Questions Rarely Asked by the Pro-Life Movement

I’ve been trying to talk myself out of writing this piece, mostly because there’s so much other good commentary out there on this subject. But over and over I find myself pondering these questions and seeing very few in the Evangelical pro-life movement who are addressing them. Let me emphasize that none of the following ideas is new with me, just that they don’t seem to get much if any airing in my circles. And that’s my purpose here: to give these ideas an airing. I’ll tell you up front that I’m not going to end with a list of quick and easy solutions. I just want to prod my readers, most of whom would identify as pro-life, to think about the ramifications of that term and to be able to engage in rational discourse with those who would disagree with them. We need the very best weapons available in the fight for life.

Let me start out with what is meant to be a clear statement of my own position in this area: I do not believe that human beings have the right to take human life as a “choice.” There may be desperate situations when killing in self-defense or to defend the life of someone else is necessary, and the Bible does allow for capital punishment, which is not a killing carried out by an individual but by the state. There can also be times when there are two lives, that of the mother and that of the child, and a choice at least seemingly has to be made about which life is more important. There may also be situations, usually at the end of life, in which the wrenching decision has to be made of whether or not to carry out extraordinary measures to extend that life. Many people reading this material will have gone through this last experience. I have myself, in a way. In 1994 my mother had contracted pneumonia and was on a ventilator. My brother, father and I met with her doctors and were told that they thought they had the infection under control for the time being and that she would be much more comfortable off the ventilator. However, they said, there was no question that she would probably fall prey to another such infection, since her health was compromised by her numerous other physical problems. Because I wanted to be very sure what they were saying, I specifically asked, “Are you saying that if you take her off the ventilator she will die?” No, they hastened to assure me, not at this time. But you are going to have to decide what to do the next time she gets sick. We agreed that she should go off the machine for the time being, and she died that night. So we never had to make the final decision; it was made for us. We thought we were making an interim choice, but we were really making a final one. How long would she have lived had we left her on the ventilator? Impossible to know. We did the best we could with the information we were given.

With the foregoing in mind, then, I’m going to start with what I think is the central question and then go on from there:

The expression that many staunch pro-lifers use is “the seamless tissue of life,” the idea that human life is sacred from the moment of conception to the moment of death. Implicit within this idea is the concept that the human soul comes into existence at that first moment, and the question I’m asking is whether or not that concept is true. Simply put, we need to grapple with this issue: When does the human soul come into existence? And when does it enter the body? (This process is called “ensoulment.”) There have been controversies on this subject going back at least to the time of Aristotle. Jews and Christians have believed in the past that the soul enters the body at the time of “quickening,” the first time that the mother senses the child’s movement in her womb. But now we have a much clearer idea of how the process of life progresses, and that guideline is no longer seen as the standard by most pro-life advocates. Instead, many/most pro-lifers would say that “When the egg and sperm come together, then there is a complete set of DNA necessary to make a human being,” and, if pressed, would then say that this is the point of ensoulment. But DNA is a physical substance. The human soul is not. Just because human DNA is present at conception doesn’t mean that the human soul is present, does it?

This issue somewhat crystallized for me last summer (2019) when I was at a women’s Bible study. Somehow we had gotten started discussing abortion, and I raised this whole when-does-the-human-soul-begin argument, and a woman said, “Well, it’s just . . . life.” I thought at the time that “life” in and of itself isn’t really the issue. It’s human life—but even more important, it’s the human soul. We as Christians don’t hold that the human body is sacred per se. We believe that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We believe that we use our bodies to carry out good works or to commit sins. We believe, in other words, that we inhabit our bodies, not that we are our bodies. (“Absent from the body is present with the Lord.”)

There are obvious pitfalls here. Taken too far, what I said in the previous paragraph could be made into a very credible argument for euthanasia. Here’s an old, feeble person, or a person in a vegetative state, or a person in great pain. Why not free that soul from the body, if we believe that the body is simply housing? So we have to tread carefully. God created Adam’s body and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Our bodies are God’s handiwork and as such must be treated with respect. Here’s a good summation that I ran across online:

A theology of the human body indicates that the purpose of the body is for relationship with God, creation, and other people. The body is our bridge to created reality (Francis Schaeffer). Through the body we are vulnerable to pain and threat, and through the body we communicate, respond, work, and experience life in the world. (“Theology of the Body and Sexual Harm” by John McKinley in The Good Book Blog from the Talbot School of Theology, Biola University.)

A further summation would say that since we are unique among God’s creations in having a spirit or a soul that animals do not have, we do not have the right to end human life in the body. Only God has the right to do that. And just to be clear about the theology involved: Christians as well as Jews and Muslims do not believe that souls are pre-existent; we believe that the soul has a moment of beginning and is eternal from that point on. There’s no waiting room filled with souls ready to enter bodies. If you start down that whole waiting-room path you’re almost certainly going to end up with a belief in reincarnation.

So on this central question of the sanctity of human life, that argument goes, we should come down on saying that since we simply don’t know for sure when the soul enters the body we need to err on the side of assuming it’s there from the beginning. We’re safe in taking that position because we haven’t gotten onto the dreaded “slippery slope.” We’re self-consistent.

But then we enter a whole new thicket of difficulties. For instance, if indeed the birth-control pill and, more to the point, the “morning-after pill,” prevent the fertilized egg that contains a human soul from implanting and instead it is expelled from the woman’s body, then taking that pill is the same morally as aborting a 24-week unborn child. I had a conversation not too long ago with a friend about this very question; she was saying that at the beginning of her first marriage, at age 21, she had been on the pill. She wasn’t a Christian at the time and didn’t give any thought to whatever moral implications might exist by her action. But now she wondered: had she ended human lives by taking that pill every morning? Should she feel guilty about it now, more than 40 years later? I think we’d all say no to that one. What about the teaching leader of the Bible study I used to attend who had an abortion in college? She has struggled and struggled over the years with her guilt, and she gives talks to many groups about her experience. Did she end a human life? I think everyone reading this article would say yes, but that her feelings of guilt do not have to continue. (Easy for me to say.)

And now we move into yet another thicket, this one having to do with that notoriously thorny question of “the life of the mother.” So here’s where another question needs to be asked that usually isn’t:

Why do we automatically assume that the unborn child’s life is worth more than that of the woman carrying the child? The answer most pro-life advocates would give is that because the child’s life is so vulnerable, so completely dependent on the mother, this life is also more valuable. But is that true? Does, indeed, vulnerability equal value? If you’ve been at all aware of this issue you’ve certainly read stories in which a pregnant woman has sacrificed her life in order to save the child she carries. Many years ago I read one such story in James Dobson’s Focus on the Family magazine. As with so many of these examples, this one involved whether or not the woman should seek treatment for her cancer; doing so would kill her child. So she refused the treatment, managed to hang on long enough to give the child a shot at survival, gave birth or had a C-section, and then died. She had a husband and a two-year-old child who were left behind, as well as this new baby who would never know her mother. A year or so ago there was another, similar story in The Washington Post in which a woman with brain cancer (and five other children) refused treatment and then died after giving birth. (It’s actually even more complicated and tragic than this brief description conveys. You can read the whole story here.) Then the baby also died. Her husband was left without her and with their five children to raise on his own. I look at those stories and think, Wasn’t the mother’s life worth saving?

And yet . . . I think of a young woman in our former church who was told that her unborn child had no brain and therefore no chance of survival. Why on earth should she go through the rigors and risks of a full-term pregnancy and childbirth when the child would almost certainly die within hours? Her non-believing family urged her to get an abortion. (She and her husband were somewhat estranged at the time; I’m not sure what his attitude was.) She steadfastly refused. In the end, she proved the doctors wrong and gave birth to a beautiful, normal little girl. And then there’s the case of my beloved sister-in-law, who would not exist if her mother, my biological mother-in-law, had agreed that her soaring pre-eclampsia was reason enough for an abortion. The child would almost certainly die but if she did survive she’d be mentally deficient, she was told, and she, the mother, ran a high risk of death. But no, my mother-in-law said. I could never do that to a baby. And so she courageously weathered a high-risk pregnancy and birth. She and the baby survived, and we can’t imagine not having that now-grown baby (with a completely sound intellect, by the way) around. In fact, without her my husband and I probably wouldn’t even be married, as it was that “deficient” baby, by then a teenager, who brought us together. She has been a huge blessing in our lives and in those of many others. In the end, for both of these examples, the story ended happily, with a living mother and a normal child.

The point is that the two mothers who died because of refusing treatment and the two mothers who lived and gave birth to healthy babies all made choices. I like what a former colleague of mine in a Christian school used to say: In any given situation, always choose life. Don’t emphasize who is going to die; think about who is going to live. So, if I were to take his advice, what would I do if I were pregnant and had cancer? Since I’ve never had to deal with this in real life and am only speaking hypothetically, I need to guard against presumption. It would be a horrible state in which to find myself, and I can’t say for sure what I would do. But I think it’s safe to say that I would not feel an automatic obligation to die in order to save that child’s life. I would not think that I had to leave my husband a widower. If I had other children, I would weigh the outcome of their being without a mother. I believe that I would choose life for myself by simply going ahead with the chemo or radiation or whatever, although I can’t imagine that I would directly bring about the child’s death via an abortion. That being said, the two women who chose to die in order to save the lives of their unborn children had the right to make the choice that they did. They came down on a different side of the moral argument than I probably would, but that difference doesn’t mean that they were right—or that I would be wrong. Micah 6:8 gives us the moral framework for our choices: ^“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

One last thorny thicket: There are also those who say that children conceived as a result of rape or incest must be preserved. Now we get into very sticky territory. On the one hand, that child certainly had no control over the circumstances of his/her conception, any more than any other child does. On the other, do we really want to say that a 13-year-old who’s been raped by her stepfather must carry the resulting pregnancy to term? As they say, hard cases make bad law. But those hard cases deserve scrutiny nevertheless, and great compassion for the victims. There are absolutely no easy answers here.

Okay. Anyone still with me? Let me point out yet another missing piece in the whole pro-life vs. pro-choice debate, and that is the question of the fathers. It drives me crazy when I see this debate framed exclusively in terms of the pregnant woman. Let me tell you something: if every man on the planet knew that he’d be held responsible for any child he fathered, regardless of the circumstances, there would be far fewer problematic pregnancies to begin with. I can guarantee that statement 100%. As science stands right now, there is something called a “Non-Invasive Prenatal Paternity Test,” in which DNA from the unborn child can be detected in the blood of the mother. A sample of the putative father’s DNA can thus determine his paternity. Up until this point the collection of fetal DNA has had a risk of miscarriage, but now a simple blood draw can accomplish the same end. Although as far as I can tell this test is still a little on the sketchy side, there’s no doubt that it will become mainstream. I wonder what would happen if every pregnant woman had to have this DNA test if she wanted an abortion and then had to bring in the father before the procedure would be performed? A game changer, indeed.

One more thing, before I get on to the status of legal arguments these days, and that is how the whole save-sex-for-marriage argument is framed. I think we do young (and not-so-young) people such a disservice when we use what I call the “deprivation” model, and this is true in Christian and non-Christian circles. When do we ever (and here I’m referencing youth pastors as well as sex-education teachers) talk about the need for human dignity and self-determination? When do we ever address that young girl’s desperate desire for someone to love her, and someone whom she can love back? When do we ever address that boy’s or man’s attitude that he should be able to have his way and fulfill his desires no matter what? (Or vice versa; women are perfectly capable of taking advantage of men.) When do we say, with force and feeling, that sex is for grownups? For the people who are willing and able to take the responsibility for the consequences of their actions? That as God’s creations we’ve been given the power of choice, and the burdens and obligations that come with that choice? The anti-abortion protesters in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic need to realize that they are appearing only at the end of a long, complicated, painful process. They are starting way too late. Yes, they talk a few girls out of going ahead with abortions—although I’ve never seen any hard statistics on how often that happens. But the central problem has not been addressed: that no one is someone else’s plaything. God has not made us that way.

On to the state of legal affairs. I’m not in the least interested in or capable of analyzing the whole Roe v. Wade brouhaha except to say that almost everybody, conservative and liberal alike, agrees that it was a poor decision based on faulty legal reasoning. Pro-life people mourned; pro-abortion/choice people rejoiced, figuring that they’d take what they could get. However, be that as it may, Roe is the law of the land. So every case since then that has been an attempt to end abortion has had to be some kind of end run around Roe. The Supreme Court will almost certainly not hear a case that baldly attempts to overturn Roe, at least not unless and until there’s a rock-solid pro-life majority on the Court, so pro-life advocates are reduced to trying to put so many limitations on abortion services that they reduce the number of abortions without actually making the practice illegal. Right now, as I write this piece, we are awaiting the SCOTUS decision on a case out of Louisiana about the whole abortion-clinics-must-have-hospital-admitting-privileges question. A conservative podcast I listen to that focuses mainly on legal issues (“Advisory Opinions”) had as its guest back in March Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s solicitor general, who was going to be arguing the case for the clinic restrictions in front of the Supreme Court the next day. As the episode went on I became more and more uneasy. Murrill was arguing with great gusto about how this case was based on the need for women’s health to be protected so that if a woman was getting an abortion and something went wrong she could be taken to the hospital without delay. And I thought, ‘You’re being disingenuous here. That’s not what this case is about. Its whole purpose is to limit abortions by limiting the number of clinics that can operate legally in the state. But you can’t say that because the case would be summarily dismissed, even though everyone knows perfectly well what you’re really trying to do. As long as everyone goes along with the charade, the case can be argued.’ Indeed, the questions put the next day during oral arguments seemed to indicate that Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh weren’t particularly impressed with Louisiana’s position. We’ll see. This case is just one in a series of arguments that have sought to do the same thing: limit abortions without overturning Roe. David French, an outstanding pro-life conservative Christian journalist, has called this goal “small ball.” And I would agree. Is this sort of thing really worth all the efforts of the pro-life movement for the past 50 years? Surely we can do better!

Here’s a good summation from the conservative news outlet The Dispatch by that same David French:

In the decades since Roe, pro-life voters and activists have exerted a staggering amount of political energy in the effort to elect presidents who nominate justices who are willing to reverse Roe. Abortion rights activists have responded with their own intense efforts, and the public debate is white-hot. 

The judiciary has in fact been remade—at least to a degree—but America’s judicial transformation has perhaps affected abortion rights less than any other contentious area of American constitutional law. Put another way, the most activist energy has yielded the least constitutional impact. (“A Dispiriting Day for the Pro-Life Movement at the Supreme Court” by David French, March 5, 2020.)

I want to focus on that phrase “a staggering amount of political energy” and make two points, one about general practices and one about specific political positions. In general terms the question must be asked, could this energy have been used to better effect? Conservatives have been unanimous in the past about condemning “judicial activism” when it has been used in the service of liberal causes, but that same activism is lauded when it’s seen as being used in the right way. Wouldn’t all the campaigning have been better used to further the goal that we as pro-life advocates say we want, which is the winning of hearts and minds, the attainment of the attitude that looks upon the killing of a child with horror?

Specifically, the focus of this energy has beamed in on the election of candidates who say they are pro-life and who promise to push for pro-life legislation and, in the case of the President, to nominate pro-life judges and justices. And that is how the conservative pro-life movement came to endorse Donald Trump. (You knew I’d get to him eventually, right?) The one overriding issue, the one qualification that he possessed, no matter how obviously unqualified he was to hold the office of the Presidency, was that he would say that he would further the pro-life cause. If you were pro-life, then, you “had” to vote for him. I heard this from any number of people who would normally know better than to entrust their futures to a con man. But hey–he was a pro-life con man!

And so, as I write this article in May of 2020, the terrible price of this transactional bargain is coming due. The unending stream of scandal, corruption and plain old incompetence emanating from the Trump White House has tarnished the Republican party, the label of conservatism, and, I would say, the pro-life cause, in a way that is going to take a generation to rectify. As deaths mount from the COVID-19 pandemic and the President becomes more and more unhinged in his self-justifying rhetoric, his chances of re-election become ever slimmer. And plenty of formerly pro-life conservatives are coming out and saying, “Hey, this whole ‘seamless tissue of life’ thingy? Maybe not so much after all. Not if it’s just Grandma.” While we all learned in 2016 that black swans are perhaps more possible than we thought, the handwriting on the wall is becoming clearer every day saying that Trump’s chances of re-election are dwindling. So what has all the nose-holding gotten pro-lifers who voted for him? Almost certainly, a Democratic takeover of government that will result in a liberalization of abortion laws. The holy grail of overturning Roe will not happen. Disaffected young people, the ones we need to remain in the pro-life conservative camp, are instead leaving the Republican party in droves. November looms. And even if Trump is re-elected, his victory will only cement the pro-life movement’s guilt by association.

So I would challenge you to think through these issues for yourself. What do you mean if you call yourself pro life? How large of a part does compassion for all life play in your position? I would encourage you to read the following thoughtful articles along with the ones quoted from above, out of the many that I could list, to help in assessing your own position and in choosing life as broadly as possible.

“A Future Pro-Life Movement” by Janet Kelly, founder of Public Faith, in Medium, Oct. 11, 2016.

“Donald Trump Would Set Back the Pro-Life Cause More Than Hillary Would” by Matthew Loftus, The Federalist, Oct. 20, 2016. (from back in the days when this website was worthy of the name “conservative news outlet”)

“The Pill: Contraceptive or Abortifacient?” by Karen Swallow Prior, The Atlantic, Dec. 31, 2012. (I included this article because I was so struck with its reasoning and scholarship)

“In a Post-Roe World, Pro-Lifers Would Still Have a Lot of Work to Do” by David French, National Review, July 19, 2019. (Here’s a good representative sentence: “Cultural change precedes legal change, and cultural change is more potent than legal change.”)

“It’s Time for Pro-Lifers to Change the Culture on Abortion” by Sarah Quinlan, The Bulwark, Feb. 1, 2019.

“I Questioned the Sincerity of Donald Trump’s Pro-Life Stance. The Response from My Fellow Evangelicals Was Troubling” by Robb Ryerse in Time, Feb. 12, 2020. (Sorry about the auto-play video—I can’t figure out how to turn it off.)

“Pro-Lifers Are Being Guilted into Supporting Roy Moore Even Though Morality Is Multi-Faceted” by Kimberly Ross, RedState, Dec. 5, 2017. (Note that Ross and other sterling writers were booted off RS sometime after this article because they refused to slavishly support Donald Trump. RS is now, like The Federalist, a very different publication than it was when I first started reading it in 2016.)

And the classic, the grand-daddy of them all:

“The Professional Pro-Life Movement Has a Lot in Common with Donald Trump” by Leon Wolfe, originally posted on RedState but no longer there, now posted on The Briefing Room, Sept. 19, 2016.