For many years some people have been making the case for “life begins at conception.” Is there a united opposition to that view? Where is the pushback?
In my opinion, the lack of a consistent and direct counter-position is why Roe v. Wade got overturned, and why the Alabama State Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos in an IVF clinic are “extrauterine children.” And why using an IUD is equated now with abortion, along with the “morning after” pill.
The counter narrative to “life begins at conception” has to be more than “No, it doesn’t.”
Pointing out that rigidly enforcing “life begins at conception” will cause many deaths from pregnancy complications, even though true, is dodging the issue.
Legalism is a cold, unfeeling position in opposition to love and compassion. No sane, rational person can feel more compassion for a microscopic speck of an ovum than for a living, breathing, suffering woman in pain.
To allow a woman to die an excruciating death due to an ectopic pregnancy rather than removing the source of her suffering is as evil and immoral as anything I can think of.
A God who would command such a thing is no God I would waste my time worshipping.
Historically, there was no such thing as conception until less than 200 years ago, when the mammalian ovum was first found (in 1827) by Karl Ernst von Baer (Edward Dolnick, “The Seeds of Life,” Basic Books, 2017).
For thousands of years, the belief was that the woman was a garden where the man planted the seed. If the garden was fertile, the seed grew and was harvested at the birth of the. child.
If she didn’t become pregnant, she was considered not fertile, or barren. Failing to conceive a child was her fault, and she could be replaced with a more fertile woman.
Seems to be what worked for King Henry VIII.
Biblically, the texts are plain. In those days (when the Bible was written), the soul and the breath were equated. Genesis 2:7 says, ”And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
The same equation is evident in Job 27:3, “All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils.”
Conversely, when the breath is gone, that is the end of life. Psalms 146:4 says, “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.”
Not that long ago, that black bag that doctors carried everywhere contained a small mirror. If the doctor held the mirror up to your nose, and the breath wasn’t visible on it, he declared you dead.
For those of us who believe that there is no better person to make a decision on whether to stay pregnant or not than the woman involved, there needs to be a forceful campaign to publicize the disastrous harm that the banning of abortion is doing to our freedoms and our privacy.
With women being thrown in jail after a miscarriage, the right to travel across state lines for better health care being threatened, and data of clinic visits, GPS locations and license-platephoto- captures being accessed by police for anti-abortion enforcement, the New Inquisition is here.
The cruelty to women is the point. Denying them their right to life (a possibility when a life-saving abortion is prohibited) and their right to control what happens to their own bodies (a certainty when the decision to remain pregnant or not is denied) violates the U.S. Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment states: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Wresting control of a woman’s own body from her, it seems to me, constitutes “unreasonable search and seizure.”
It is way past time for freedom- minded people to fight back.
Don Rogers was born and raised in Merced, California, and educated in Adventist schools, including a year studying Mechanical Engineering at Walla Walla University in Washington. He worked as a Mechanic/Machinist at various electric power plants in Colorado and Nevada for over 35 years, but retired in 2006. He moved to Durant when his wife, Carolyn Wright, developed Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, then chose to remain in Oklahoma after his wife died in 2018. He is now a volunteer poll worker in Bryan County and a member of Red River Unitarian Universalist Church in Denison.