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Two End-of-Life Issues: Abortion and Euthanasia
Part 1
Am I a Person Yet?
by Samuel E. Ward
Introduction
In our series of studies concerning current issues facing the church, I have decided first to present and evaluate two key distinguishing arguments (one on the subject of abortion and the other on euthanasia) which provide a major dividing point among those involved in the discussion of these two issues. Relative to abortion, the arguments from various conflicting viewpoints concerning when one becomes a person will be presented and evaluated. Concerning euthanasia, the differing rationales on the issue of passive and active euthanasia will be offered followed by an assessment of the arguments made.
Charles Colson expresses exactly why coming to a general agreement on either the issue of abortion or euthanasia in our culture is so difficult when he writes,
Christians believe that God created human beings in his own image. And because human life bears this divine stamp, life is sacred, a gift from the Creator. He and he alone can set the boundaries of when we live and when we die. Against this…is the naturalistic belief that life arose from the primordial sea through a chance collision of chemicals, and that over billions of years of chance mutations, this biological accident gave rise to the first humans.[1]
I. Abortion: The Issue of When One Becomes Fully Human
Norman Geisler asserts that there are three basic positions that can be held relative to abortion.[2]
1. If the status of the unborn is seen as fully human, the one holding this view will most likely never accept abortion as an option on the basis of the sanctity of life.
2. If the status of the unborn is viewed as being potentially human, proponents will argue that abortion may be an appropriate option sometimes.
3. If the status of the unborn is regarded as subhuman, then supporters of this view will see abortion as always an available option under any circumstance.
The point at which one becomes a human being, then, becomes vital to the discussion. David S. Oderberg states, "If, then, the foetus is an innocent human being, deliberately killing it must, as a matter of logic, be a homicidal act."[3]
A. The View That the Unborn Is Fully Human
Norman Geisler represents the view held by many Christians that the fetus is fully human from conception. The following reflect four of his key biblical arguments:
1. Unborn babies are called "children," the same word used of infants and young children.
Luke 1:41,44 (NIV) 41When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. . . 44As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
Luke 2:12 (NIV) 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.". . . 16So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.
1 Kings 3:17-18 (NIV) 17One of them said, "My lord, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was there with me. 18The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us.
2. The unborn are created by God (Ps 139:13) just as God created Adam and Eve in His image (Gen
Psalms 139:13 (NIV) 13(NIV) For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
Genesis 1:27 (NIV) 27(NIV) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
3. The life of the unborn is protected by the same punishment for injury or death (Exo.
Exodus 21:22 (NIV) 22"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely£ but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows.
Genesis 9:6 (NIV) 6(NIV)"Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.
4. Christ was human (the God-man) from the point he was conceived in Mary's womb
Matthew 1:20-21 (NIV) 20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
B. The View That Unborn Is Potentially Human
Lewis Smedes, himself a Christian, suggests that there are four possible answers to the question as to when one becomes a person:
1. The moment of conception
2. The acquiring of one specific identifiable quality or ability (possession of a soul,
movement of the fetus within the womb, or viability outside the womb, etc.)
3. The moment it is born
4. The fetus becomes a person at some indiscernible point in the process from the fertilized egg to birth[4]
It is this last answer that Smedes settles upon for himself. He writes,
We cannot point to any moment in the process when we are sure that the fetus is not a person. Nor can we mark off a moment after which we know for sure that the fetus is a person, with the same right as a child dancing in the streets. How, then, are we to treat the fetus-on-its-way.[5]
C. The View That the Unborn Is Subhuman
Michael Tooley argues for still another possible definition of personhood. In his paper, "Abortion and Infanticide," he asks and then offers his answer to the question.
What properties must something have in order to be a person, i.e., to have a serious right to life? The claim I wish to defend is this: An organism possesses a serious right to life only if it possesses the concept of self as a continuing subject of experiences and other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity.[6]
Tooley says the point at which an individual manifests a concept of self as described above is set by some as the time when he can use language to express such concepts.
Peter Singer, who edited the book in which Tooley's paper appears, shares a similar view as Tooley in regards to justification of infanticide on the grounds that self-consciousness has not developed and goes so far as to say that if the death of an infant is a tragedy, it is "generally a tragedy for the parents, not for the infant who has not even glimpsed the prospects of the life that might have been in store for it."[7]
II. Analysis of Views Concerning the Question of When One Becomes Fully Human
A. Analysis of the View That The Unborn Is Fully Human
God, as creator of all things (including human life) is the final authority on life and death issues. This view that there is a God who has revealed and claimed His rights over all life is one that is consistent with the revelation that is in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. As previously noted from Geisler, God's knowledge of a person begins even before conception.
With that in view, who dares to arbitrarily end even fetal life unaware of what God might do with that person, whole or not, when born? For God takes responsibility for the physically unwhole as indicated to Moses:
Exodus 4:10-11 (NIV) 10Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." 11The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
B. Analysis of the View That the Unborn Is Potentially Human
There are a wide range of opinions as to where one should mark the point one becomes a person along the continuum of human development, some starting at conception (Geisler) and others (Tooley and Singer) at some point even past birth. But since any of these markers are subjective and arbitrary, then anyone's opinion is as valid as another's.
It is because that from the time of conception what has begun to develop will never have the possibility of being anything other than human that they should be considered persons from the start. Biologists speak of stages of development, but they are always stages of human development. Just as a tree is only one manifestation of what an oak is, so is the acorn. They are both an oak something. Even in the case of an oak, it is the value that we place at particular points in its development that determines what we might do with it. We might casually crush the acorn underfoot not caring about its potential, or struggle with the thought of cutting down a full-grown tree because we might value it for either its shade or lumber.
These very same value judgments are entering the debate concerning humans. Do we use them, nurture them, or abort them, depending on how we value the human something at whatever stage? It becomes disturbing that personhood is only attached by some if the developing child is valued and not necessarily because biology is able to define personhood at some point. It is a person if it is wanted.
It is this uncertainty concerning when personhood begins that justifies for Smedes the consideration of abortion for reasons of compassion.
Over against uncertainty about the fetus, we weigh the certainty of misery and pain for the living persons who would be driven to desperate disadvantage by the birth of the child. In the broken and disordered lives of human beings times and situations come when it would be morally irresponsible to refuse consideration of their needs and their rights when confronting the question: may it ever be God's will that a mother abort a fetus? Once we admit the needs of people into our moral deliberations, along with the life of the fetus, we admit the possibility that we may justifiably choose abortion.[8]
It appears, however, that for Smedes it is compassion with prejudice toward those whose lives might have too many other problems to add to them the care of a child. But consider who receives the most drastic consequence. For the child, death is the consequence. For those who are affected by the child being allowed to live, it is having to provide care for the child along with other challenges in their lives.
But life will always have its challenges because it is the nature of a fallen world. As a Christian, Smedes must know this. It would seem the Christian view that acknowledges a sovereign, compassionate, and providing God would have us trust Him for coping with the challenges that come with bringing a child into the world rather than killing the child.
If we say that we abort children in order to prevent them from having to live with a physical disability, given the alternative, how do we not know that they would not choose life with the disability over no life at all?
For some, the gift of life with the challenge might outweigh the burden of the challenge. For the Christian, suffering exists because of the fall of man. Suffering will continue until God restores all of creation because it is intrinsic to the consequences of that fall. However, God allows it also for good purposes beyond its natural consequences.
Consider Jesus' explanation for the man he healed who had been blind from birth:
John 9:1-3 (NIV) As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.
Ponder as well Paul's explanation of Christian suffering:
2 Cor 1:3-4 (NIV) Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
Nor let us overlook God's message to Paul about his suffering . Three times God declined Paul's request to have his suffering removed. Note God's word to him:
2 Cor 12:8b, 10 (NIV "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."…That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
WHEN WE SEE OTHERS WHO HAVE FOUND JOY AND HAPPINESS IN SPITE OF SEVERE TRIALS AND SUFFERING, WE ARE ENCOURAGED TO ENDURE OUR OWN.
– S. E. Ward
C. Analysis of the View That The Unborn Is Subhuman
Tooley and Singer have been used to represent the view that the unborn are subhuman. This view reflects an especially humanistic approach, making man the final arbiter of what is moral. The unborn as subhuman have no rights and ultimately exist by the permission of someone else until self-consciousness develops and with it comes the right of existence for its own sake.
This is a very disturbing view for it means that personhood can be re-defined as many times as there is a change in societal mores or ruling authorities who either by legislation or decree determine which child (at whatever stage) shall be allowed to live. Remember Pharoah during the time of Moses and Hitler from the 1930s and 1940s.
It is because America's founding fathers had experienced something of the tyrannical in their own lives that they proclaimed in a document, "The Declaration of Independence," and published to the world that men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."[9]
It is difficult to see how there is any protection in the views of Tooley and Singer for these rights. Indeed, the door is left wide open to draw the line of personhood anywhere that society as a whole, or an individual (if allowed), or the medical profession, or government wants it. It is not only the unborn who become nothing more than someone's property to be retained or disposed of at will, but the born, as well.
Conclusion
Would You Consider Abortion in These Four Situations?
1. There is a preacher and wife who are very, very poor. They already have 14 kids. Now she finds out she is pregnant with her 15th. They are living in tremendous poverty. Considering their poverty and the excessive world population, would you consider recommending abortion?
2. The father is sick with sniffles, the mother has TB. They have 4 children. The first is blind, the second is dead. The third is deaf and the fourth has TB.. The mother finds she is pregnant again. Given the extreme situation, would you recommend abortion?
3. A man raped a 13 year old black girl and she got pregnant. If you were her parents, would you consider recommending abortion?
4. A teenage girl is pregnant. She is not married. Her fiancee is not the father of the baby, and he is very upset. Would you recommend an abortion?
If you have answered "yes" to any of these situations:
1. In the first case you would have killed John Wesley, one of the great evangelists of the 19th century.
2. In the second case, you would have killed Beethoven.
3. In the third case you would have killed Ethel Waters, the great black gospel singer.
4. In the fourth case you would have recommended the murder of Jesus Christ.[10]
[1] Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live (
[2] Norman Geisler, Christian Ethics: Options and Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989), 135.
[3] David S. Oderberg, Applied Ethics: A non-consenquentialist approach (
[4] Lewis B. Smedes, Mere Morality: What God Expects from Ordinary People (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1983), pp. 127-132.
[5] Ibid., 132-133.
[6] Michael Tooley, Applied Ethics:
[7] Peter Singer, "Changing Ethics in Life and Death Decision Making," Society 38, No. 5 (July/August 2001): 9.
[8] Ibid., 137 <<Need a period>>
[9] The Declaration of
