Life does not begin when the baby is born. You know when dad and two older kids come to visit mom in the hospital and find her holding the little cherub in her proud arms - that's not when life begins at all. It's way before then. Life begins at conception. Let me explain what this means. You see, it's actually not the stork that brings mom the baby. Grownups only tell kids that because the truth is kinda icky. Mom and dad make the baby together. What I'm about to explain is something I've never done before, and if I stay in the seminary and become a priest I'll never do it. But I've read about it, and I'm sure my information is pretty accurate. Dad and mom make the baby by having sex together. Inside dad are these little things called spermatozoa. They are so very small and so very many. While having sex, dad deposits these spermatozoa inside mom. Now, mom has eggs inside her, and the spermatozoa are drawn to the eggs. As soon as one sperm cell joins with one egg, life begins. This exact moment is called conception or fertilization. "From the womb before the birth I conceived you" (Psalm 110:3). Again, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart" (Jer 1:5).
The product of joining a sperm cell with an egg in the mother's womb is called a zygote. This zygote is microscopic, yet it is a human life in its own right just like any of us. It contains all the biological programming that makes us who we are. Within a few days of fertilization, the zygote has experienced numerous changes, and has attached itself to the wall of the mother's womb. By the 28th day, it has become an embryo which through a placenta feeds on the mother. After two months, the fetus' size is about 3cm. In eighty days, it has grown to be about 9cm, and after four months, about 20cm. Nine months later, it is about 50cm, and weighs about 7.0lb, quite ready to be born. And this nine-month period, the meeting of two cells in the mother's womb to the birth of a baby composed of some 60 billion cells, is called gestation.
And at every moment during gestation, the unborn is alive. The mother can speak to it, and feel its activities. It is counted as a life, a member of the human population. In the Jewish tradition for example, if by some misfortune a person were to injure a pregnant woman in such a way that she lost her unborn baby, the demand was a life for a life according to the lex talonis. This is evidence that the unborn child was seen as a living person. Some wealthy parents also begin to modify their wills to include their unborn offspring. There are many other practices which show that people recognize the unborn as living persons. There is life in the womb before parturition.
In view of the foregoing therefore, abortion, defined here as the medical destruction of unborn life, is technically murder. In Law however, there is a difference between abortion and murder. Murder is a crime, but abortion is not. The latter is justified by the courts. Whenever I write, I never criticize our laws. I am too much in awe of this amazing land and its politics to do that. Besides, Psalm 115:16 says: "The heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to people." The ideals of Holy Mother Church, true though they are, are just that - ideals. In the realm of politics, we should leave the adjudication of claims to people, not priests. The courts are justified and have the jurisdiction to declare that abortion is not a crime. But there is a difference between a crime and a sin. Mother Church has jurisdiction over the latter.
So you can understand why Mother Church is worried. Imagine you were a mother, and your child was engaging in sinful behavior, but the child didn't realize it - would you keep quiet? No, not if you cared for them. This is why the Church does all it can to cry out against abortion which we have shown to be, from a moral standpoint, essentially murder. And it is from a moral and spiritual standpoint that the rest of this post will proceed. I have no competency in law and politics, and I always try to stay out of them. If I am very lucky to be a priest, my degree will be in theology, not in political science.
In a previous post, I defined a human soul as all the conscious, semi-conscious and unconscious activities of an individual from the moment of conception to the moment of actual death. I also said that every soul, teleologically speaking, has a purpose intended for it by God. In the book of Jeremiah, we see God telling him that the divine will had set the prophet apart even while the prophet was unborn. In other words, Jeremiah's personality and purpose were determined even before he was brought into the physical world. The unborn zygote like we earlier said has all the biological programming that makes it truly human. This programming contains within itself organs deriving from cells and chromosomes. What biology would call cells, organs and the like spirituality would call energy. And the first law of thermodynamics concerns the conservation of energy. It states: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only converted from one form to another. Also, God says: "It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it" (Isaiah 55:11). The spiritual energy that God sends to be enfleshed in the mating activity of parents is deliberately sent. Of an average of 300 million sperm cells released by the father into the mother's body during sex, only one actually fertilizes her egg. Just take a moment to think about it - only one. Can this be an accident? I really don't think so. Besides, not every coitus results in conception.
Every energy field made in conception is ordained by God for a purpose. God entrusts the earliest moments of the unfolding of that purpose to parents. That being the case, a woman having an abortion is like her saying to God: I really don't give a crap about your divine purpose. I'm gonna do things my own way. Here is a God that knows everything, a supreme being that is infinitely wise; in the infinity of the divine wisdom, God sends a life force, a bundle of energy that can neither be created nor destroyed; a soul to this individual woman, so that she can manage the earliest periods of this soul's unfolding, but the woman is audacious enough to slap God in the freaking face! Some people are bold, I tell you. It's like your boss at work. He or she tells you to do something, and you stand up straight, look them in the eyes and say, "I'm not gonna do that." That's a recipe for being fired. Many bosses, if you refused to do as they required, would fire you. And so to keep your job it would be better for you to obey your boss. God is like the biggest boss ever. No one can know better than God, and so no one can be more powerful than the divine will, because scientia est potentia, which in English means "knowledge is power." When the divine will has a plan and sends a woman a soul to care for, God expects the woman to cooperate with it. God doesn't like taking no for an answer.
But many women complain. They call their pregnancy "unplanned." Whose plan is important, by the way? God's or the woman's? Besides, who was it that had sex in the first place? Some women say, "Oh, I wasn't ready," or "I was raped," or "I used every precaution." There are many excuses to be given for abortion, but none holds moral water. Think of Maria Mater Dei. She was only about twelve years old and a virgin when the angel Gabriel was sent to her. She probably wasn't ready; she hadn't had any consensual sex, and she was using the best precaution of all - abstinence - when the angel announced that she was going to conceive and bear a son, Jesus. As an unmarried girl, her life was going to be endangered. She was going to be stoned when the pregnancy began to show. She must have been terrified. Her family and friends would shun her; she would be ostracized in the market place, and of course she would eventually be pelted with rocks till she expired, but she courageously said, "I am but a servant-girl to God. Let what you have said happen to me" (Luke 1:38). How many girls of today can do this?
So for example a sixteen year-old high school cheerleader girl - let's say her name is Jessica - has sex with her dashing jock of a boyfriend, Trey. They'd been on a date at Wendy's. Trey had bought her one of those awesome shakes Jess liked, and they had enjoyed themselves sipping and talking and then making out in the car afterwards. Then Trey had suggested it, and they had gone from first base to second base and then hit a home run in a matter of minutes. Weeks later, Jess tells Trey she's pregnant, and Trey panics - "My life is ruined, damn it! How could you do this to me, Jess?" "What're you talking about, Trey - what I did to you? What about what you did to me?" "I'm supposed to go to Princeton in the fall on scholarship. I worked hard for this; you're not gonna ruin this for me, Jess; I'm not gonna let you. You've got to take care of it." "You mean get an abortion?" "Hello - did I freaking stutter!" And Jessica flees, crying her eyes out. Or, there's been a kegger. College frat guys and sorority chicks are near passing out. One guy "gets lucky" and forces himself on a girl who is too weak to resist because she's tipsy. He takes advantage and literally rapes her, and they both feel terrible the morning after, not just from the worst hangover they've had, but also from the realization that they've had unprotected sex. Weeks later, the girl finds out she's pregnant, but doesn't even remember who's responsible. Cases like these abound. Some are worse, some are better. They are the usual grounds for a woman's wanting to have an abortion. The unborn life in them is inconvenient in situations like these. The unborn child obstructs their plans and feels like a burden, and they want to rid themselves of it.
But, even though they did not "plan" to have babies, God purposefully let them. And to have an abortion is to disrespect God, who never makes mistakes because of the divine perfection. St Anselm sees God as the most perfect reality conceivable, above which no level of perfection is conceivable. Aquinas calls God the ultimate Good, in whom there is no desire of evil, no wish for harm for anyone. For Aristotle, there is no evil intention in God, for there actually is no evil, but only the potentiality of privation in goodness. "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jer 29:11). Again, "All things work together unto good for those that love God and are called to the divine purpose" (Rom 8:28). Hence, for those who are spiritual enough to appreciate the reality of God, abortion need never be an option. But for those who hate God or are prejudiced toward him, abortion remains an option.
In the parable of the talents contained in Luke 19:12-28, the wicked servant was very prejudiced toward his master. He said he knew that his master was "a hard man, harvesting where [he had] not sown and gathering where he had not scattered seed," (v21) and so the servant threw away the talent entrusted him, whereas the other servants cared for the talents entrusted them. The master condemned the wicked servant to everlasting suffering in hell for aborting the talent given to him, while he praised the others, who groomed theirs. Similarly, so what if the pregnancy was not prepared for; what if the circumstances of conception were less than ideal; what if the mother is on welfare or on drugs - the unborn child is still a "talent" entrusted by the divine master to the woman, who is a mere servant. God desires that the talent be saved and valued, not destroyed and cast away; allowed to fulfill the purpose intended for it, not sent back void to the master.
The unborn life is a soul in search of the life lessons marked out for it. The best way for the soul to learn such lessons is for it to be born at the specific moment, in the specific circumstances and through the specific mother. The universe has perfectly calculated the situation, and the general order of events has made room for the arrival of the additional life. The mother however claims to know better than God. She purportedly knows the baby's birth will be a bad idea, and so has to prevent it from happening, and so she aborts the fetus. Relieved that she has prevented a catastrophe, she returns home. But she cannot know what the future holds - that's why there is a God. But then again, perhaps many of the people who get their unborn babies aborted don't believe in God.
Unplanned pregnancy has many life lessons to teach both the mother and the baby. For a soul to be born to a woman in such circumstances as to make her want an abortion, that soul must have some tough lessons to learn indeed. And an unplanned pregnancy might be a wakeup call to a mother, to make her reexamine the use of her sexuality and put her life back on track. This may not always be the case, though, since a few women have one unplanned pregnancy after another, apparently learning nothing from previous such experiences. And how sorry for those babies I am. What manner of life lessons must be intended for them that they should be born in such circumstances! And yet God allows it. He knows intimately the value of even the sorriest human life. Jesus says in Luke 12:7: "And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows."
How can one know all this and still want to have an abortion? It seems to me that the people who choose to have abortions do not believe in God. Saints Aquinas, Anselm and Bonaventure have proved the existence of God, but many yet do not believe. For these unbelievers, life is a random set of events with no purpose; no conscious, deliberate order. Existentialists see individual people as the be-all and end-all of their individual fates, and give the power of destiny to mortal people. Yet the psalmist asks God: "What are people that you are mindful of them; ordinary people that you care for them?" (Psalm 8:5). Again the psalmist declares: "People are just a breath; they fade like a passing shadow" (Psalm 144:4). How can people, so described, be the supreme arbiters of destiny? Only God is justified to take human life. Only God is the arbiter of human destiny.
There should be no reason for an individual to commit abortion. My appeal is directed at individuals. Even though you are legally permitted to commit abortion, choose not to exercise your liberty. Keep your babies. Let them live and grow inside you, and birth them. God knows why you're pregnant. It's like money you have in the bank - it's legally yours to do as you please; you can save it or you can blow it. It's your choice, but then again what is the better choice - waste or conservation? Especially as waste is not the actual destruction of wealth, but simply relinquishing material power to a shrewder person. In the same way, when a person aborts a child, the soul is not destroyed; God's spiritual plan and principle are not thwarted. All that happens is that the mother proves herself to be unworthy to participate in God's plan, to her own disadvantage. God simply entrusts the plan to someone else, and condemns the mother. In the parable of the talents, the talent was taken from the wicked servant and given to the one who already had more. In the book of Esther, Mordecai tells her, "If you do not participate in God's design to save the Jews, help will come from another person, but you and your father's house will perish completely" (Esther 4:14).
Do you want yours and your father's house to perish? I'm sure you don't. I am speaking to your conscience, and not to politics - those are beyond my pay-grade; the psalmist says in the 131st song: I do not bother myself with matters beyond me. I am saying that you as an individual should abhor abortion because morally speaking it is as grievous as murder, and spiritually speaking it is like slapping God in the freaking face, saying you know better than God does, and refusing to participate in the divine plan! Resolve never to have an abortion, and encourage your friends and family not to as well. Indeed, in so doing, you would not only be benefitting spiritually, but you would be escaping some of the medical complications that can result, such as infections, loss of fertility or permanent damage to the womb, all of which are directly proportional to the dating of the abortion in the lifecycle of the unborn child.
Furthermore, there are commonsense alternatives to abortion. To begin with, a mother can decide to put the baby up for adoption. There are many couples who cannot have children of their own, but are desperately seeking to adopt. A mother can enrich their lives with a child. Think of the example of Trey and Jess. Trey can still go off to Princeton on scholarship, and Jess can continue with her life, especially if supported by friends and family during the gestation period, by simply passing on the responsibility of raising the child once born to adoptive parents. Where a woman decides to keep the baby, welfare and counseling programs abound to help her cope with her decision. Church groups and government institutions provide an enormous amount of aid to such mothers. There is always a moral way out. Always. And "God will make a way, where there seems to be no way" (Isaiah 43:19). And if unplanned pregnancy remains the primary excuse for abortion, then let us begin to plan. Vigorous sex education programs should be embarked upon in homes and schools. Couples should embrace family planning measures and thus responsibly approach the procreative process. Everyone should be involved in some way.
Finally, think of Moses' mother in the bible (Exodus 2:1-10). At a time when babies were being aborted, she took the risk of keeping her own child, knowing that if she were discovered she would be put to death. She hid her child in her bedroom until he was too big to be hidden anymore, and then she took him to a river and placed him among the reeds on the bank. She and Miriam her daughter watched protectively over him until Pharoah's daughter came a-bathing. Then they connived to ensure that Pharoah's daughter adopt the infant, with its biological mother for nurse - genius! The baby grew up to be one of the greatest individuals in human history. If people like Moses' mother could go to extraordinary lengths to preserve the life of their child, not knowing whether such a child would in fact grow to become a towering personality in human affairs, why can't everyone? We must let God be God. We should choose life.
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