life begins at forty…

Originally posted on May 31, 2008 – by Andre Piet
last modification: July 18, 2024

embryo selection

When does life begin? That is the principled question that is currently very much topical at the governmental level. State Secretary Jet Bussemaker had written that parents with a genetic form of breast cancer who want to be certain that their IVF child does not have this gene may have an embryo selection performed. The Christian Union is vehemently opposed to this. For them, life begins at conception. From this (classical Christian) idea, selecting embryos away or performing an abortion provocatus is in fact nothing other than murder. On this latter assertion (abortion = murder) I want to take a closer look in this weblog.

the mother’s womb

Biblically speaking, it is indeed perfectly logical that nothing deserves protection so much as the mother’s womb. It may be called telling that the Hebrew word for “womb” (rechem) is from the same root as the word for “compassion.” Whoever says “womb” says “compassion.” The womb is the intimate place where the God-miracle takes place of the development of the unborn child (see Ps. 139:13–16).

injury or manslaughter?

But… the worthiness of protection of the womb is something different from the assertion that from fertilization onward there is already a human soul. Or that terminating a pregnancy would be the same as murder. In the Bible it is different. In Exodus 21 we read a regulation in which there is mention of an unintentional abortion:

22. When men strive and one strikes a pregnant woman, so that her fruit departs, yet without other injury, he shall surely be fined, as the husband of the woman imposes upon him, and he shall give it according to the decision of the judges. 23. But if there is other injury, then you shall give soul for soul…
Exodus 21

This legislation shows that miscarriage through fault is regarded as inflicting injury upon the pregnant woman. If the woman herself were to die as a result of the violence of one of the men, then there would be manslaughter. And then “soul for soul” would be given. A miscarriage, however, is not counted as a soul.

life is breathing

In the Bible a living soul is that which has “the breath of life.” God breathed the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils and thus he became a living soul (Gen. 2:7). In Gen. 7:22 we read of “in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life.” Spirit and breath are synonymous concepts in the Bible. A person receives the spirit at the first breath (= at birth) and gives up the spirit with the exhaling of the last breath. Until the end of the pregnancy, the life of the child is the life of the mother. The blood in the unborn fruit is supplied with “breath of life” that the mother inhales. Only at birth does the child itself begin to breathe and thereby itself begin to live. The span of life is rightly reckoned from birth, not from conception.

Life begins at forty… weeks.

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