Is the Church Right to Value Young Life?

We’re taking our time with this topic, The Borders of Life, continuing the series on Biblical Anthropology, because frankly there’s a whole lot to meditate on. And after all, it is a major topic that our world is focused on.

Every once in a while the debate comes back about how “incremental” our approach should be when it comes to law. Should we change a law that only stops some abortions? Or should we only aim to stop all of them together? Are we being consistent? Is it all right to be inconsistent politically or legally on our way to an ultimate goal?

I’m not taking the time to answer these questions because I’m focusing on laying foundations in this series. But you can certainly see how tricky things can get when you take a simply example – a law that outlaws the killing of a baby as soon as a heartbeat can be detected. In theory, this may stop a lot of murder. But of course there’s a lack of consistency. Does a detectable heartbeat make one a person? Someone of value? What about someone with an artificial heart, who technically has no heartbeat at all? Can they be legally killed?

When it comes to law, it is strange but true that one Scripture passage is brought up by two very different sides in order to support their point of view. And it’s not an easy passage. But I want to give you an introduction to it, because you will hear it come up in debate. Let’s take a look:

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.

Exodus 21:22-25

Now, at first glance, it would appear (in English, anyway) that if the woman has a miscarriage – that is, the baby dies – the guilty party simply pays a fine. If, however, the woman dies, the guilty party is executed.

However, there are some problems with this interpretation.

There is some challenging translating going on here, but the above is a fairly literal translation of the first part – “her children come out”. Some versions obscure this, but the law does indeed consider the unborn to be “children”. It (or they) is/are a human life.

You’ll also note that it doesn’t specify if the baby lives or dies. So if we read this more or less literally, this seems to be the idea. If the baby is born prematurely, but the mother and the baby are fine, the guilty party pays a fine. But if the child and/or mother dies, he is executed.

But there’s something else. There’s a very difficult phrase here – translated above “he shall pay as the judges determine”. There’s actually a lot of disagreement about what this phrase in Hebrew even means, but it seems that somehow the guilty party pays for his guilt. In the Law of Moses, this could be a fine, but it could also be the death penalty. When we look at other uses of this phrase in Scripture, it is always talking about something extremely serious.

Trust me, that is only an introduction – there are a number of interesting issues here, but that would be a series of posts in itself! But the idea seems to be that the Bible clearly identifies the unborn as a child, and that the punishment would be the same for mother or child – life for life.

Of course, the Bible is very clear about the value of human life, including at the borders of life. So we should not take a less clear text and try to overturn the clearer ones, even if we could somehow argue that this text supports abortion (which it does not!).

In spite of modern attempts to make the Bible support the killing of the unborn, the Church throughout history has been remarkably consistent here. One of the earliest texts from church history is the Didache. It’s so early that some people believe it may have been written before the New Testament was completed. It’s not inspired Scripture, but it does give us a picture of what some of the earliest Christians believed.

And it says it well –

…you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.

The Didache

In both cases, it’s a child. Do not murder.

Back in those days, people found that infanticide was quite convenient if you don’t want the baby. They knew very well that it was the same life in the womb as it was outside, and so why not be allowed to end the life either way? And so many people would “expose” their babies – leave them outside to die (or be picked up by someone looking to build up their slave resources).

And I should mention that today, some respected scholars think that this is a reason why we should allow infanticide again.

The first Christians rescued and raised many many of these abandoned babies. There are many stories of this in early Christian writings. Until finally, government outlawed exposing babies. That’s actual progress.

But today, some want to bring the practice back. An article from 2011 featured in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, entitled After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?, explored this. Scholars from Australia and Italy wrote: “…we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be.” They suggest we emphasize the morality of this by changing language from “infanticide” to “after-birth abortion”. How can they defend this? Because, they claim, the baby is really only “a potential person”.

I wonder who decides who is only a “potential” person? Hitler decided that Jews were not people at all. And millions were murdered.

Let’s admit it, many of us would agree in one way – a few centimetres or a few days does not change the value of a person. These scholars do indeed conclude, “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus”. But of course they don’t believe that either was made in God’s image. And so, according to many, we can decide – or the “experts” can decide – who is a person and who is not.

If we don’t believe in the imago dei, we look for value in other places. Maybe if someone is severely handicapped, they have no value. Maybe if they can no longer contribute to the community, they’re no longer a “person”. Or perhaps we let the government decide. Brothers, NO!

And so this brings us to the other border of life. We’ll look at that next time.