Audio only:
In this episode Trent refutes pro-choice advocates who try to use the Bible and church history to defend abortion.
Transcription:
Trent:
A lot of people claim that abortion is just a religious issue or it’s Christians imposing their religion on other people. But I find that when it comes to abortion, it’s pro-choice who always want to bring up religion and they always want to run away from the scientific and philosophical case for the pro-life position. So in today’s episode, we will refute pro-choice distortions of the Bible and church history. Let’s start with some common Bible verses that pro-choice advocates twist in order to support abortion. First, there’s Genesis two, seven, which says the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.
CLIP:
The only scripture that says when life begins is in Genesis two, when they are filled with the breath of life.
Trent:
So the claim is that the Bible teaches that life begins when you take your first breath because Adam became a living being when he breathe and they claim this happens at birth, not a conception. But what’s wrong with this argument? First, it proves too much. Many babies do not breathe immediately at birth. Some can take up to a minute to breathe on their own. This argument would justify fantasize as well as abortion. Number two, the unborn do breathe before they’re born, but they do so through an umbilical cord rather than through their mouths, even before they develop their umbilical cord, the unborn absorb oxygen through the lining of their cells in a process called respiration. And finally, God had to infuse an immortal soul directly into Adam or breathe the breath of life into him because Adam was the first human being. But all other human beings come into existence from other human beings.
So the requirement that God must breathe life into them just as he did for Adam is unsupported. The biblical authors knew there was human life in the womb before birth because women could feel their unborn child moving later in pregnancy. In the New Testament, the Greek word for baby Breo is used for born and unborn children. In Luke one forty four, a pregnant Elizabeth says to her cousin Mary, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the Breo baby in my womb leaped for joy. In Luke two 12, the same Greek word is used to describe the newborn Jesus sleeping in the manger. But we don’t need the Bible to prove the unborn are human and alive before birth. Because the science of biology shows us that after conception, which most scientists call fertilization, the life of a new member of the human species has begun the standard medical text, human embryology, and teratology states.
Although human life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed. Keith Moore and TVN Prasad’s textbook, the developing human states, human development begins at fertilization and Lang’s medical embryology. States development begins with fertilization, the process by which the male gat the sperm and the female gat the Oo site unite to give rise to a zygote. On a side note, some people claim the Catholic church does not believe the unborn or human because the church does not baptize stillborn babies. This meme claims these children are not baptized or given funeral masses because they never took a breath, but that’s false. The church does offer funeral rights for unborn children, and baptism is withheld from infants who died before birth because the church only baptizes living. People born and unborn stillborn infants are not baptized, not because they were never alive in the womb, but because they are no longer alive. Sacraments like baptism are for the living, not the dead, but the church pray for all the deceased and entrust especially children to the God who said, let the little children come to me. Next we have Exodus 21, 22, 23, which say, when men strive together and hurt a woman with child so that there is a miscarriage and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined according as the woman’s husband shall lay upon him and he shall pay as the judge determine if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.
CLIP:
Exodus, which is the law, it says that if people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined because the fetus is considered property. This is Jewish law. This is the law.
Trent:
Critics like this gentleman use this passage to argue that if the unborn were human, then the punishment would be more severe for killing the child than a mere fine. Instead, this is just treated as like a property crime first. Though it is not clear what the word injury in these verses refers to. It could mean an injury that occurs to the pregnant woman, to the unborn child, or to both. One way to interpret the passage is that if the woman is caused to have an early delivery of a living child, then the penalty is a fine, but any further injury to the child is covered under the Lex law, the law of an eye for an eye real fast. At this point, a lot of people would say in a video, here’s the word from our sponsor, but I love that our supporters are so generous.
We don’t need sponsorships. We can just focus on sharing and defending the Catholic faith. And if you want to help us to keep doing that, please hit the subscribe button and support us@trenthornpodcast.com. Where for as little as $5 a month, you get access to bonus content and you make all of this possible without any sponsorships. And now back to the episode, but even if that interpretation were incorrect, this passage does not prove God permits abortion. How does it follow that? Because someone was given a lesser punishment for accidentally killing an unborn child versus accidentally killing his mother that God would approve of intentionally killing an unmourned child through abortion. In ancient Israel, slaves and children had less social standing, so punishments for harming them were less severe. In the verses before this passage, a man who unintentionally kills his slave through physical discipline is not punished at all, but that didn’t mean slaves were property you could treat in any way you pleased. In the next verse, the intentional killing of a slave is treated as grounds for serious punishment, possibly the death penalty. This passage and Exodus simply does not support the view that intentional abortion is not sinful. Finally, let’s look at numbers. Chapter five,
CLIP:
Go pick up your own Bible wherever you have a Bible. Turn to numbers five 11 to 31. So this portion says it’s about a woman, and if you’re not sure if your wife has cheated on you, if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband, here the priest is to put the women under this curse. May the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries. It is clear as day. There is no question about it. If you don’t believe me, just go read the Bible. It is, it’s not even pro-choice, pro-abortion. It says, if you think your wife is cheated on you, give her a toxic potion and make sure that she has an abortion. I didn’t say it, I didn’t say it. Your God said it. Your God said it. Are you going to listen to it or not? Read the Bible? Read the Bible
Trent:
First. Chank, calm down so you don’t have a heart attack for everybody, even for you. Second, let’s summarize the context here. Numbers chapter five verses 11 through 31 require a wife suspected of adultery to drink water mixed with dust from the tabernacle floor. Pro-choice like Chank from the young Turks allege that this will cause a miscarriage if she has been unfaithful. And so this shows how abortion can be part of God’s plan, so to speak. But the passage in numbers does not say that the punishment here causes the unfaithful woman to have a miscarriage. The passage never even says anything about the woman being pregnant in the first place, and many acts of adultery do not lead to conception. The passage instead says her body shall swell and her thigh shall fall away and the woman shall become an execration among her people. But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children.
Biblical scholar Bruce Fisk says, the ritual in numbers five rendered the guilty infertile. But even if this punishment did cause a miscarriage, God’s killing of an unborn child conceived in adultery would not prove that unborn children are not persons or that we can kill them for any reason. God punished King David’s disobedience through the death of David’s newborn son, but that would not mean infants are not persons or that human beings are allowed to commit infanticide. God is allowed to end human life. We are not. So the Bible cannot be used to support the pro-choice position, but it certainly supports the pro-life position and you don’t have to use the Bible to show the unborn or human beings in order to have that biblical support. The argument from scripture, I prefer as a modest one, God forbids the killing of human beings because human beings are made in God’s image and we know from science and philosophy that the unborn are human beings, so it follows that abortion is wrong.
No special argument or special appeal to scripture is needed to show that abortion is wrong. Just as no special argument or appeal to scripture is needed to show that lynching innocent black people is wrong. Pope St. John Paul II put it this way, the text of sacred scripture never addressed the question of deliberate abortion, and so do not directly and specifically condemn it, but they show such great respect for the human being in the mother’s womb that they require as a logical consequence that God’s commandment you shall not kill, be extended to the unborn child as well. Moreover, we have to read scripture in light of the church’s constant teaching on the issue of abortion. The catechism says Since the first century, the church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. The first century did. A case says, you shall not procure abortion nor destroy a newborn child.
By three 14, the Council of Kyra thought it was being lenient in reducing a woman’s penance for procuring an abortion to 10 years of fasting. Now, it’s true that the question of insolvement was debated throughout church history, but that didn’t matter because the church condemned abortion regardless of the answer to the question of when the soul entered the body in the third century. Tertullian said, nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born or destroy, one that is coming to the birth that is a man, which is going to be one. You have the fruit already in its seed in the fourth century, St. Basil, the great said of the unborn child regarding abortion, the woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder with us. There is no nice inquiry as to it’s being formed or unformed. I’d also add here though that the church has always taught that men and women who choose to end the life of their child born or unborn are not permanently cut off from God’s mercy.
Pope John Paul II said the following to post-abortive women, which would also apply to men who actively support or even cowardly hope that their child is aborted. He said, if you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the sacrament of reconciliation to the same father and his mercy. You can with sure hope and your child, even the church fathers who believe that insolvement occurred after conception like all other saints and doctors of the church never said abortion was moral. According to Father John Connery in his book, abortion, the Development of the Roman Catholic perspective, whatever one would want to hold about the time of animation or when the fetus became a human being in the strict sense of the term abortion from the time of conception was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked upon as a moral dividing line between permissible and immoral abortion. In response, pro-choice Catholics claim that the church has previously permitted abortion, but their arguments rely on myth and misunderstanding. For example, some of them say that saints like Ireland’s Bridget of Kilder performed miraculous abortions that dissolved pregnancies caused by rape in Ireland. There’s even a pro-abortion group called the Bridget Alliance named after her, and here’s an alleged comedian referring to her.
CLIP:
So St Bridge Day is coming up and she’s the first woman in Ireland. She’s the Saint Patriot state of Ireland who gave an abortion. So what she did was a nun came and was like, I’m, I got pregnant. And Bridge said, don’t worry, I do miracles, and she just sent the baby back to God. I thought that was brilliant. I said, I fucking post that everybody would be happy again, and I got in so much trouble,
Trent:
And you won’t be surprised to learn that historians have shown these accounts about St. Bridged performing abortions come from unreliable folklore written centuries after she lived. Even Mave Callan and historian who downplays the medieval church’s attitude against abortion admits the sixth century penitentials of phon, the seventh century Irish cannons and the eighth century old Irish penitential include abortion among the sins to be repented even if abortion didn’t constitute homicide because there was doubt about whether the child had a rational soul. It still constituted an attack on human life, but modern science has now shown that the delayed in settlement view relies on flawed biology. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas believed that an unborn child received a rational soul weeks after he was conceived. But they probably believe that because Aristotle thought that unborn children progressed through vegetable and animal stages of life before their bodies were animated with a rational soul and became human beings later in the pregnancy.
Moral theologian William Mae says that quote, Aquinas relied on the inadequate biological knowledge of his day that in human generation the male seed was alone, the active element, he concluded that the body first formed by maternal blood by this seed was only vegetative in nature. But note that for St. Thomas, the bodies generated were not human in nature. St. Thomas were he alive today and cognizant of the biological evidence known today would not hesitate in concluding that the body that comes to be when fertilization is completed is indubitably a human body and hence that its organizing and vivifying principle can only be a human soul, an intellectual or spiritual soul. The question of whether abortion is wrong has nothing to do with the question of whether the unborn have souls. There’s no way to empirically prove that a newborn infant, or anyone for that matter has an immortal soul.
As a result, this argument proves too much. And when justify killing humans at any stage of life, it would be more responsible to believe that biological human beings have a right to life, and that is why abortion and infanticide and other forms of homicide are wrong. We can make a solid rational argument against abortion from secular principles, but people who call themselves Catholic definitely can’t support abortion in the gospel of life. John Paul II made it clear that the state has a duty to protect unborn children’s right to life, and Catholics have absolutely no room to say abortion is not gravely evil. The following words from Pope St. John Paul II make that abundantly clear, he said, by the authority, which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors in communion with the bishops, who on various occasions have condemned abortion and who in the aforementioned consultation albeit dispersed throughout the world, have shown unanimous agreement concerning this doctrine, I declare that direct abortion that is abortion willed as an end or as a means always constitutes a grave moral disorder since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.
This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God is transmitted by the church’s tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make listen and act, which is intrinsically illicit since it is contrary to the law of God, which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself and proclaimed by the church. If you’d like to learn more about how to discuss this issue, I recommend the second edition of my book Persuasive Pro-Life. Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.