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.

Margaret Sanger(Planned Parenthood founder)quotes

I’m not taking these from Pro-Life propaganda sources, these are independently sourced directly from her own writings.  Their indisputable.

[We propose to] hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

-Commenting on the ‘Negro Project’ in a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, December 10, 1939. - Sanger manuscripts, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.

The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.

-Speech quoted in “Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do.” The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11-12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review, Gothic Press, pages 172 and 174.

All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class

-“Morality and Birth Control”, February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.

As an advocate of birth control I wish … to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit,’ admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation…. On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.

-“The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda”, October 1921, page 5.

Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.

-“The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda”, October 1921, page 5.

The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.

-“The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda”, October 1921, page 5.

..give dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.

-“A Plan for Peace”, April 1932, pp. 107-108

Always to me any aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing… Never before had I looked into a sea of faces like these. I was sure that if I uttered one word, such as abortion, outside the usual vocabulary of these women they would go off into hysteria. And so my address that night had to be in the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand. [npg] In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were finally through it was too late to return to New York.

-Autobiography 1938, Chapter 29, “While the Doctors Consult”, p. 366.

In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of ‘fit’ and ‘unfit.’ Who is to decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.

-The Pivot of Civilization1922, Chapter 8, “Dangers of Cradle Competition”

Eugenics aims to arouse the enthusiasm or the interest of the people in the welfare of the world fifteen or twenty generations in the future. On its negative side it shows us that we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all—that the wealth of individuals and of states is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization.

-The Pivot of Civilization1922, Chapter 8, “Dangers of Cradle Competition”

Our ‘overhead’ expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying … demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded ‘captains of industry,’ financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements of the community.

-The Pivot of Civilization1922, Chapter 12, “Woman and the Future”
The following is not her’s in origin, but she still said it.

The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly.

-W.E.B. DuBois, Birth Control Review, June 1932. Quoted by Sanger in her proposal for the “Negro Project.”
Below is not directly her’s but fromBirthControlReview.

Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.

-Ernst Rudin, Birth Control Review, April 1933.

It is not my desire to turn anyone I disagree with into a 2 Dimensional Cartoon villain.  So I will not deny she also expressed legitimate concerns about Women’s rights.

Actually what’s amusing is she still in-spite of all this would not agree with the modern Pro-Choice movement’s insistence that the Unborn don’t qualify as Human beings.

I'm both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice

I define Life as beginning at Conception, but defining when life begins is not the only issue with regards to Abortion. I've become less radically "Pro-Life" over time.

Life is an important thing to protect, and so is Freedom of Choice, a good Libertarian and a good Christian believes in both of those things. Abortion represents an area where the two conflict, it's perfectly natural that different people will have different views on where to draw the line. But it's unfortunately standard on both sides to engage in demonizing the other.

I've shown, in another article of mine, that Life Begins at Conception Biblically, and that Abortion fits the Biblical definition of Murder.  But not all acts of Murder are equal, I do not view a woman who has an abortion, especially a teenage girl, the same as I do an Ax murderer. However I'll never agree with the most radical "Pro-Choice" people who want abortion to be treated like any ordinary medical procedure like having your tonsils removed.

I should also add that I oppose the Death Penalty

I'm going to give some advice to both sides. But I kind of have more for Pro-Life precisely because that's where I firmly was once and still identify with them more culturally as a Fundamentalist Christian.

To Pro-Lifers.
1. Don't engage in Slut shamming, I know only a loud Minority do that, but it's still important advice. And be careful because something can sound that way whether you intended it to or not.
2. Stop naively confusing the "Morning after Pill" with Abortion, it's not, the "Morning After Pill" will not terminate a pregnancy. it's merely a last resort to prevent conception. I go into more detail on that near the end of the defining when life begins dissertation.
3. When asked about the Rape exception, no matter what your view on that is don't answer with "Punish the Rapist not the Baby" a desire to punish is not why a women in that situation desires an Abortion.
4. Understand that Abortion is not a vice, the majority of ordinary people who are Politically "Pro-Choice" do want to lower the number of Abortions.
5. To many Pro-Chociers proving the child is alive won't be enough. They cite the issue of Autonomy, that no person has to right to use another person's body without their consent. No matter how innocent or dependent on that for their own life they are. This argument is why I feel we need to at least concede the Rape Exception.

And stop supporting Republicans, they're not Pro-Life their just using you. Ron Paul's Sanctity of Life Act would have ended legal Abortion, but when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress NO ONE made any effort to support his bill.

To Pro-Choicers.
1. No matter how much of a Woman's rights issue it is to you, that does not mean Pro-Lifers are automatically misogynists. There are and have been plenty of Pro-Life Feminists, including early Feminists before it became popular.
http://www.feministsforlife.org/history/index
2. And quit that silly "If a Fetus is alive so is a Sperm" and "If Abortion is murder so is Masturbation". It's a silly argument, it's not that difficult to understand the view that it's the uniting of the Sperm and Egg and their merging together that is the beginning of Life. Agree with it or not, it's not difficult to understand.

Basically both sides need to quit insisting the other is lying about what they say motivates them. That is inherently naive and hateful.

There is a claim that Numbers 5:11-31 is an Abortion ritual, though I see no reference to a pregnancy in it.  There are a lot of ways that passage is used against The Bible by modern critics.  Thing is, it's the opposite of the kinds of "Ordeals" used to expose "witches" in medieval times.  In this case it is something supernatural happening that was harmful to the woman. To my knowledge drinking bitter water would not actually scientifically cause that effect (Nahmandies also pointed this out).  It is actually my theory that this story is here for the purpose of allowing a husband an excuse to let his wife get away with adultery, I don't believe anyone was ever in fact condemned by this ritual.

Abortion is not a defining issue in how I vote either way. My general philosophy is that the more the Mainstream Media makes a big deal of something, the more it's likely a distraction from what the people in power don't want us knowing they're doing. I never vote for Republicans or Democrats (except Ron Paul), when choosing a 3rd Party candidate to support, I've supported both Pro-Life (Chuck Baldwin) and Pro-Choice (Gary Johnson) ones.