What Does Christianity Say About Life's Beginning?
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“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
For centuries, people have debated the question of who is and who isn’t a person in response to different issues, such as: Are slaves people? Is it ok to conquer less technological peoples in order to access their resources? Is abortion ever acceptable? We might not ask the first two questions any longer (I certainly hope), but scientific advances have added several to the last one: Is it ok to abort someone because of their gender or handicap? Is embryonic stem-cell research ethical?
While science can’t answer the moral questions regarding personhood, information that we learn through scientific research can help us in the quest for wisdom and understanding. Let’s look at a few issues and consider what science and Christianity have to say about them.
“Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.”
Tertullian (c. 160-220 AD), De Anima 25
Abortion
Since the earliest days of the Christian Church, there has been almost unanimous condemnation of abortion. In the Christianworldview, each person is precious to our creator and therefore worthy of life. People make arguments for every conceivable “defining moment” of when a pre-born entity “becomes” a person, but the historical Christian position is that life begins at the moment of conception.
Even among Christians who disagree about when life begins, many agree that it is best to err on the side of caution and never risk possibly committing the act of murder against a fellow human being. Christians have typically argued (with some recent exceptions) that from the moment of conception, we should consider the developing body a person for ethical purposes. That way we will not grieve God by destroying a precious piece of His creation.
Scientific discoveries support the belief that life is present from the very beginning, and milestones of development come early and often. The other side of the scientific coin, however, is that medical advances have made abortion safer than ever before (for the mother, at least; still not for the baby). Early-term abortion is now considered a minor medical procedure similar to having one’s tonsils removed. And since it is no longer a big deal medically, many people assume that it’s not a big deal ethically. But those same people would have a hard time arguing that adultery or stealing are ethical, even in situations where they are very easy or convenient.
Now that abortion is widespread, we are beginning to see some of its unintended consequences. In some Asian countries, there are more boys born than girls, because boys are more culturally desirable in those places (for more, read “The Population Control Holocaust” by Robert Zubrin in The New Atlantis, Spring 2012). The targeted abortion of girls, simply because they are girls, is probably not what “women’s rights” activists have in mind when they defend (or promote) abortion.
Here in the West, we find that the population of people with handicaps like Down Syndrome is decreasing because of early screenings and abortion (by about 30%, according to the Lozier Institute). For those of us who believe that every person is precious to God, and especially for those who love someone with a handicap, that’s a tragedy, and it is morally unacceptable.
The rationale for these types of screenings is usually that they give parents a chance to prepare themselves if they are going to have a special-needs baby. But they're too often used as a tool to weed out the "undesirables" from our society and avoid having to deal with people who require an extra measure of help and love. Parents who are pregnant with a potentially handicapped child need to be supported in every way so they don't become overwhelmed. And it would be wise for every parent who is considering aborting one of these precious babies to spend a day helping out at the Special Olympics. There are no throwaway people.
Stem-Cell Research
Stem cells are cells that have the ability to turn into other kinds of cells. Scientists are researching ways to use them to treat diseases from diabetes to spinal cord injuries to blindness. Stem cells from adults are currently used in bone marrow transplants.
Stem-cell research is a fascinating field with potential health benefits for suffering people. But it is controversial because of one of the ways stem cells are acquired: by taking them from embryos of aborted babies. Other methods are to use adult cells, or to take any cell and replace the nucleus.
Some doctors and researchers would like to work with the flexible and plentiful embryonic stem cells. The debate around stem cell research is often confusing, because research done with adult stem cells or SCNT cells (Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer) is generally not considered to be controversial; these are just cells that appear in a grown person's body that can be manipulated for therapeutic purposes. So only one kind of stem cells causes the ethical dilemma for most people.
People who support embryonic stem cell research fall into one of three categories:
Some don't believe that abortion is immoral in the first place, so they don't have a problem with benefitting from it.
Others say that abortion is wrong, but the babies the cells come from are aborted anyway, so we might as well benefit from their deaths.
And others believe that abortion is wrong, and that it is generally wrong to benefit from immoral actions, but that the good that can be done with embryonic stem cells outweighs the reasons not to use them.
People in this last group usually believe that benefitting from abortion is the lesser of two evils - the other evil is wasting the opportunity to help those who are suffering and might be helped by the research.
The answer proposed by Dr. Francis Collins is to use the leftover embryos from in-vitro fertilization procedures for embryonic stem cell research. While that might sound like a nice, neat solution, there are ethical entanglements there as well (such as implicitly condoning IVF - see below).
For Christians, the ultimate question regarding stem cell research (because it is the ultimate question about everything), is: "What would God have us do?" It's a shame that embryonic stem cell research isn't mentioned explicitly in the Bible, but it's not, so we have to make our best effort to determine what is right based on the information we have.
In-vitro fertilization
In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is the process of fertilizing a woman's egg(s) in a laboratory with sperm from a donor male, and then injecting the egg(s) into that woman’s or another woman's uterus to try to cause a pregnancy. It is used to help couples get pregnant after less expensive methods (such as sex) have been tried. It is sometimes used to help single or lesbian women become pregnant. It is an expensive procedure with a success rate of less than 50%.
IVF is controversial for a couple reasons. First of all, some see creating babies in a Petri dish a way of playing God, especially since some couples use this part of the process to weed out any embryos that might have hereditary health problems. Others object to the fact that with IVF, the parents are mix-and-match; you can use the egg and sperm from any man and woman to create a baby, divorcing the process from an act of love and turning children into a market commodity with a price.
Perhaps the most controversial part of the IVF process is that often, more embryos are created than are needed for the procedure (or desired by the couple). These "leftover" embryos are typically frozen and dealt with in different ways: some are used later by the couple, some are donated to other couples, some are donated to medical research, some are disposed of, and some are kept frozen until a decision about them can be made, or indefinitely (the couple pays a yearly storage fee). Many see the destruction of unused embryos (or their indefinite freezing) as tantamount to abortion, since it is denying an opportunity for life to a human being.
Couples who are willing to pay large amounts of money for the less than 50% chance of conceiving a baby are desperate to have a child, and those of us who are not in that position must be sensitive to the heartbreak that comes with fertility struggles. But to be truly loving, we have to do what is best for each couple, and what is best for every couple is to act in accordance with what is good and moral. And that means there are moral and immoral ways to make a family.
I believe the long-term solution is for the Christian Church to promote the alternatives to IVF, not just by talking about them, but by putting them into practice. Some churches have adoption ministries, where members of the church support couples who want to adopt by walking them through the process, helping with bills, and having support meetings with other adoptive couples. Churches can create an atmosphere where adoption is considered a norm of Christian life. This kind of living not only helps build beautiful families, but it is a tangible representation of the Gospel, which is the story of God adopting us into His family.
Life
“Life is a gift” isn’t just a favorite expression of the Pro-Life movement; it is a deep theological truth that has repercussions in all of life. God gives us life; He doesn’t have to, but chooses to. We are accountable for what we do with this incredible gift, both for ourselves and for others. And we have a responsibility to stand up for the vulnerable and “disposable,” just as Jesus taught us.