I think it's quite true, and it is true at least in all the Latin
language, we use the same word to define the tempo that
we measure with a clock and the temperature that we
measure with a thermometer. We say in French temps and
temperature; in English you say time which is a change of
tempo, which is a temporal thing, and temperature. And that
is not a mistake of the ordinary language; it's a definition of
the basic phenomenon. I don't know how they have
recognized it so long ago to build it into the language. What
means "time" is the flux of the agitation of the molecule, the
flux of the particle which is continually going on. And
temperature is just a measure of the speed with which the
molecules are running in a given medium.

Now, if you
diminish progressively temperature, you diminish the speed
and the number of collisions between the molecules, and so
to speak without any joke about the words, you are
progressively slowing down, slowing down the temperature,
you are freezing time. And, in fact, we are wrong telling that
we are freezing embryos. In a sense it's very true like you
deep freeze the meat in the supermarket, very correct. But
in the fundamental sense what we are doing by lowering
down the temperature is stopping not totally but very deeply
the movements of the atoms and molecule so, in fact, inside
the can, the thermal can in which we put in tiny canisters the
cells or the embryos, we have more or less arrested the flux
of the time. This seems to be rhetorical, but it is not because
otherwise we could never understood why it is possible to
freeze a cell, to have it entirely not moving, not respirating,
not having any chemical exchange, and just if you have done
it with precision (so that no crystals have been made inside
the cells which could have ruptured its very minute
architecture), if you thaw it, thaw it progressively and
carefully, it will again begin to flourish and to divide. Then
it's obviously sure that we have not arrested life and started
life again. What we have arrested is the time for this
particular organism which is inside this can.

If we could put a
cell down to the minus two hundred seventy-three
centigrade, that is, to the absolute zero, every movement
would be stopped. And if the temperature would be
maintained at that level, it would be kept unchanged for
indefinity. I would not say eternity but indefinity. We are not
achieving that when we freeze a cell in my laboratory (and
you do the same here); we use not liquid hydrogen because
it's very costly and very explosive, and it's used only in NASA
for the rockets. We use mostly liquid nitrogen because it
cannot explode, and it's rather cheap, and it's easy to
manage. But it's only minus a hundred ninety degrees that
we have inside the canister. Well, it's rather cool, but it's not
absolute zero, so the preservation is not a hundred percent.
 And probably you
could not preserve the cells for more than a number of
years; that nobody knows because it depends on the cells.
For example, to the best of my knowledge for ordinary cells
which are very resistant, they are examples of more than
fifteen years in the canister and being thawed and being
correctly surviving and alive. For mouse embryo it's some
ten years. In our species I think there are no long time,
maybe one or two years, no more than that. And nobody
knows with the actual technique how long the preservation
would be real preservation. It's a question I could not
answer, and I think nobody can answer precisely today.

But what I could

say, that the information which is inside this first cell
obviously tell to this cell all the tricks of the trade to build
herself as the individual, this cell is already. I mean it's not a
definition to build a theoretical man, but to build that
particular human person we will call later Margaret or Paul or
Peter; it's already there, but it's so small that we cannot see
it. It's by induction that we know it for the moment. And I
would say I would like to use the felicitous expression of the
mathematicians. They would say that man is reduced at its
simplest expression like you can do with an algebraic
formula if you manipulate it intelligently. If you want to know
what mean that formula you have to expand it to give value
to the various parameters, and to put in use a formula, you
expand it. It's what is life, the formula is there; if you allow
this formula to be expanded by itself, just giving shelter and
nurture, then you have the development of the full person.
 Now, I know that
there has been recent discussion of vocabulary, and I was
very surprised two years ago that some of our British
colleagues invented the term of pre-embryo. That does not
exist, it has never existed. I was curious, and I went to the
encyclopedia, to the French encyclopedia, the one I inherited
from my great father, so it was fifty years ago it was printed.
And at the term of embryo it was said: "The youngest form of
a being," which is very clear and simple definition, and it
stated: "It starts as one fertilized cell, (fertilized egg which is
called also zygote), and when the zygote splits in two cells, it
is called a two-cell embryo. When it split in four it is called a
four-cell embryo." Then it's very interesting because this
terminology was accepted the world over for more than fifty
years by all the specialists of the world, and we had no need
at all of a sub-class which would be called a pre-embryo,
because there is nothing before the embryo. Before an
embryo there is a sperm and an egg, and that is it. And the
sperm and an egg cannot be a pre-embryo because you
cannot tell what embryo it will be, because you don't know
what the sperm will go in what an egg, but once it is made,
you have got a zygote and when it divides it's an embryo
and that's it.

I think it's
important because people would believe that a pre-embryo
does not have the same significance that an embryo. And in
fact, on the contrary, a first cell knows more and is more
specialized, if I could say, than any cell which is later in our
organism.
 Now, I don't know if
I can abuse of your patience, your Honor?

THE COURT: You're

doing fine.

THE WITNESS: The

very young human being, just after fertilization, after it has
split in two cells and then in three cells because curiously we
do not split ourselves in two, four, eight and continue like
that, no, at the beginning we don't do that. We split in two
cells of roughly equal dimension and one of the two cells
splits in two. There is a moment in which inside the
zonapellucida which is a kind of plastic bag, which is, so to
speak, the wall of the private life of the embryo in which it is
protected from the outside, we have a stage in which there
are three cells. This has been known for fifty, sixty years, and
it was remaining a mystery for embryology, because after
that stage of three cells, it starts again, it comes to four, and
it continue by multiples of two.
 What could be the
meaning? We do not know yet the accurate meaning, but it
is of great importance about the discussion we have today
because we can manipulate non-human embryos like, for
example, mice. We can disassemble the cells which are
inside the zonapellucida of a sixteen-cell embryo of mice and
take few cells of it, take few cells from another embryo, of
another type of embryo, if you wish, and put all that together
inside a new zona pellucida from which you have expelled
the legitimate occupant. Now, what happens? Most of the
time it fails, but sometimes a chimera comes out. For
example, if you have chosen a black embryo, a white
embryo and you have mixed them together, you find a little
tiny mouse which can run on your table but which has a
chessboard on the body. Parts are black, parts are white
because she has built herself of two type of cells that you
had put together in the same zona pellucida. It has to be
done with a very small number of cells.

We have tried, and

when I say we, I should say geneticists, have tried to put
three different lines, and they have got few mice with three
different type of cells that they can see on the fur. They have
tried four, does not work; five, does not work. It's only
possible with three cells. And that remembers that when we
split at the beginning of our life (two cells and then one cell
in two), we go at a three-cell stage. It's probably at that time
that a message goes from one cell to the two other cells,
come back to the first one and suddenly realize we are not a
population of cells. We are bound to be an individual. This is
individualization, that makes the difference between a
population of cells which is just a tissue culture and an
individual which will build himself according to his own rule,
is demonstrated at the three-cell stage, that is very soon
after fertilization has occurred.

If we stop the
process, if we slow down the movement of the molecules, we
progressively come to a relative standstill, and when the
embryo is frozen, these tiny human beings, they are very
small, one millimeter and a half of a dimension, a sphere a
millimeter and a half, you can put them in canisters by the
thousands. And then with the due connotation, the fact of
putting inside a very chilly space, tiny human beings who are
deprived of liberty, of any movement, even they are
deprived of time (time is frozen for them), make them
surviving, so to speak, in a suspended time, in a
concentration can. It's not as hospitable and prepared to life
as would be the secret temple which is inside the female
body that is a womb which is by far much better equipped
physiologically, chemically, and I would say intellectually
than our best laboratories for the development of a new
human being.

That is the reason

why thinking about those things, I was deeply moved when
you phoned to me, knowing that Madame, the mother,
wanted to rescue babies from this concentration can. And to
give to the baby-I would not use term baby, it is not perfectly
accurate, not good English-would offer to those early human
beings, her own flesh, the hospitality that she is the best in
the world to give them. And because Mr. Palmer told me on
the phone that it had been said that if you, Madame, were
not entitled to give this shelter to the baby-to the early
human beings (being perfectly correct in what I mean)-you
would prefer that they would be enjoying another shelter and
not being left inside the concentration can, or destroyed. And
I was impressed because it remembered me of an
extraordinary trial which has occurred more than two
thousand years ago, and I could not believe it could occur
again, that two people will discuss whether it's better to
have an early human being alive and given to a certain
person or another person would prefer the baby not being
alive at all. And to the best of my recollection this judgment
has been considered as a paragon of justice when Solomon
did it. I was not thinking I would come from Paris to speak in
Tennessee about a two thousand years old trial. But I
realized when you phoned to me, it was the first time it was
arising in this earth with a very early human being, because
before early human beings were not in our reach, they were
protected inside the secret temple. And then I felt it was
opportunity that a geneticist was going to tell you what our
own science tells us.

If this trial had

taken place two years before, I would have stopped because
I would have told you all that we knew at that moment. But
with your permission, your Honor, I will continue a little
further, faster and faster.

THE COURT: Yes.

THE WITNESS: We
know much more, since the last two years; we know that the
uniqueness of the early human being I was talking at the
beginning, which was a statistical certainty (but an inference
of all we knew about the frequency of the genes, about the
difference between individuals) is now an experimentally
demonstrated fact. That has been discovered less than two
years ago by Jeffreys in England, the remarkable manipulator
of DNA. And Jeffreys invented that he could select a little
piece of DNA, of which he could manufacture a lot of it,
which is specific of some message in our chromosomes. It is
repeated a lot of times in many different chromosomes and
which is probably a regulation system. Some indication to do
something or do another thing, but not a kitchen recipe, but
a precision about what to do.
 And because it's
only telling the cells that this should work and this should not
work, it can assume a lot of tiny change, so that there are so
many of those little genes and there are so many little
changes in them that we receive from father and from
mother an array of those genes that we can realize very
simply, you get the DNA, you put it in solution and you have
it spread in a special medium. Then you put this special
probe made by Jeffreys, and what you see it looks exactly
like the bar code that you have probably seen in the
supermarket, that is, small lines of different breadth and
different distance from each other. If you put that bar code
and you read it with an electronic device, it tells the
computer what the price of the object and tells a lot of other
things.

Well, it's exactly

what it tells us that when we look at the DNA bar code, and
we detect every individual is different from the next one by
its own bar code. And that is not any longer a demonstration
by statistical reasoning. So many investigations have been
made that we know now that looking at the bar code with his
Jeffreys system, the probability that you will find it identical
in another person is less than one in a billion. So it's not any
longer a theory that each of us is unique. It's now a
demonstration as simple as a bar code in the supermarket. It
does not tell you the price of human life, it has a difference
with supermarket.
 The second
advance has been that we know now that in one cell we can
detect its originality. That has been due to the discovery of a
new system which is called PCR, which is becoming
extraordinary popular. It started two years ago. You can take
a tiny piece of DNA, one molecule taken from one cell, you
see how little this is, you can with that technique reproduce
it by billions, and when you have enough you can make the
analysis of Jeffreys and see again that we have the whole
demonstration of uniqueness, not only in a sample taken
from the individual, but in one cell, in one nucleus of one
individual.

Another is a third
discovery which is by far the most important of all, which is
that DNA is not as dull as the magnetic tape I was talking
before. Nature is imitated by our discoveries, but she has
known much more than we have yet discovered. In that
sense, that the message written on DNA is written by change
of the various bases which come one after the other in that
one-meter-long molecule. But now it happens that twenty
years ago it was described with certainty that some of the
bases of DNA were carrying an extra little piece we call a
methyl (which is CH3), which is just hooked on it and change
a little of the form of one of the bars of this long scale which
is the DNA molecule. Nobody understood what it was
meaning. And it's only four years ago (especially by the
discovery of Surani) that we have begun to understand that
we were up to something extraordinary, which is that those
tiny little bits of methyl which are put on the base, cytosine,
which is transformed in methyl-cytosine-I'm sorry to be
technical, your Honor, but I cannot translate it, it's chemical
slang.

THE COURT: I
understand.

THE WITNESS: Is
exactly comparable to what does an intelligent reader when
he wants with a pen to underline, to highlight some passage
or to scratch, delete another sentence. That is with the
methylation, one gene which is still there is knocked out, put
to silence, but if it is demethylated on the next division, on
the next cell, then it will speak again.

Now, the basic

discovery was that this is possible because this tiny change
on the DNA changes the surface of the big groove of the
helix of DNA. It is inside this big groove that some molecules,
some proteins, will hook on different segments specific of the
DNA. It is a kind of language telling to the chromosome: You
have to tell this information or for this information, shut up,
do not speak this one for the moment. It's very necessary,
because there is so many information in our cells that if they
were expressing everything, every time, to have the energy
spent by one cell would be much more than the energy of
our whole body. So it's necessary that we have some silent
gene and some gene giving expression, expressed.

Now, the basic

discovery is the following, and it is directly related to our
discussion: That the DNA carried by the sperm is not
underlined (or crossed) by this methylation on the same
places which are not equivalent in the DNA chromosomes
carried by ovum. During the manufacture of the sperm there
are indications, it's penciled, so to speak. It's underlined, you
should do that. But on the equivalent gene, on the
equivalent chromosome manufactured by the mother, the
underline is in a different place, and it underlines something
different. So that at the moment the two sets of
chromosomes carried by the sperms and the egg are put
together, they are not as we believed for years identical. We
knew there was a difference with the "X" and "Y"
chromosomes, but for the others they were believed to carry
the same information; that is not true. Some information is
to be read on as coming from the male chromosome, and
another information from a chromosome coming from the
mother. Now, the reason is that the fertilized egg is the most
specialized cell under the sun because it has a special
indication underlining segments of DNA which shall be
expressed and others that shall not be expressed that no
other cell will ever have in the life of this individual. When
it's split in two we know that exchange of information comes
from one cell to the other one. When it's split in three it
receives information we are an individual. And when it
continues progressively, the underlining system is
progressively changed so that cells do differentiate, and cells
become specialized doing a nail, doing hair, doing skin,
doing neurons, doing everything.

And the very thing

is that during this process, the expansion of the primary
formula which is written in the early human being, nothing is
learned but progressively a lot of things are forgotten. The
first cell knew more than the three-cell stage, and the three-
cell stage knew more than the morula, than the gastrula,
than the primitive streak, and the primitive nervous system.
In the beginning it was written really not only what is the
genetic message we can read in every cell, but it was written
the way it should be read from one sequence to another one.
Exactly like in the program of a computer, you don't put only
the equivalent of the algebraic formula, but you tell to the
computer do that; if you get that result, then go at that and
continue that program; or if you don't get the result,
continue and go to the other program. That is written in the
first cell; is progressively forgotten in the other cells of our
body.
 At the end of the
process when the organism has grown up, it produces then
its own reproductive cells, it puts the counter to zero again,
and hence the rejuvenation. A new life will begin when a
female and a male cell will encounter to produce the next
generation. So I would say very precisely, your Honor, that
two years ago I would not have been able to give you this
very simple but extremely valuable information which we
have now, beyond any doubt.

I would give you an

example of why it's not theoretical. We can manipulate with
mice-not me, but my colleagues. And with mice they have
been able to make pseudo zygote, that is, to take one egg,
expel its own legitimate nucleus and put, for example, two
nuclei coming from sperm, so they have diploid cell, a diploid
zygote containing only two sets of paternal origin; it fails to
grow. They have tried to do it with two maternal original
nuclei, that is, two maternal chromosomal cells and no
paternal cells. It's diploid; by the old theory it should grow,
but it does not. But curiously both of them do something,
they don't build a full imago, that is, the whole form. But
they specialize. If there is only male nuclei, two male nuclei
making what is called an androgenote, it produce little cysts
which are looking like the membranes and placenta that the
child is normally building around himself to make its space
and time capsule so that it could take the fluid from the
mother vessels. An early zygote containing only male
chromosome does only that.
 If a zygote contains
only chromosomes from female origin, it makes the spare
parts. It makes pieces of skin, it makes piece of teeth, it can
make a little nail, but all that in a full disorder, not at all
constructed it makes the spare parts. We know this directly
by experiment in mice done by Surani last year. But we knew
that but we could not understood it before.

We knew that
already in man, because in man we know that there are what
is called dermoid cysts which is a division of a non-fertilized
egg inside the ovary of a virgin girl. It cannot grow. It's rare,
but it is well known. It will never give a little baby, but it
makes the spare parts, teeth, nails, all that mixed in
incomprehensible disorder. On the reverse we knew that
sometime after apparently normal fertilization the product
does not divide correctly but makes cysts, little balls again
and again and again, and it's called a mole, hydatidiformis
mole, and it's very dangerous because it can give the cancer
to the pregnant woman.

Now, we have
discovered-(not me), you have to know I'm professor, and
when I say we, it's all the professors of the world, it's not me.
We have discovered that in those hydatidiformis moles, there
were only paternal chromosomes. There were two sets of
paternal chromosomes and the maternal pronuclei had died,
we don't know why. So we know by the mice experiments
that it is related to methylation of the DNA.

Hence, we know by
the human observation, that there is a specialization of
information carried by the sperm compared to the
information carried by the ovum. And I would say I was
wondering, not surprised, but wondering that we were
discovering at this extraordinarily tiny level of information
built into the chromosomes, that paternal duty was to build
the shelter and to make the gathering of the food, to build
the hut and the hunting. And that the maternal trick was
household and building of the spare parts so the individual
can build himself. And it's a kind of admiration that we have
for nature that since we have seen in the grown up that the
man is going hunting and the mother is doing the kitchen, it
is just the same deeply written inside our own chromosomes
at the very beginning at the moments the first human
constitution is spelled out.

Well, I have abused

your kindness, your Honor. I have spoken maybe too much,
but I would say to finish that there is no, no difficulty to
understand that at the very beginning of life, the genetic
information and the molecular structure of the egg, the spirit
and the matter, the soul and the body must be that tightly
intricated because it's a beginning of the new marvel that we
call a human.

It's very
remarkable for the geneticist that we use the same word to
define an idea coming into our mind and a new human
coming into life. We use only one word: conception. We
conceive an idea, we conceive a baby. And genetics tell us
you are not wrong using the same word; because what is
conception? It's really giving information written in the
matter so that this matter is now not any longer matter but
is a new man.

When we come
back to the early human beings in the concentration can, I
think we have now the proof that there are not spare parts in
which we could take at random, they are not experimental
material that we could throw away after using it, they are not
commodities we could freeze and defreeze at our own will,
they are not property that we could exchange against
anything. And if I understand well the present case and if I
can say a word as geneticist, I would say: An early human
being inside this suspended time which is the can cannot be
the property of anybody because it's the only one in the
world to have the property of building himself. And I would
say that science has a very simple conception of man; as
soon as he has been conceived, a man is a man.

QQ Dr. Lejeune,
suppose that-as a hypothetical question, but suppose that
we had heard testimony in this hearing that indicated that
each mom and each dad contribute identically the same to
the embryo, and that there is no differentiation between
their contributions, could you tell us what your opinion is
about whether or not cells are differentiated?

A. It's difficult to
answer that because once you know something in science,
it's very difficult to tell what you would think if you were not
knowing it. If the paternal and maternal chromosomal share
of the baby was the same, we wouldn't have any idea how
this differentiation of cells do occur, so if I had testified two
years ago, I would have said that the mystery of cell
differentiation was complete, and we did not know where it
was written. Now we begin to know where it's written. It's the
only difference, but it's a great difference that we begin to
know. It tells us definitely that what was an implication that it
must be written in the first cell (this type of differentiation
must occur at this time and at the other time another
differentiation should occur). We knew it should have been
written, but we did not know at all how it was.
 Q. Okay. And so
you testified at great length about the differentiation.

A. Yeah.

Q. And you did that

for what purpose?

A. For the purpose

of understanding how from an apparently undifferentiated
cell which is the one cell of the fertilized zygote, the full
imago can emerge. If science cannot say anything about the
mechanism of it, it just remains a pure constitution but no
knowledge about it. It's the reason why I wanted to put on
record those new findings about the methylation of DNA,
because it proved that the implication which was as all of
genetics, that differentiation is, so to speak, prewritten in the
first cell, is now having an understandable physical support.
Now, it cannot be said that the first cell is a non-
differentiated cell. It must be said now the first cell is
knowing how to differentiate the progeny, the cell progeny.
 Q. Okay. And for
me to understand -

A. To make it
clearer, if I am looking at the mass of cell growing, I know by
my own experience in my lab for twenty years that never a
baby will form itself in our bottles because we are growing
cells taken from the body. On the contrary we know that if
the cell which is dividing is a fertilized zygote, a new
individual is just now beginning to emerge.

Q. What ethical
considerations do you have about freezing?

A. I think love is
the contrary of chilly. Love is warmth, and life needs good
temperature. So I would consider that the best we can do for
early human beings is to have them in their normal shelter,
not in the fridge. The fridge is not a second choice, I would
say it's a third choice. And typically I would not be surprised
that in a few years from now, this long way outside the
female body which is artificial insemination and this long
stay in concentration can will be considered as not very
efficient. It will be much better to make graft of the tubes to
repair the difficulty of the tubal incapacity, or to use
antibiotics-new antibiotics to prevent special difficulty with
the mucosa of the tubes, or find chemicals which will help
find why certain couples, although they have normal
production of cells, cannot manage to get fertilization, or to
get implantation. It's surely some chemical thing which is not
yet discovered which will be the real solution. Then I would
consider that the extracorporeal fertilization, it's, so to
speak, an emergency proposal of medicine on the present
stage of medicine, but it's not good treatment. The good
treatment is yet to be found in each of the cases. It's not the
final answer, so to speak, not at all. That is my feeling, but
it's a feeling.

Q. Within your
knowledge, Doctor, can you tell us what we know and what
we can tell about these human beings from three cells
forward? What knowledge do we gain and at what rate do we
gain it? Do you understand my question?

A. No.
 Q. Okay. We have
heard testimony that at three weeks you have got this, the
nervous system starts at this stage-

A. Yeah.

Q. This starts when

and it's been confusing, because we have tried to eliminate-
we tried to identify body parts, we're thinking in terms, and
you come to us with a different perspective. Can you tell us
once again what it is we have and how it progresses in
development?

A. Well, from the

very beginning we have a embryo. We have first a zygote
and a two-cell embryo and then a three-cell embryo and
then a four-cell embryo, and then eight, and sixteen, and all
the power of two. This embryo, growing progressively, is
inside the zona pellucida, and suddenly at around six days or
seven days it begins to "hatch." The zonapellucida is, in fact,
the protection, or privacy, so that if they are twins, for
example, they will not mix together because each of them is
in its own zonapellucida.

At the moment the

embryo begins to hatch and make trophoblast which will
anchor itself on the mucosa, there is already so much
commitments we cannot see. There is already so much
committed to build the individual that it will not mix with a
possible twin. Otherwise, in species in which you have a lot
of pups in a litter of five, ten, like in kittens or in dogs, if they
were not protected, each of them at the beginning in their
own plastic bag (in their own zonapellucida), they would not
make different animals, they would mix and make a kind of
chimera. But when it's so well committed, when all the cells
are so well committed to continue to cooperate with each
other, then nature has invented that embryo will hatch and
rupture the zonapellucida and begin to anchor on the uterus.

The second step,

we can describe around twelve days after fertilization; that is
the very beginning of the little line which cells begin to draw
on the embryo; this little line will progressively become a
kind of gouttiere-I don't know the word in English-and finally
will close itself in a tube, and it will be the beginning of the
neural tube.
 Then well, let's say,
what I should say more? I will describe the whole
development of the imago, let's say at three weeks, the
cardiac tubes will begin to beat, so that the heart is
beginning to beat three weeks after fertilization. And
progressively you will reach the end of the embryonic period
at two months after fertilization. At that moment the little
fellow will be just size of my thumb. And it's because of that
that all the mothers telling fairy tales to the children are
speaking about Tom Thumb story because it's a true story.
Therefore, each of us has been a Tom Thumb in the womb of
the mother and women have always known that there was a
kind of underground country, a kind of vaulted shelter, with a
kind of red light and curious noise in which very tiny humans
were having a very curious and marvelous life. That is the
story of Tom Thumb.

Well, after Tom

Thumb is visible, that is, two months of age, it has two
centimeters and a half from the crown to the rump, and if I
had it-if I had him on my fist, you would not see that I have
something, but if I was opening my hand you would see the
tiny man with hands, with fingers, with toes. Everything is
there, the brain is there and will continue to grow.
 It's from that
moment which is two months after fertilization, that we don't
call any longer human being embryos, we call them fetuses.
And that is very true to change the name just because it tells
a very plain evidence: Nobody in the world looking for the
first time at a Tom Thumb bag, looking at an embryo of two
months of a chimpanzee, of a gorilla, of an orangutan, or of a
man, nobody in the world would make a mistake just looking
at him. It's obvious this one is a chimpanzee, this one is an
orangutan, this one is gorilla, this one is a man.

The reason why we

change the name, and we call it fetus, it means only
something to be carried because the full form is already
present. But the man was there before everybody could tell
the difference with a chimp. For example, if we were taking
one cell-I would not do that because it's dangerous for the
being, but if we were taking one cell of a four-cell embryo, it
would probably survive and compensate. We know it in
mouse. Now, let's take one cell of a chimpanzee embryo, of a
human embryo, of a gorilla embryo and give it to one of my
students in the Certificate of Cytogenetics in Paris, and if he
cannot tell you this one is a human being, this one is a
chimpanzee being, this one is a gorilla being, he would fail
his exam; it's as simple as that.
 Q. When you see
the development of three cells -

A. Yeah.

Q. And if we used
the most intricate computers, let's say, that would be used in
our space program, NASA we call it, could those computers
be programmed to keep up with what is going on?

A. No, totally not.

The amount of information which is inside the zygote, which
would if spelled out and put in a computer tell the computer
how to calculate what will happen next, this amount of
information is that big that nobody can measure it.
 I have to explain
that very simply. You have the two meters of DNA, one
coming from father, one coming from mother, that it means
ten to the eleven bits of information, just to spell out what is
written on this DNA. If you add the subscript that I was
talking about methylation, then it will increase this number
by ten to the power four or to the power five. Thus, we will
go very soon, just for the DNA, at ten to the fifteen. It's an
enormous number. To give you an idea, just to print letter by
letter all what it is written in the DNA of a fertilized egg, you
would need, writing G, C, T, A, and all the string of symbols,
you would need five times the Encyclopedia Britannica just
to spell out the DNA, five times Encyclopedia Britannica. But
nobody could read it. You could fit it into the computer. But
now you would have to take care of all the molecules that
are inside the cytoplasm which will recognize the message,
which will send a message to the next cell. And to spell out
this amount of information which is absolutely necessary
(otherwise no life would be possible), I think you would need
a thousand, a million times more bits of information. No
computer in the world would have a storage enough just to
fill the amount of data. Now, to tell to the computer the
algorithm to use it, nobody knows how to do it. You have to
realize that this enormous information which makes a man is
enormous compared to the information which makes a
computer, because it's a man who has made the computer;
it's not the computer which has made the man.

MR.
CHRISTENBERRY: You may ask him. I would like to interject at
first if the Court-while it's fresh on the Court's mind, would
have any questions of the doctor. He's used to facing a judge
after he's told his side of the story, and sometimes we do
that in our system.

THE COURT: I have

no questions at this point.

MR. CLIFFORD:
Thank you, your Honor.

CROSS EXAMINATION BYMR. CLIFFORD:

 Q. Bonjour, Dr.
Lejeune.

A. Merci.

Q. Now, in
genetics, I would take it, it has been believed on the
theoretical level, all of the genetic material, all of the
information as you referred to it was in the zygote, that has
been believed theoretically for a very long time?

A. No doubt.

Q. And that what

you have described to us at such length today has been the
working out of the precise mechanism of how that works?
 A. In a sense, yes,
but it's a little change that previously it was an inference and
now we begin to have a demonstration. For a scientist it
makes a lot of difference.

Q. Of course. But if
I had come to you, Dr. Lejeune, ten years ago, and I had said,
please help me with my genetics, Doctor, do you believe that
all of the information that's necessary for the development
and maturation of a chicken-

A. Yeah.

Q. Is contained in
that zygotic cell we first see in the egg-

A. Yeah.
 Q. Would you have
told me that you believed that?

A. Well, to be
perfectly correct, I would say I believe it; now I would say I
know it. That's a small difference.

Q. But I take it it
would be true that, again, ten years ago had I asked you this
question about the chicken that your level of conviction
about all that information being in the zygotic cell would
have been very high?

A. Yes, pretty.

Q. And certainly if
in genetics we had discovered that some information was
coming into cells from some other source than the genetic
material and having an impact, we would have all been
stunned, scientific world would have been stunned?

A. Yeah, yeah.

Q. Now then, you

described at great length this morning, the precise nature of
the development of embryos as far as the mechanics of the
genes and chromosomes and information that is passed from
each gamete into that zygote, and you, of course, described
it as an incredibly complicated procedure.

A. Uh-huh
(affirmative).
 Q. I take it that
your questions, you were answering specifically about
human embryos, zygotes, sperm, ova, but I take it that is
also true of chimpanzees, gorillas, mice, they are-in those
species it's also a very complicated fascinating complex
mechanism?

A. Yes, but not

exactly the same mechanism.

Q. Certainly. I think
I have read somewhere, and I'm sure if I'm not right you'll
correct me, that genetically as far as the chromosomes, as
far as the contents of the DNA in the chromosomes, for
instance, man, Homo sapiens, and the higher mammals,
particularly the gorillas, chimpanzees-help me look for that
species.

A. Orangutan.
 Q. There is a
remarkable similarity?

A. Well, it depends
what you remark. You can remark the similarity, or you can
remark the differences. Arid difference is incredibly
interesting. I don't know where you want to ask me.

Q. Well, I have
heard it said or read that approximately ninety-eight percent
of the genetic material that is found in a chimpanzee or
gorilla is identical to what may be found in a human being.

A. It has been
written, and it has been written by statistical calculation of
the DNA but not about the meaning of it. Now, what makes
ninety percent similarity in the number of words in two
different texts? They can mean something very different by
the way the sentences are made. It's what makes the
difference between the species.
 Q. But there is a
similarity in the DNA?

A. Oh, yes, exactly

like the similarity in the fact they have two hands like us, not
the same thumb, but they have hands, we have feet, but
they are the most similar to us, no doubt. It's no surprise
that the DNA also has some similarity.

QQ But the same

basic process that we observe in human beings we also
observe in chimpanzees?

A. Oh, yes.

Q. Mice?
 A. Mice, I would not
go that far but partly.

Q. Mice have
zygotes?

A. Oh, yes, I mean-I

want to make clear when we speak about basic mechanism
we have to know what we mean by basic. For example, I told
you the enormous importance of methylation of the DNA we
discovered those years. But, for example, Drosophila does
not methylate the DNA.

Q. That's the fruit

fly?
 A. That's the fruit
fly but it's a very complex organism. It makes a
differentiation of cells that makes me believe that with
methylation we have unveiled one of the tricks used by
nature, but there are other tricks we are still using, we men,
that were sufficient to build a Drosophila but would not be
sufficient to build the human being. I would not agree that
basic mechanism are the same in the whole living system.
Surely it's much more complicated to build a human being,
to determinate on one cell the wiring of his brain so that he
will some day invent machine to help his own brain to
understand the law of the universe. There is something
peculiar to the human beings compared to others, you know.
I will tell you one thing, very simple: I'm traveling a lot, and
as far as I can I visit two points which are very important for
me when I go in a new town: One is the university and other
is the zoological garden. In the university I have often seen
very grave professors asking themselves whether after all
their children when they were very young were not animals,
but I have never seen in a zoological garden a congress of
chimpanzees asking themselves whether their children when
they are grown up will become universitarians. I feel there is
a difference somewhere.

Q. Doctor, I forgot
to ask you a couple of questions about your expertise, and
please pardon me for having to come back, but I take it from
your testimony when Mr. Christenberry was asking you
questions that you have not worked in the field of what is
called in this country in-vitro fertilization?
 A. No.

Q. I believe in
France there is a different term for that.

A. No, it's called

also fecundation in vitro.

Q. But you have

not been involved in any in-vitro fertilization clinics?

A. No.
 Q. You have not
been asked to advise in-vitro fertilization clinics on matters
of genetics or anything else?

A. Not directly, but

I have advised a lot of my patients who consider whether
they should have or not this type of investigation.

Q. I suppose I
should ask you this, I understand in-vitro fertilization is done
in France?

A. Oh, yes.

Q. How long has

this procedure been carried out in your country?
 A. Well, I think
Amanda has been six years, now, six years and a half, she
was the first test-tube baby in Paris. I think she is six years,
seven years maybe.

Q. Let me see, Dr.

Lejeune, if I understand the point you are making this
morning. It is your belief as a geneticist, that all the
information that is necessary to create a human being, a
unique individual human being, we could go in and find in a
nucleus of a zygote?

A. No, I never said

that. In the zygote I would say, not in the nucleus. You need
the nucleus and whole cytoplasm. The zygote cannot be
reduced to the magnetic tape. We have also to have the tape
recorder working.

Q. We can take if
we wished on a perhaps philosophical scientific experiment
here, we could take a zygote, look at it, look at the DNA, look
at the other structures in that one cell and assuming that we
had the knowledge to be able to do it, tell everything about
that human being?

A. I would say yes,

beside accident, which cannot be predicted, but I would say
no machine is big enough to put in it this information, it is
purely hypothetical.

Q. Right.

A. It's not practical.

Q. We're engaging
on a philosophical experiment.
 A. To be frank and
to give you my belief, I'm not sure we'll be any time able to
build a machine big enough to do that job. There is no
evidence about that.

Q. Dr. Lejeune,
then theoretically-

A. Otherwise this
machine would be a fertilized egg itself.

Q But if we had
such a machine on our philosophical experiment, we could
look into the zygote, and we could tell what color hair this
person would have?

A. No doubt.
 Q. What color eyes
this person could have?

A. Yes.

Q. Could we look
into the zygote and, either in the structure or chromosome or
DNA, and tell what language the person would speak?

A. I don't believe
so, sir, because language is a basic phenomenon built in. We
could say, in your example, theoretical example, this being
will be able to speak, but he will speak Japanese if he is in
Tokyo. But we could say conversely with your same system,
looking at a chimpanzee first cell, this being will never
speak.
 Q. Could we look
into the zygote, into the genes of the chromosomes, into the
DNA structure and tell whether this individual would like the
music of Beethoven?

A. Partly, yes, sir,

because we could in your hypothesis be sure that he is
perfectly normal, and if he is perfectly normal he would like
Beethoven.

Q. Dr. Lejeune, do
you intend to investigate to find the defective chromosomes
for those who do not like Beethoven?

A. No, no, but you

were asking me about normality.
 Q. Could we look
into the zygote, into the chromosomes, DNA, into the
balance of the structure, and tell whether this individual
would grow up to be a person of liberal or conservative
persuasion?

A. Well, even
looking at the grown-up I cannot tell that, sir.

Q. Of course, as
you realize, Professor Lejeune, I'm trying to make, I guess, a
philosophical point, and that is while some information, a
great deal obviously of information is contained in that
zygote, that there would obviously be things we could not
detect with our philosophical machine about the individual
when he or she was twenty, forty or sixty?

A. Uh-huh
(affirmative).
 Q. Dr. Lejeune, let
me come I guess to what is the heart of the matter here and
the heart of your testimony. You mentioned using the word
conception and defining it in two different ways, defining it
as the point where a zygote comes into existence and the
point where we have a thought, and really would you agree
with me, Dr. Lejeune, that what we're concerned about in
this case and in the great debate about human life are
definitions? How do we define a human being?

A. Oh, yes.

Q. Now, of course,
when you define a human being, what we're assuming there
is that a human being has certain rights, whether God-given
rights or legal rights?

A. That is not what

defines a human being.
 Q. Of course not. I
understand. But I take it and I will ask you directly, Dr.
Lejeune: You have referred to the zygote and the embryo as
quote "early human beings."

A. Yeah.

Q. Do you regard
an early human being as having the same moral rights as a
later human being such as myself?

A. You have to
excuse me, I'm very, very direct. As far as your nature is
concerned, I cannot see any difference between the early
human being you were and the late human being you are,
because in both case, you were and you are a member of our
species. What defines a human being is: He belongs to our
species. So an early one or a late one has not changed from
its species to another species. It belongs to our kin. That is a
definition. And I would say very precisely that I have the
same respect, no matter the amount of kilograms and no
matter the amount of differentiation of tissues.

Q. Dr. Lejeune, let

me make sure I understand what you are telling us, that the
zygote should be treated with the same respect as an adult
human being?

A. I'm not telling

you that because I'm not in a position of knowing that. I'm
telling you, he is a human being, and then it is a justice who
will tell whether this human being has the same rights as the
others. If you make difference between human beings, that
is on your own to prove the reasons why you make that
difference. But as a geneticist, you ask me whether this
human being is a human, and I would tell you that because
he is a being and being human, he is a human being.

Q. And I take it you

would believe from your testimony today that it is morally
very wrong to intentionally kill a zygote?
 A. I think it's no
good, it's killing a member of our species.

Q. And it would be
the same as ifwe were to kill twenty years later the person,
human being, that the zygote would become?

A. It's difficult to
tell because you ask me a justice question; I'm a biologist.

Q. Now, but those

are your beliefs?

A. My belief is that
it's no good to kill a member of our kin, very simple belief.
 Q. There is not
much difference to you between whether it's at the zygote
level, the fetus level?

A. There is a great
difference as they have not the same age. Some of them are
very youthful ones, others are old ones. But it doesn't make
for me a great difference, in the true sense of the fact it is
discarding a member of my species. It's the only reason why
I don't kill people, it's because they are human. Otherwise,
some of them-some difficulty in life ...

Q. Dr. Lejeune, you,

of course, are a scientist, and I'm sure that in the large part,
you base your convictions and feelings upon your knowledge
of genetics and other sciences. Will you concede, Dr.
Lejeune, there are other very distinguished scientists, men
who are as learned as you, who have thought and who have
access to the same scientific information that you have, who
come to a different conclusion?
 A. About what?

Q. About the moral

rights or moral duty to the zygote.

A. Oh, in that case

yes, but not about the fact it's a human being or not.

Q. I understand
that.

A. But that's the

point.
 Q. I understand
that. There are even, I believe, individuals in your own
country who differ with your view of what ethical duty is
owed to the zygote.

A. Well, I think in
France we are divided in forty million opinions about that.

Q. But you do
recognize there are men in your own country of great
learning who differ with your view on the ethics of the
embryo and zygotic levels?

A. Oh, that's
obvious.
 Q. I believe, Dr.
Lejeune, in the earlier-or I'd say slightly mid-nineteen
eighties, your country set up a commission to study the
ethical concerns raised by the technology of in-vitro
fertilization. Are you aware of the national commission?

A. Well, you can

call it a national commission, it's specially appointed by the
president of France, so all the people have been nominated
by the president. It's a presidential thing. It's not really a
national thing. It's called national, but it's not elected so it's
not representative at all.

Q. Well, I believe it
was called national commission.

A. They have called

them national commission, but you have to know they are
not representative. They are not elected by bodies.
 Q. Were you on
that committee?

A. No, and I can tell

you why, because I'm a member of the Academie des
Sciences Morales et Politiques, moral and political sciences,
and normally a member of this academy should have been
appointed ex officio. Deliberately in the constitution, the by-
laws of this committee, our academy was not put on it
because they knew that the Academic des Sciences Morales
et Politiques would appoint me. Just an interesting
phenomenon.

Q. So you feel-

A. I don't feel
anything about it. It's just a fact. I don't feel anything.
 Q. You believe you
were intentionally kept off this committee?

A. I believe that our

academy was kept off, no doubt.

Q. Since they knew

that it would be you that was appointed, you were
intentionally kept off?

A. That is a
scientific hypothesis, not demonstrated.

Q. But you do, I

take it, recognize that the members of the national
commission that were appointed were distinguished persons
in their fields?
 A. I have never
seen somebody in a committee who is not distinguished, sir.

Q. And regarding
those individuals, even if you disagree with them, I take it
you would recognize their integrity?

A. Case by case.

Q. Case by case.

A. Case by case.
 Q. Do you know all
the members of the committee?

A. No.

Q. But you would,

in general, agree they are persons of integrity and learning?

A. Case by case.

Q. Are you familiar

with the report of the national commission?
 A. Yes, I have read
it.

Q. You have read

it?

A. Yes.

Q. The report of
your national commission expresses some very grave
reservations about the technique we know here as
cryopreservation. Are you familiar with that?

A. Uh-huh
(affirmative).
 Q. Let me ask you
this, Dr. Lejeune: Do you share those reservations about
cryopreservation?

A. I have many
reservations. Probably it's not very good.

Q. We heard
testimony from Dr. Shivers, who was the embryologist who
worked in this case, that with cryopreservation there was a
statistical loss of the frozen embryos in the range of, I
believe he said, fifteen to thirty percent.

A. He's a better
specialist about this attrition percent than I am.
 Q. So that you can
expect, therefore, by the rules of statistics if we freeze one
hundred pre-embryos, and we come back to thaw them at
any point, we know the odds are very, very high we'll only
have seventy, seventy-five or eighty?

A. Uh-huh
(affirmative).

Q. We knew that
before we put them in the Frigidaire?

A. Yes.

Q. Would you
regard that as an intentional killing of embryos?
 A. No, but I would
consider that it's making the embryo running a risk, and
whether this risk was in the best interest of the embryo or
not is an open question. I explain. When we do an
intervention in a baby for a heart disease, in some
intervention we know that around twenty percent of them
will be killed by the intervention. And in this case the
intervention is made only if we know if we don't operate the
child will be killed by the disease at ninety-nine percent of
probability. Then we say in the real interests of this patient
the best for him is to operate even if the operation is still
dangerous, the danger is much greater if we don't operate.
That is a way you can make indeed some choices in
medicine which are dangerous but which are, in fact, the
best that you can do in the interest of this particular patient.

Now, in the case of

an embryo, I am not sure it is in his own interest that this
choice is made.

Q. In fact, it's made

in a choice that as Dr. Shivers and Dr. King testified
previously, that it merely gives the woman a better chance
since she won't have to go through the stimulated cycle
having shots and medication, hormones injected into her, it
simply gives her a better chance of becoming pregnant.
You're aware of that?

A. I am aware of
that.

Q. So in
cryopreservation we know that we are going to kill ten,
twenty, thirty percent of these early human beings merely so
the woman has a better chance of getting pregnant?

A. That would be
one of the reservations that I would have, but I dislike you
say you kill. It's not killing.

Q. If we were to
take the members, the individuals seated in the jury box,
and I were to have a room I could put them in where we
would know that thirty percent of them would come out
dead, would you not agree I would be guilty of murder?

A. Well, it depends,
sir, because if the room you were talking about were a
shelter during a bombing time and if remaining in that room
all of them will be dead, but in the shelter some of them will
survive, even if thirty percent of them will be dead, you did
well. So it depends on the reason why you did it.

Q. What if I did it
not to take them out of a position of greater harm but merely
for the benefit of some person other than themselves, not
one of them but Mr. Palmer?

A. I suppose he
would refuse you do it, I'm sure.
 Q. You recognize
the ethical and moral dilemma I'm raising, of course?

A. No, I don't
recognize it, sir.

QQ You don't?

A. No, because you

use the word killing. And if you take an embryo which has
been frozen and you put him briskly at normal temperature
so that he will die, you are killing the embryo. If you are
freezing the embryo you are not trying to kill him; if I
understand what you have in your mind to is to help the
embryo surviving so he could be implanted in the womb of
the mother. So your technique is not good because you lose
part of them, but you are not killing. And I would not say that
my colleagues who are freezing embryos are killers. It's not
true. Otherwise, maybe it's because I don't understand
English, but I would not use the word kill.
 Q. The national
commission in its report used a term which in English is
supernumerary?

A. Yeah.

QQ Referring to
supernumerary embryos, referring parti cularly to
cryopreservation, embryos which are not to be used with a
particular patient, woman, who has undergone WF. Are you
familiar with that term, first of all?

A. I know that
term, and it's a wrong term. Can you tell me a man who is
supernumerary?
 Q. Maybe just a
lawyer.

A. I don't believe
that, as a man he is not supernumerary. Maybe-I'm not
saying anything.

Q. But that is the

term that is used in the report of the national commission?

A. Yes, but it is a
very misleading term, exactly the same thing as pre-embryo.
You change the name because you will change your
behavior, and I dislike that. I like to call a cat a cat, and a
man a man. It's Wendell Holmes who said a man is a man is
a man.
 Q. And a dog a dog
and chicken a chicken?

A. No, but "a man

is a man is a man," is a saying in your country.

Q. Well, rather at
this point debating whether the term was wise or not, I'm
asking if that was the term that was used.

A. Right.

Q. Now, as I think I
asked you and you told me awhile ago, the French
commission did have reservations about the whole process
of cryopreservation, because, of course, it leads to the
precise problem that we have in this case. Of course, you
know that regular IVF the woman is implanted or pre-
embryos-excuse me, the embryos are inserted within forty-
eight hours?

A. As soon as you
can, yes.

Q. Whereas with a
cryopreserved embryo, it might be six months, it might be a
year. In fact, I believe that you are aware that the French
guidelines provide for a year for the first child, recommend
that a cryopreserved embryo should not be saved longer
than twelve months for the first child?

A. Could I tell you

because you speak about what is said in French that this
committee is consultative. It means that what he says as
guidelines is for himself.
 Q. But these are
the guidelines published by the national commission that
was appointed by your government-

A. It's consultative.
It has no law, no force; just an opinion.

Q. But you are

aware that the commission recommended one year for the
first child?

A. Yes.

Q. And then with

an extension of an additional twelve months if a second child
was desired?
 A. I don't follow
you.

Q One question
that was raised in the commission was how long you should
keep a cryopreserved embryo.

A. Yes.

Q. Now, and the

committee recommended that it should not exceed twelve
months without very special circumstances and without a
great deal of thought by people concerned with the ethical
dilemma of IVF, do you recall that?

A. I know about
that, but I don't see the meaning.
 Q. I'm just asking
you about the report at this point.

A. Yes. Nobody
knows from where it was coming, the time of one year. Out
of the air?

Q. Now, the French

commission recognized that one of the dilemmas that was
posed by cryopreservation again was the open-ended time,
time during which, as in this case, things could change, is
that correct?

A. I have to be very
precise, I don't know by heart the whole document you are
talking about.
 Q. I'm not going to
ask you to quote it. But let me ask you this: Are you aware
that the national commission of France that spoke on this
subject recommended that in the case where the project of
the couple, that is, the IVF project of this couple is
abandoned in the meantime, and that meantime refers to
cryopreservation being used or is unfeasible because, for
example, of the separation of the couple, the only solution
retained by the committee by way of the least evil consist in
the destruction of the embryos with the reservation of the
possibility of donation for research?

A. I'm not aware of

that at all, sir, because the consultative committee said it
would not give any indication because they have not
reached any opinion. I don't know what document you are
talking about, but the one I have read was not this one. If
you talk about this document, the opinions saying that it's
better to kill the frozen embryos, it's just in my opinion
wrong, I disagree with it.

MR. CLIFFORD:
Your Honor, may I approach the witness?
 THE COURT: You
may.

Q. Let me show
you a page here which unfortunately for me is in French.

A. That's good for

me.

Q. And ask if you

could read the title of the document?

A. (Reading in
French.)
 Q. Could you-

A. I'll try to make a

translation. Advice concerning research on human embryos
in-vitro and their utilization for medical and scientific
purposes.

Q. Could you
continue to read the page? If you would rather not-

A. Well, what
interest?

Q. Just the
headings.
 A.
Recommendation to the use of in-vitro fertilization as answer
to infertility-it's very long.

Q. Well, that is, in

fact, the report of the national commission, is it not?

A. Well, I'm sorry,

sir, but it's not printed. It's something made on a computer. I
don't see any important document there because it's-
probably it has been a project of it, but it has not been
published as a final advice because as I know, what I have
heard on television, they said they have not reached an
opinion on that. I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter anyway. It's a
consultative party.

Q. I'm somewhat
surprised by that answer, Dr. Lejeune, because I'm given to
understand-you can correct me here-in December of 1986, a
committee of distinguished French scientists made their
report to the government. The report was started 1983.
 A. No, no, there is
no final advice given by this body on this particular problem.
They have discussed it, and they said we will continue to
discuss it, as far as I know.

Q. As far as you
know?

A. Uh-huh
(affirmative).

Q. You are not

familiar with the national commission report?

A. When it is
published, yes, I read it, but that is not published matter. I
don't see where you want to go with this question.
 Q. In fact, Dr.
Lejeune, will you agree with me, sir, that there are
distinguished, learned men and women in your own country
of France who take the view that when a couple separates or
is divorced that any embryos that may be in
cryopreservation should be discarded or destroyed?

A. That there exists

people thinking that, no doubt, because if they say that it's
probably because they think it. But it does not prove they're
right.

Q. Of course, not.
Of course, not. And, of course, I take it because you have
your feelings, you would concede that it does not prove that
you are right?

A. On that, I would
not agree entirely with you.
 Q. Okay. All right.
Would you agree with me, Dr. Lejeune, that really, of course,
we're talking about what will become in this court a legal
question?

A. Yeah, partly.

Q. And that legal

question is what quote "rights," if any, an embryo should
have legally?

A. Disagree with
that. I'm not thinking about the rights of the embryos; I'm
thinking about the duty of the parents and of society. Duty is
a different thing.
 Q. Let's talk about
duty because that is a word that courts can understand. You
believe, in fact, there is a duty, and a strong duty, to bring,
or attempt to bring an embryo to term and birth?

A. The embryos
have been frozen for that purpose.

Q. I'm not so much

talking about the particular seven embryos in this case, but
any embryo that's been produced by IVF or in-vitro
fertilization.

A. If it has been
produced, it has been produced in the view that it could be
put somewhere in which it could be developed, that is the
womb.
 Q, So you would
believe that the man has a duty to bring it to life, bring it to
birth rather, is that correct?

A. What man?

Q This man, the

man who is the donor of the sperm.

A. Yeah.

Q. That he has a
duty, a moral duty to bring it to term?
 A. Yes.

Q. And you would

believe that the woman has such a duty?

A. I would believe
that if she was not feeling having that duty, she would not
have accepted the beginning of the process.

Q. Now, you, of
course, are best known for your discovery of the
chromosome connected with Down's syndrome?

A. That is long ago.

 Q You have
researched since that point other conditions or diseases,
abnormal conditions which relate to the chromosomes that
are passed on by heredity, is that correct?

A. Yeah.

Q. If I understand
what you also told us this morning, it is possible to tell at the
zygote level whether-

A. Not at the
zygote level.

Q. At the embryo
level?
 A. Yes, and late
embryo.

Q. Late embryo
level whether or not this early human being will suffer from
Down's syndrome?

A. Oh, yes, yes.

Q. And as-

A. In fact, it's
essentially for a fetus. It is after two months.
 Q. But there is no
reason that you know of, I take it that we could not at some
point in the not very distant future even make that diagnosis
in the embryo level?

A. In some future,
might not.

Q. I take it from
your testimony, Dr. Lejeune, you would believe that even if
the embryo, that early human being, was going to suffer
from Down's syndrome or some other very serious condition
or abnormality, that it would still be the duty of the mother
and the father to bring it to term?

A. I would say the

duty is not to kill, and that duty is universal. And I would say
that if by technique I was looking at the chromosomes of this
baby, and I see the chromosomes abnormal, say for
example, he has a trisomy twenty-one, I would say that this
is the disease. But if I look at the other forty-six
chromosomes that are normal I would see the mankind of
the baby. And I don't condemn a member of my kin.

Q. You would
believe that the donors of that embryo would have a moral
imperative, a duty to bring that-

A. Not to kill the

embryo.

Q. That early being

into a later stage of human being?

A. Not to kill him.

 Q. Now, let me
drop back down to a bit more normal level of questions, Dr.
Lejeune. Bear with me. Let's take an embryo in general, just
statements that we can make about all embryos that would
be true. That there is obviously a genetic contribution both
by the woman and by the man?

A. Yes, there is a
contribution by the father and by the mother.

Q, By the father
and by the mother?

A. Yeah.

Q. And without the

contribution of either there would be no embryo?
 A. Correct.

Q. So on that sense
the contributions of the mother and contribution of the
father-

A. Are both
necessary.

Q. Are equal?

A. No, they are not

equal. They are different, but they are both necessary.
 Q. Both-

A. Necessary,
absolutely.

Q. And now let's

talk about a particular embryo, early human being, and let's
look at this early human being when it's became a later
human being. Obviously, as far as the genetic makeup of this
particular individual, it might be, in fact, more strongly
influenced by the mother's contribution, at least in some
areas, or might be more strongly influenced by the father's
contribution.

A. Who knows?
 Q. Who knows.
And, of course, unless we were to examine it, we wouldn't
know.

A. Uh-huh
(affirmative).

Q. And certainly
you are not in this court saying that women contribute more
genetic material?

A. In fact, I'm
obliged to say, yes, they contribute more genetic material.
For example, all the DNA on the mitochondria is coming from
the mother, not from the father. Makes a little difference. It's
a fact.
 Q. It's a fact?

A. It's a fact.

Q. But it's also a

fact without both contributions -

A. They are both

necessary, no doubt.

Q. But you are not

here today saying, Dr. Lejeune, that the reason, the sole
reason that Mrs. Davis should win this case and prevail is
because her DNA contribution may have been slightly more
than Mr. Davis' DNA contribution?
 A. I don't
understand your question. I cannot see how you can solve a
judicial problem with DNA contributions.

Q. You are saying

that it's your opinion that these embryos should be allowed
to develop in this young lady because you believe they're
early human beings?

A. I do believe they
are early human beings, and I have been told that their
mother offered them shelter. Who could refuse that?

Q. But not because

of DNA contribution?
 A. Because they're
her own flesh.

Q. Well, they're his

own flesh, too, aren't they?

A. Yes.

Q. And obviously
he will be their father forever, for the rest of his life if there
are children?

A. (Witness nods
head in the affirmative).
 Q. You will not deny
that would have an effect?

A. I would not deny

anything.

Q. I take it, Dr.

Lejeune, therefore, if you believed that a embryo was not a
human being as that term is used in ethical or legal or moral
or philosophical or religious way that your view of this case
may well be different?

A. Totally. If I was
convinced that those early human beings are, in fact, piece
of properties, well, property can be discarded, there is no
interest for me as a geneticist. But if they are human beings,
what they are, then they cannot be considered as property.
They need custody.
 Q. What it really
turns on is what philosophically, ethically, legally that
embryo may be. In your mind, sir, you have come to the very
firm conviction that the early embryo or that the embryo is a
human being, early human being, as you described it?

A. Yes.

Q. And you do
recognize in other men's minds, after long and deep thought,
learned men, they come to the opposite conclusion you do?

A. No, I don't agree

with that.

Q. You don't agree

with that?
 A. I have not yet
seen any scientist coming to the opinion that it is a property.
It is what is the case. It's whether they are property that can
be discarded, or whether they're human being who must be
given to custody. That is it. You ask my question, I answer
precisely; I have never heard one of my colleagues-we differ
on opinion of many things, but I have never heard one of
them telling me or telling to any other that a frozen embryo
was the property of somebody, that it could be sold, that it
could be destroyed like a property, never. I never heard it.

Q. Just so I
understand what you're telling us, I take it, Dr. Lejeune, from
your testimony that you would be opposed to abortion?

A. Oh, I dislike to
kill anybody. That is very true, sir.

Q. You would
believe that abortion should not be legal?
 A. That is another
point which is different. I think abortion is killing people, and
I think in a good jurisdiction would make those killing people
become rare. You cannot prevent everything.

Q. I take it, again,

your basis of that belief would be that the fetus or embryo is
an early human being?

A. Exactly. If it was
a tooth, I would not worry about it.

Q. Finally, Dr.
Lejeune, I'd like to thank you very much first for coming here
to Maryville, Tennessee, to share your scientific and
philosophical views with the court. I hope that you enjoy your
stay and that your trip back is enjoyable. I have only one
final question for you. Okay? What is this?
 A. Well, from here I
suppose it's an egg, but I'm not sure.

Q. Let me get a
little closer.

A. It looks like an
egg.

Q. It's an egg?

A. It looks like.
 MR. CLIFFORD:
Thank you, Doctor, I thought you were going to tell me it was
an early chicken.

THE WITNESS: Oh-

MR. CLIFFORD: I
have no further questions.

THE WITNESS: Your

Honor.

THE COURT: You

may respond, if you wish.
 THE WITNESS: Yes,
I would respond to that because I have never pretended that
I could see through a shell. I don't know if it has been
fertilized so I cannot know whether it's an early chicken.

Q. All right. Let's

talk about the difference for a moment. If I had in this hand a
live chicken, would you agree with me if I were to take it and
squeeze its head that it would feel pain?

A. Oh, probably.

Q. That it will be
frightened?

A. Yes.
 Q. And it would
suffer psychological, if you can use that term with a chicken,
stress?

A. I'm not
competent in psychology, you told me, and especially not
about chickens.

Q. But if I take this

egg and assuming it is fertilized-I wouldn't really do this, jay-
but if I were to crush it in my hand, this egg would not feel
pain, it would not be aware in the slightest of what was
happening to it?

A. Yeah. But it
would be still a chicken and only a chicken.
 Q. I thought you
told me it was an egg?

A. You told me it
was a chicken.

MR. CLIFFORD: No
further questions.

(A brief discussion
was held off the record.
CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. TAYLOR:

Q. Dr. Lejeune, I
have just a very few questions. You testified earlier that in
the case of freezing human embryos, the temperature is
lowered only to, I think, a hundred and eighty or ninety
degrees below centigrade, is that correct?

A. Yes, generally.

Q. And because
that is not absolute zero there are still certain processes that
continue within those embryos?

A. Very slowly.
 Q. And because of
that, it is your opinion that life or the processes are not
suspended completely, and therefore the embryo continues
to age or develop, is that right?

A. No, it does not

continue to develop, but it can age in the sense of losing
some properties because of the agitation of the molecule
and not being able to repair it. It's the reason why if you
freeze cells, ordinary cells in tissue culture, and if you thaw
them, after one month you will get ninety percent groove,
after ten years you will get fifty percent, so eventually some
of them have died in the process.

Q. Is it then your
opinion if these embryos are left in this frozen condition
indefinitely, ultimately they will perish?

A. If they were to
be protected for a long time, I would put them in liquid
hydrogen, but it will cost very much.
 Q. If they're in
liquid nitrogen which is not absolute zero, is it your opinion
that they would ultimately perish?

A. I cannot tell time

but ultimately.

Q. Is it your opinion
that the ultimate effect of storage in cryopreservation
ultimately would have the same effect as destroying them
now?

A. In the ultimate,
yes, but I dislike to speak about very long time because I'm
not sure of what would happen in between.
 Q. Yes, sir. You
indicated that you do not object to in-vitro fertilization as a
process, do you?

A. I do not favor it
for theoretical reasons. I guess it's a trick we use now in the
present stage of knowledge, but it's not the best answer. If
you read the newspaper it seems to be the last word about
helping reproduction, and I guess it's a wrong idea. But that
is a technical opinion.

Q. Even though it
may not be the ultimate solution, the ideal solution, you
would concede that many, many infertile couples have been
helped by in-vitro fertilization, would you not?

A. I would consider
some have been helped, but the number that have been
helped by other methods is much greater. But some have
been helped, no doubt.
 Q. Doctor, you
indicated that one of the reasons you objected to
cryopreservation was because there is a mortality rate,
certain percentage of the embryo do not survive the process,
is that correct?

A. It's not only that.

That is one of the reasons, but it's not the only reason.

Q. Are you aware,

Doctor, in a normal cycle, a natural reproductive cycle that
as many as sixty percent of the ova produced by a mother
undergo actual fertilization? Are you familiar with that
particular statistic?

A. No, I don't
understand what you mean.
 Q. We have been
told that as many as sixty percent of the eggs produced by a
mother may be actually fertilized, but statistically only about
twenty-five actually result in a birth.

A. You mean about

the early death of early human beings. Well, it has been a
very disputed field. To the best of our knowledge, we can rely
on experimental animals because we can look at the number
of yellow corpus which develops on the ovary and tells us
how many eggs have been laid and look at the litter, for
example, in mice or any other animals. It seems that thirty
percent of the conceptus die, but that more than sixty
percent of conceptus come to birth and to normal-that has
been established in many wild animals. Then it seems that
the number of early deaths has been overestimated recently
in our species. I would guess it around the order of thirty
percent. Some of them said sixty percent; I would guess
myself it's around closer to thirty than to sixty, but that is -

QQ You do
recognize -
 A. A sizable
number.

QQ You do
recognize, do you not, though, Doctor, that when a man and
woman attempt to have a child by normal sexual
intercourse, there is a percent of embryo human beings, in
your terminology, that are created that never result in a
birth; that is a risk they undergo?

A. It's difficult to
answer your question because some of those fertilizations
are probably abnormal fertilizations that can be early cysts
and what we call empty cysts which are probably not really
true fertilizations. It is very complex, but I agree with you
that the road of life is dangerous, even at the very
beginning.

QQ 1 guess my
question is, Doctor, then even in natural intercourse trying to
achieve a pregnancy, there are going to be some risks that
some of the embryo will not survive, just like in-vitro
fertilization?

A. Yeah.

Q. Finally, Doctor,
as I understand your testimony here today, if you were
advising his Honor on a solution to this very troublesome
problem, your first preference would be that the embryo be
returned to the mother, Mrs. Davis, in this case, is that
correct?

A. I would go step
by step, if you ask me. May I, your Honor?

THE COURT: Yes,

you may.
 THE WITNESS: I
would first say it's not a property so they must not be
destroyed. Secondly, they have been put into suspended
time in the hope that some day they will be given shelter by
their own mother, and their mother offers them shelter. I
don't see any reason not to grant it to them and to her.

Q. Let me take that

one step further: if his Honor should decide for some reason
that it is not appropriate that Mrs. Davis, the mother, should
have these embryo, would you then agree that the second
preference, the second best solution would be to donate
them to some other couple, some other mother who would
bring them into being, or attempt to bring them into being?

A. I would agree
with that because that would preserve the life of the
embryos, but then if you agree with that, you are coming
back to the Solomon decision. The true mother is the one
who prefer the baby given to another than the baby being
killed. Then I would suppose that the justice would be on the
side of Solomon.
 MR. TAYLOR: We all
hope his Honor has the wisdom of Solomon. Thank you,
Doctor.

THE COURT: Do you

have anything?

MR.
CHRISTENBERRY: No, thank you, your Honor.

THE COURT: Any

recross?

MR. CLIFFORD: No,

your Honor.
 THE COURT: Dr.
Lejeune, you may come down and have a seat over here
with Mr. Palmer and Mr. Christenberry.

(The witness was

excused.

 
There are a large number of pro-life organizations that can
provide you with further information about the abortion
debate. The following list is by no means comprehensive, but
it should give you a good start.
 
1 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "2008 Service
Report," 2-4.

2 Planned Parenthoodlnsider, April 1993.

3 PPFA, "Service Report," 19-24.

4 Planned Parenthoodlnsider,July-August 1993.

5 Ibid.; cf. National STOPP News, Nov 30, 1993.

6 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "2008 Annual
Report,"21.

7 Madeline Gray, Margaret Sanger. A Biography (New York:

Marek, 1979), 326.

8 PPFA, "Service Report,"21.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.; cf. International Planned Parenthood Federation,

"2002 Annual Report," 22;
National STOPP News, Nov 30,
1993.
11 LifeNews, Dec. 20, 2009
([Link]
abortionrecord. html).

12 National Catholic Register, March 28, 2009

([Link]
obama_100_days_ofabortion).

13 Gallup Poll, May 15, 2009

([Link]/poll/118399/Mo
re-Americans- Pro-Life-Than-Pro-
Choice-First-Time. aspx).

14 The Pew Research Center, October 2009 ([Link]

[Link]/report/549/ support-for-
abortion-slips).
15 Rasmussen Poll, May 26, 2009.

16 G. T. Burkman, et al., "Culture and Treatment Results in

Endometritis Following Elective
Abortion, "American Journal of
Obstetrics and Gynecology 128:5;
C. Gassner and C. Ballard,
"Emergency Medicine after
Abortion Abscess," American
Journal of Obstetrics and
Gynecology, 128:4; D.
Trichopoulos, et al., "Induced
Abortion and Secondary
Infertility," British Journal OB/GYN
83;

K. A. Stallworthy,
et al., "Legal
Abortion: A
Critical
Assessment of its
Risks," The
Lancet, 12:4;
American
Association of
Blood Banks and
The American
Red Cross,
"Circular
Information,"
1984, 6; W.
Cates, et al.,
"Thromboembolis
m and Abortion,"
American Journal
of Obstetrics and
Gynecology
132:4; R. L.
Turner,
Complications
and
Consequences
ofAbortion (Los
Angeles:
Advocates for
Life Press, 1983),
4; L. Duenhoelter
and B. Grant,
"Complications
Following
Prostaglandin F-
2A Induced Mid-
trimester
Abortion,"
American Journal
of Obstetrics and
Gynecology,
146:2.
17 Health Care Reform Gazetteer, November 2009; cf. Omni
Magazine, October 1991; Julia
Wittleson, The Feminization of
Poverty (Boston: Holy Cross
Press, 1983), 122-125. Direct
causality is difficult to prove, of
course, but no other single factor
has so affected the health-care
world to separate men and
women more than gynecological
innovations such as abortion.
Even the changing shape of the
workforce to include more women
has been neutralized as a factor
in costs by group health
insurance stabilization.

18 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "A Risky

Business: Reproductive Health
Care in Litigation," 1998.

19 New York Times, June 19, 1993.

20 Scott Somerville, ed., The Link BetweenAbortion
andBreast Cancer (Purcellville,
Va.: AIM, 1993).

21 The St. Louis Wire, Spring 2004.

22 National Right to Life News, June 15, 1995.

23 Ibid.

24 Hong Kong Eastern Express, April 12, 1995.

25 New Dimensions, October 1991.

26 Austin American-Statesman, Nov. 22, 1993.

27 National Institute ofFamily and Life Advocates Legal

Update, July-August 2007.

28 Front Lines Research, November 2000.

29 CaveatJournal, Nov. 2, 2009.

30 Health Care Reform Gazetteer, November 2009.

31 George Grant, Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned
Parenthood (Franklin, Tenn.:
King's Meadow, 1988,1992,
2010).

32 For the story of this remarkable pro-life resurgence, see

George Grant, Third TimeAround:
The History of the Pro-Lfe
Movement from the First Century
to the Present (Franklin, Tenn.:
King's Meadow, 1990,2010); and
Marvin Olasky, The Press
andAbortion, 1838-1988
(Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Publishers, 1988).

33 See James Macaulay, Current Heroes: Examples ofFaith

for OurTime (New York: American
Tract Society, 1879), 56-57;
James C. Mohr, Abortion in
America: The Origins and
Evolution of National Policy (New
York: Oxford University Press,
1978), 221-224; E. Frank Howe,
Sermon on Ante-Natal Infanticide
(Terra Haute, Ind.: Allen &
 Andrews, 1869), 2; Minutes of the
General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in the United
States of America, XVIII
(Philadelphia: Presbyterian
Publications Committee, 1869),
937.

34 Winston C. Duke and Paul Fowler, Abortion: Toward an

Evangelical Consensus (Portland,
Ore.: Multnomah, 1987), 36.

35 Edward J. Carnell, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948),
22.

36 See Grant, Third Time Around.

37 Michael J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity,
1982),21.

38 Ibid.,20.

39 Early Christian Fathers, eds. John Baillie, John T. McNeill,

and Henry P. Van Dusen, Library
of Christian Classics, vol. I
(Philadelphia: Westminster,
1953), 172.

40 Ibid.,171.

41 Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church, 49.

42 John M. Frame, Medical Ethics (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R,
1988), 94.

43 Ibid., 99-101. The term yeledin Exodus 21:22 is never

used to describe a nonviable
fetus. The Hebrew language has
such a word, golem. Used in
Psalm 139:16, golem literally
means "embryo" or "fetus." When
Scripture speaks of the death of
an unborn child (Job 3:16; Ps.
58:8; Eccl. 6:3), the word is
neither golem nor yeled, but
nefel, which means "one untimely
born." Yeled, then, in the absence
of strong considerations to the
contrary, does not mean a
miscarried child. Dr. Frame also
examines the verb yatza, found
in Exodus 21:22. The term means
"go out" or "depart." Yatza is
normally used to describe
ordinary births (Gen. 25:26;
38:28-30; Job 10:18; Jer. 1:5;
20:18). The only possible
exception is the use of yatza in
Numbers 12:12. Again, the
Hebrew has a more accurate
term for miscarriage and
spontaneous abortion: shakol
(Gen. 31:38; Ex. 23:26; Job 2:10;
 Hos. 9:14; Mal. 3:11). The proper
interpretation, then, of the
phrase weyatze'u yeladheyha in
Exodus 21:22 would not be an
induced miscarriage nor the
death of an unborn child, but an
induced premature birth of a
living child. Finally, Dr. Frame
examines the term ason ("harm")
in verses 22 and 23. Had the
writer intended to refer only to
the woman, lah meaning "to her"
would have been added. The
harm then refers to the woman,
to her prematurely born child, or
to both. Pro-abortion activists are
on shaky ground with this text,
whether the broad or narrow
interpretation is used.

44 Terry Bosgra, Abortion, the Bible, and the Church

(Toronto: LifeCycle Books, 1987),
7-8.

45 Cited in John Jefferson Davis, Evangelical Ethics

(Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R,
 1985),134.

46 Cited in Robert H. Bork, The Tempting ofAmerica (New

York: The Free Press, 1990),14.

47 Ibid.

48 Cited in ibid., 115.

49 Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther

(Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1978), 144.
50 Cited in Bork, The Tempting ofAmerica, 114.

51 Cited in Joseph Wambaugh, The Blooding (New York:

Bantam Books, 1989), 94.

52 Cited in Bosgra,Abortion, the Bible, and the Church, 14.

53 New York Times, January 8, 1990, B8.

54 Cited in Charles Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict (Grand

Rapids: Zondervan, 1987),101.
55 Ibid., 105.

56 Ibid., 108.

57 Ibid., 125.

58 New York Times, January 8, 1990, Al, B8.

 
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Grant, George. Grand Illusions-The Legacy ofPlanned

Parenthood. Franklin, Tenn.:
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from the First Century to the Present. Franklin, Tenn.: King's
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. KillerAngel.• The Life and Legacy of Margaret Sanger.

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Young, Curt. The Least ofThese. Chicago: Moody Press, 1984.

 
 
Dr. R. C. Sproul is the founder and chairman of Ligonier
Ministries, an international multimedia ministry based in
Lake Mary, Florida. He also serves as senior minister of
preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's in Sanford, Florida,
and as chancellor of the Ligonier Academy of Biblical and
Theological Studies, and his teaching can be heard around
the world on the daily radio program Renewing Your Mind.

During his
distinguished academic career, Dr. Sproul helped train men
for the ministry as a professor at several leading theological
seminaries.

He is the author of
more than seventy books, including The Holiness of God,
Chosen by God, The Invisible Hand, Faith Alone, A Taste of
Heaven, Truths We Confess, The Truth of the Cross, and The
Prayer of the Lord. He also served as general editor of The
Reformation Study Bible and has written several children's
books, including The Prince's Poison Cup.
 Dr. Sproul and his
wife, Vesta, make their home in Longwood, Florida.
 Table of Contents
Foreword by Dr. George Grant
Preface
1 A Nation Divided
2 The Sanctity of Life ......................................17
3 The Sanctity of Life and Natural Law
4 When Does Life Begin?
5 What If You Are Not Sure about Abortion?
6 The Role of Government in Abortion
7 A Woman's Right to Her Body
8 Three Frequent Assertions
9 The Pro-Choice Position
10 The Problem of Unwanted Pregnancies .....................121
11 Is Abortion the Unpardonable Sin?
12 A Pro-Life Strategy
Appendix A: Testimony on the Beginning of Human Life
Appendix B: Pro-Life Resources .............................217
Notes
Bibliography
Index