Tuesday, May 12, 2015

The Life begins at First Breath argument

I've argued strongly for Life Begins at Conception before, but I'm someone willing to change my views after further study of Scripture.  I've also talked about how nuanced the Abortion issue is here.

First disclaimer however is that I know many making the Life at First Breath argument do so treating that as synonymous with Life beginning at Birth.  That is an error, we now know scientifically that the fetus develops lungs & nostrils and begins breathing at about six months.  And undeniable Biblical proof that it is alive before birth is provided by Jeremiah 1 and Luke 1:39-45, that's two witnesses.  We don't know at what point in the pregnancy it was that God spoke to Jeremiah, but we know the visitation was six months into Elizabeth's pregnancy, exactly the point the fetus develops lungs is when John leaped for Joy in his mother's womb.

Passages like Psalm 139 and Isaiah 44 may refer to conception, but not in a context that in any way helps define when Life Begins.  Psalm 139 is about God's foreknowledge, it's entire context is about how God knew you BEFORE your life began, not when it began.  Same btw with the references to Conception in Jeremiah 1.

 In this study of mine from a few months ago, some Biblical significance to the fact that the lungs are formed six months after conception is discussed.

Genesis 2:7 says that Adam became a living soul when God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils.  

Also Ezekiel 37: The Dry Bones vision, which is contrary to some people's insistence is about the literal Bodily Resurrection as David being there proves.  The same imagery is used, God Breaths the Life into the dry bones to Resurrect them.

In both Hebrew and Greek the word for "spirit" often translated "ghost" also means "breath".  

In the New Testament believers are never refereed to as dead, we have Eternal Life, the time our bodies are clinically dead is just refereed to as a sort of sleep.  Repeatedly the moment of physical death is defined as "gave up the ghost", that can equally accurately be translated "gave up the breath" as an idiom for "stopped breathing".  This phrase is used both of Jesus Death on The Cross, and Stephen's stoning in Acts 7.

Psalm 33:6 could also be seen as backing up this doctrine.  As well as Job 34:14-15.

There is the counter argument I'm aware of that Blood is The Life and the fetus' heart starts beating at less then a month.  But the heart is not pumping it's own blood yet at that point but the Mother's.  The Fetus begins producing it's own blood about 5 days before the Lungs are formed.

When Pro-Choicers who are Ok with Abortion being illegal at a certain point refer to a fetus becoming "viable", this is the point in the pregnancy they are referring to.  It is after the lungs are formed that the child could survive if it's born prematurely, but if it's born before that it usually doesn't make it.

4 comments:

  1. "There is the counter argument I'm aware of that Blood is The Life and the fetus' heart starts beating at less then a month. But the heart is not pumping it's own blood yet at that point but the Mother's. The Fetus begins producing it's own blood about 5 days before the Lungs are formed."

    Completely false. The baby does not ever have the mother's blood circulating through his body. It would kill him because her white blood cells would attack his cells as being foreign. Her blood never enters the body of her child. The child's heart pumps his own blood, and this starts about the 18th day after conception. The mother's blood goes no further than the placenta. In the placenta, maternal and fetal blood vessels intertwine, but the blood does not mix. Instead, oxygen, carbon dioxide, fluids, nutrients, and wastes diffuse between the two separate systems. The child gets the nutrients he needs and passes off wastes to the mother's blood to be removed. The blood circulated through the baby's body is produced first in the yolk sac, then the liver, and eventually the bone marrow. It does not come from the mother. The hemoglobin in the baby's blood is different from adult hemoglobin by having a higher affinity for oxygen, which allows the baby's blood to absorb oxygen from the mother's blood more efficiently in the placenta.

    "We don't know at what point in the pregnancy it was that God spoke to Jeremiah, but we know the visitation was six months into Elizabeth's pregnancy, exactly the point the fetus develops lungs is when John leaped for Joy in his mother's womb."

    Elizabeth was 6 months pregnant when this happened, but Mary had just become pregnant when she assented to be the mother of Christ at the angel's prompting. The preborn John the Baptist reacted with joy because he recognized the Savior, already incarnated in Mary's womb.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jesus is not the same as other individuals, since he alone had a Pre-Existence.

      For the rest of us that didn't exist before our bodies became alive, Life is defined as beginning at first Breath.

      Delete
    2. No, the Bible never defines life as beginning at the first breath. Adam's creation isn't the way people usually begin to exist. We don't get formed from dirt, then breathed into by God.

      Life usually has breath, but that's a general statement. Nowhere does the Bible indicate that breath is the dividing line. If anything, there's a stronger argument to be made for blood circulation being the important thing because the Bible does actually say that the life is in the blood. That starts at 18 days after conception. But even there, talking about a general case (that life has blood) doesn't necessarily mean that a human life that hasn't developed that far is expendable.

      Even if you could prove that a baby doesn't have a soul until the heart beats or the lungs develop, it does not follow that we have the authority to end that life. God gave us dominion over the plants and animals, but not over other human beings. We don't have the right to end a human life - whether we know for sure it has a soul or not.

      Delete
    3. By the way, it's ridiculous to claim that it's okay to kill a baby up until 6 months gestation when babies have survived outside the womb before that point.

      Also, development is a gradual process. Personhood or having a soul are an either-or kind of quality. If you're talking about development of a particular body part like the lungs, it starts very early in an embryo with cells that will become the lungs, continues on with gradual development of the lungs and further on until the lungs are showing some function, then full function sometime around birth or even after birth. It's a continuum, not a distinct point. Any point you identify in there is going to be completely arbitrary. It can't be a valid basis for determining whether we can kill the baby or not.

      Delete