Chapter 3
When is a Life Considered a Life?
One of the most debated questions of our time is over the issue of the unborn: When does a life become a life? There are those who hold to the idea that a baby is not an actual human life until the second that he takes his first breath outside the womb without the aid of his mother. There is another camp, usually in Christian circles, that passionately believes that a human life is created at conception, from the time that a zygote (fertilized egg) is formed. There are also people in the middle, found on all points of a timeline, who cite that a fetus becomes a life after the formation of the heart, or the lungs, or when he becomes shaped like a human.
This is a very difficult question to answer since the babies can’t answer when we question. No one can think back to the time when they were in that gestation period themselves, leaving each of us unable to answer the question from personal experiences.
One way to answer the question is to look at the possible answers and use the process of elimination. Is the answer to the question that a baby is not a human life until birth? If that were the case then how do we reconcile the fact that some babies are born full term at forty weeks while others are born prematurely as early as twenty-four weeks? That fortieth week cannot be the finishing touch on forming a life if a baby is considered viable outside the womb at twenty-four weeks.
In order for a grown man to be considered to be alive he would need a beating heart, working lungs, and brain activity. Those are all accounted for inside the womb, so by common sense standards it does not take birth to create a life.
A person could watch a baby on the screen of an ultrasound machine and observe a functioning life. One could see movement, thumb sucking, yawning, a beating heart, expanding lungs, opening and closing of the eyes and mouth, and so on. Babies can even show personality at this stage. It would be hard to observe all of this and not come to the conclusion that this fetus is, in fact, very much alive.
Is the answer to the question found somewhere on a timeline between conception and birth? One could almost make the case that the baby is not a life until after the thirty-seventh week when the lungs become mature. However, a baby could be born thirteen weeks prior to the full development of the lungs and still survive with the help of an incubator and respirator. We do not consider an adult to have ceased from being a life just because he requires the aid of a respirator to breathe, so we should not with babies either.
Also important on the timeline is a functioning heart, which can be found as early as twenty-two days after conception. For a baby to be miscarried or aborted after that point requires a heart to stop beating. It is hard to believe that anything with a beating heart is not a life. Even so, doctors put pacemakers in people all the time. A pacemaker is a device that makes the heart beat, which means that the natural heart is not beating; no one would consider an adult with a pacemaker to not be a life because his own heart doesn’t beat.
Science also shows us that as early as six weeks after conception there are identifiable brain waves in this new life. Since the majority of abortions are performed after the ninth week this requires stopping a beating heart and functioning brain.
At which point on this timeline would you say that a baby becomes an actual life?
*Day 1—fertilization
*Day 6—embryo implants in the uterus
*Day 22—a heart pumps the baby’s own blood
*Week 3—spinal column, nervous system, liver, and kidneys forming
*Week 4—the baby is 10,000 times larger than it was at conception
*Week 5—eyes, hands, and legs are developing
*Week 6—brain waves are noticeable; mouth, lips, and fingernails are forming
*Week 7—eye lids, toes, and nose are forming; he is swimming and kicking
*Week 8—every organ is in place; cartilage is turning into bone; he has unique fingerprints and he can hear
*Weeks 9-10—teeth are developing in the gums; he can hiccup
*Weeks 11-12—he can urinate and “practices breathing;” he has a full skeletal structure
*Week 12—vocal chords are complete
*Week 14—the heart pumps several quarts of blood per day
*Week 15—he has all his taste buds
*Month 4—his bone marrow is forming and he weighs half a pound
This timeline shows that there is never one clear point where anyone can definitively say that there is a human life. What is more likely then is that all of the ingredients for life are present at conception and develop over time until the God-ordained time of birth.
There was a picture that was circulated several years ago from a doctor who performed surgery on a baby that was still in the mother’s womb. Tests revealed that the baby was going to have spina bifida and an operation was needed prior to delivery. In surgery the womb was removed from the mother and cut open so that the doctor could operate on the baby. A photograph was taken when the baby extended a tiny arm out of the womb and grabbed the doctor’s finger.
To many people that was just a fetus, a far cry from a human life. How could a person conclude that this was not yet a life after watching him behave as if he were? Sadly, the doctor who performed that operation also performs abortions, and he was unchanged by the miracle of life he witnessed that day in the OR.
Does life begin at conception? So far science cannot tell us. Since life has to begin sometime before birth, why not err on the safe side and consider the possibility that life begins at conception.
One thing to consider is the fact that a zygote is genetically complete, containing all forty-six chromosomes that a person needs, with even the baby’s gender, hair and eye color, and height already determined. Thus at the very second of conception all the genetic makeup of a human life is present and accounted for. This new life that is formed has unique DNA; no one before or after him will ever have the same genetic makeup, and yet there are many liberals out there that would like us to believe that fetuses are common and just a dime a dozen.
Some will argue that crushing an acorn is not the same as chopping down a tree, using the acorn to represent the baby and the tree to represent an adult. They make the case that an acorn is not a tree, but just a potential tree. An acorn is not just a potential tree though; it is a tree in its earliest form. In the same way, a baby is not just a potential human life; it is life in the earliest form. To crush an acorn is to prevent a mighty oak tree from growing, and to terminate a baby’s development is to prevent a life from growing.
Earlier I mentioned that at conception all the ingredients for life are present and that they require time to develop. Many supporters of abortion will use this logic against the pro-life crowd saying that if it has to develop into a life than it is not a life. To use their terminology: If A has to develop into B, then A is not B.
This sounds good but it is easily refuted. No one denies the fact that a born baby is a life, and that baby is obviously different than his adult counterpart. What accounts for the difference between the two? The adult was a baby who continued to develop over time into an adult.
If a person killed a six month old baby he has committed murder; he prevented the baby from developing into an adult. No one would ever make the case that it is not murder because the six month old had not developed into an adult yet. In the same way, a fetus is a developing baby, which is a developing toddler, which is a developing child, which is a developing teenager, which is a developing adult. To stop the process at any point is to stop a life.
Our own judicial system views an unborn baby as a life. If a drunk driver hit and killed a pregnant woman with his car he could be found guilty of a double murder or of double manslaughter (even if this woman were on her way to legally abort her baby).
More importantly than what science teaches and what the judicial system acknowledges is what the Bible tells us. Can this two thousand year old book answer the question of when a baby becomes a life?
While the Bible was not written to be a history or science book everything the Bible says about history and science is accurate. Critics of the Bible have tried for years to disprove its validity by attempting to find an error in some of the ancient cities and characters the Bible mentions, but for centuries these efforts have all been made in vain.
In the same way the Bible has been only accurate on scientific measures as well; for example, thousands of years before science could prove the earth was not flat the Bible already made the case for a round earth (Job 26:7, Isaiah 40:21-22, Proverbs 8:27).
This is a necessary context when exploring what the Bible has to say about the formation of a human life. Even if the majority opinion in the world today is that life does not begin until birth (hypothetically, of course), if the Bible speaks otherwise than the majority opinion is simply wrong. When the majority opinion was that Christopher Columbus would sail off the edge of a flat earth, and the Bible taught that the earth is round, the majority opinion was wrong. So let’s take a look at what the Bible says about when a life becomes a life.
The Psalmist of Psalm 71:6 said that he will praise the Lord because the Lord protected him in the womb and delivered him out of it. Psalm 139:13 says that the Lord “covered me” in the womb. The expression “covered me” means to weave together. The New International Version translates it this way: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
In Isaiah 44:2 God tells Israel not to fear because God “formed [them] in the womb” and He would continue to protect them. Just twenty-two verses later God reminds them again that He formed them in the womb. These verses show that God is intimately aware of what is living in the womb of the mother.
In Isaiah 49:1 and 5 Isaiah proclaims that God formed him in the womb and that God chose him and called his name. These verses show that what is in the womb is not some random, lifeless glob; this is a unique person that God is interested in.
In Jeremiah 1:5 God tells Jeremiah that He sanctified him as a prophet before he came out of the womb, and that God knew him before He formed him in the womb. This verse shows that not only did God know him in the womb, He knew him before He formed him in the womb. As a baby continues to form in the womb God is actively at work doing the forming.
In the New Testament, in Luke 1:15, the parents of John the Baptist were told that their son would be filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother’s womb. Since the Holy Ghost would not indwell within something that was not yet a life, this verse shows that John was alive in the womb even before his birth. In verse forty-one of the same chapter John literally was dancing for joy in his mother’s womb when Mary told her cousin that she was pregnant with Jesus.
Furthermore Zechariah 12:1 says that the Lord forms the spirit of man within him. The Bible does not specifically say that this is done at the moment of conception, but it certainly is not done after birth. When else would this be done if not at conception?
So the Bible makes it very clear that it is not the action of a baby exiting the birth canal that creates a life. Before birth, even before conception, the Bible says that God had intimate knowledge with and was actively involved in the lives of these babies. The child that you lost was knit together by God even though he never made it to birth. The point is, an unborn baby is a life, even if the only person to know him was God.
Why is this an important question to answer? It goes far beyond politics. The first step in finding healing is actually to understand the fact that a lost baby was a human life (I’ll explain why in the next chapter). Personally I believe that the three miscarriages we had resulted in the death of three children. If miscarriage had not been the result then those babies would have been ours to raise.
Initially my wife found comfort in trying to convince herself that those were never babies; it was easier to believe the myth that this was just a glob of tissue. In the end she came to terms with the fact that she had conceived human life, but under the sovereignty of God was not permitted to raise them.
Many people will wonder what was actually developing inside them during a pregnancy, especially if the baby was lost during the first trimester. I am a firm believer that what was developing was a human, no matter how small. If, then, there was a human life that is no longer here, then it must have gone somewhere.
Does the unborn baby live on, or does it simply cease to exist? Where does he go? Did my baby really go to heaven? Will I get to see him again, and if so, what will he look like?
These questions will be answered in the next chapter.