Is Abortion Murder?

How can you say a 1 month old has no awareness ? Did you spend any time with your newborns ?

My daughter knew something big happened the minuite she got pushed out. She was completely unhappy about it. Newborns express emotion very well. They are very aware.

Maybe you should do a study of newborns who are refused by the mother. Do you know what happens when a baby isn't held, ignored for the first month ? Who just gets fed and changed ? Do a study. I think you may be suprised.

And babies enjoy baby talk. That's why they smile when you do it.

 

I didn't mean aware in that sense, I'm sure babies are aware before birth to. I meant a type of understanding of life and loss of that life.

I agree with all your other points too. No baby talk was not to mean none at all, (how can you not?) but to also talk to them in a normal loving manner, in plain english, much of the time.

 

Do you know the difference between promising you won't do something and just saying you won't do something. One you shouldn't change your mind on, the latter, you can change your mind.

I seem to remember you promising you would not make another post on this thread, yet you have. I guess you aren't a man we can trust when you make us a promise.

 

OK, thanx for clarifying. Yup, it's pretty hard not to do baby talk to babies.

 

At 1-2 months of age (after birth) That is where my memory of events started. Before that I was just tissue without awareness.

PS to moms out there, your children, at 6 months of age, can fully understand all your conversations, even when you are on the phone. So be careful of what you say in front of them. I remember them very well. And talk more with them since they can understand what you say. (forget the babytalk, use english from day one)</font>[/QUOTE]Well, post-it, I have NO recalluntill I guess around a year or so old. Maybe I am an exception but I have asked many over the years about how old they were as to being able to remember and most said abouta year old. This is not to say that you and others can remember at a very early age(few months old). I do know that babies are very aware at this early age and often cries are the babies way of getting attention(by a thought process)! Maybe that is why my memory is so bad now!

Don't you think that since you are down to 11 weeks, that you could accept the rest of the time and go to conception without bibical proof and "read between the lines", that life is by God's hand and not ours and thus, since you believe life starts with the fertilized egg, that it is by God and thus His intent is for this life to be called human? At least we are getting on a closer point of belief between us. TOO bad that many abortions are when the baby is being delivered. As someone posted, these mother's may have a serious guilt trip latter in life, if they survive the abortion!

God Bless............Alex

 

At 1-2 months of age (after birth) That is where my memory of events started. Before that I was just tissue without awareness.

</font>[/QUOTE]Post-it, ...Just when I was beginning to think there was hope for you . This is very possibly the most ridiculous, irrational assertion you have made yet.

#1- I have seen documentaries on pregnancy and birth that conclude that babies have awareness in the womb and, with very little doubt, memories.

#2- Memory of events has absolutely nothing to do with personhood or beginning of life or anything else to do with this debate. No one ceases to be who they are due to a partial or complete loss of memory.

 

I can't compromise on what scripture says if it means acusing someone of murder. I could allow myself to believe it if it harmed no one, and was not a vital part to salvation. But, the fact is that it doesn't say that abortion is murder unless the fetus could be born at a time in which it could live. That still is at 5 months. For me to accept something like what you suggest, would be me saying that a woman who aborts before 5 months is a murder, and that is wrong. Just plain wrong. I would like to save every baby aborted, but we can't make claims about the Bible without justifiable reason. And it just isn't there for abortion before 5 months.

Scripture indicates that life could begin as early as 11 weeks, but that is not certain, but we should default to that time to be "safe". In other words, a woman shouldn't have an abortion under that 5 month mark because she could be killing a living person. But we could never say the Bible supports that it is murder at 1 week to the 5th month. I think it is clear from scripture that it is murder at and after the 5th month. That means that a mother could get life in prison for murder at that point... if it ever passed into law.

 

No. Actually, the first "breath" equals the first use of oxygen from whatever source to burn calories and produce life energy. When any type of respiratory system is at work that performs the same function as the mature one, it is equivalent to the mature one. This is the one and only logical position. It is the one and only position that is consistent with other scripture that identifies newly conceived babies as individual persons such as those mentioned earlier in this thread.

If we must accept your "breath = life" argument then we must go to the purpose (respiration) rather than stopping at the mechanism since there are many ways to "breath" among living organisms.

The source of the "breath" is not important. All that is important is that the baby has a mechanism for oxygenating its system.

 

I didn't mean for that to sound like that. I was just answering a question of "when" did I think I became a person. However, monkeys have awareness too, that doesn't mean they're human.

Right, but we went off subject for a little bit.
If you lost all your memories and started out with a complete blank mind (I'm not touching that one), including language, do you think you will be who you are now? If you were placed in the sub-Sahara in Africa, do you think you would become who you are now. You might be worshiping a dead tree limb and giving prayers to several gods before you go out to kill a water buffalo to for dinner.

 

It's off topic, but...

If we lost all our memory, I tend to think we would still have the Holy Spirit to guide us away from the worship of tree limbs.

But we might like water buffalo.

 

Now look what you have done, you may have well killed the 11 week fetus breath idea. You brought a good point that may ruin the whole idea though. You said that the following:

I agree with this meaning of breath, and because I overlooked the fact that if a fetus breaths it must be getting something on the line of what breathing would bring to an air breathing person like Adam. If the fetus is just "bathing" it's lungs in the fluids, while it gets it's oxygen from some other source then we don't have a breath, we don't have breathing, we have an open mouth and nose. Who has the links to find out if a fetus takes oxygen from this fluid. I'm too sleepy to find it tonight.

 

O.K. Here you go. It's copywritten, but available at www.stcc.edu

A fetus doesn't breath air!
Of course you knew that. But if you think about it, that is a pretty good trick considering our circulatory system. We have a systemic and a pulmonary circuit. What would a fetus do with its pulmonary circuit?

Also, if the fetus doesn't breath air, it still has to be able to exchange gases. You know that the fetus will get oxygen from its mother, and you may even know that has to occur across the placenta, but how? You see, oxygen diffuses into our blood from the air because there is more oxygen in the air than in our blood. But a pregnant woman sends her blood to the placenta for gas exchange there, how does the fetus get enough oxygen from its mother's blood?

When you read the material in chapter 23 for this page, you will see that it goes into more detail than I do. That's primarily because we haven't talked about all the blood vessels yet. So I am not expecting you to give me all the detail that is in your book. I do, however, want you to know enough to answer those two questions above. So let's get to it.

The pulmonary circuit does two things in an adult: 1) it picks up oxygen from the air; and 2) it supplies the lung tissue with nutrients and picks lung tissue waste. In a fetus the pulmonary circuit is not necessary for picking up oxygen from the air, but it is still necessary for servicing developing lung tissue. In the adult, a lot of blood goes off into the pulmonary circuit with every cardiac cycle. But in the fetus, that does not need to be the case.

Therefore, there is no need to pump all the blood from the right atrium into the right ventricle and into the lungs in the fetus. Therefore, it doesn't happen. Instead, the two atria are connected via the foramen ovale, a hole between the atria. This foramen even has a valve that helps to ensure that blood doesn't back up from the left atrium to the right atrium.

That means that the blood that normally comes into the right atrium is the blood that is being pumped out into the body. Where does the oxygen get in? The oxygen enters the blood from the placenta, which the fetus accesses by sending its blood away from the heart in the umbilical arteries. The blood returns from the placenta in the umbilical vein, carrying oxygen. To connect this with what you know about blood vessels, the left ventricle sends its blood into the aorta. The aorta has many smaller arteries coming off it, including those that give rise to the umbilical arteries (one near each hip). The oxygen is picked up through umbilical capillaries in the placenta, and then oxygenated blood returns in the single umbilical vein. On its way back to the heart (so that oxygenated blood can be sent out through the body again), some of the blood detours to the liver, but the rest goes through the inferior vena cava and into the right atrium. From there, the oxygenated blood spills over to the left atrium, and the entire thing starts over. This is simplified, but it will do for now.

How is it possible for enough oxygen to diffuse from the mother's blood into the fetus' blood? It has to be able to pick up lots of oxygen, since the fetal circulatory system is not quite as efficient at sending as much blood for oxygen pick-up as the adult one.

Fetal blood contains much more hemoglobin. In fact, if we have 100% of our hemoglobin in our adult blood, a fetus has 150%! In addition, fetal hemoglobin is different from adult hemoglobin. (That is not uncommon, by the way... there are other proteins that are known to have different forms in the embryo than in the adult, like the acetylcholine receptor). The thing about the fetal hemoglobin is that it is much better at attracting oxygen than the adult hemoglobin.

The end result of having more and better hemoglobin as a fetus is that it can really grab a lot of the oxygen off the maternal hemoglobin. So, it can certainly get enough.


© 2001 STCC Foundation Press
written by Dawn A. Tamarkin, Ph.D.

 

excuse me but, may i interrupt? i haven't actually read the whole of this 27-page topic, but would like to share my own view. here goes:

1. a live human being is composed of body, soul and spirit.

2. in other words, a human is alive only when it has both biological life (the body) and soul life (the soul).

3. in the mother, there is already the biological life!

4. the biological life being already present at the womb, what is left is God's imputation of soul to the body for it to become a human life. otherwise, it remains only as biological life and not human life.

5. God imputes the soul at the moment of birth, which will result to the child's first breath, just as death will result at the last breath, which is the point when the soul leaves the body. one good source of pattern for this is Adam. first, God formed Adam's body, giving him biological life. he only had his first breath, however, after God breath him his soul. the point is, the first breath is the determining factor to say that the soul was imputed by God to the body, just as the last breath is the determining factor to say that the soul left the body.

6. if life is to start at birth, then abortion cannot be considered murder, for human life is non-existent yet at the womb. what abortion destroys is the fetus which only has biological life, and not human life, the fetus having no soul yet. again, abortion destroys the biological life, but not human life, which is yet to exist at birth.

7. in this regard, abortion is not taking away of life, but of potential life. it is destroying a biological life which has the potential to be a human life, but it is not destruction of the human life.

 

I was just trying to answer post-it's question about how a fetus breathes, but he went to bed before I got it all on.

This article is from a scientific stance, nothing about the morality (or Lack of it) concerning the awful practice of aborting one's child.

I don't agree with the "life begins at birth" thing. A child is a gift from God at the moment of conception.

[ August 29, 2002, 05:16 AM: Message edited by: Mr. Curtis ]

 

this is actually about abortion being murder or not. therefore, there must be a clear definition when a life begins, and what murder is. from then, conclusion must be set! otherwise, this topic can get 1,000 pages and not end!

does life then begin at the womb or at birth? there is no denial that biological life exists at the womb. but it is not complete. when does the soul come in?

call it a gift, a blessing or whatever. but such approach will never answer abortion being a murder or not! just as with your first statement, this article is from a scientific stance.

the issue at hand is whether abortion is murder or not! and not whether it is evil or not!

 

That's an excellent response, Aki. Great question. The only answer I have is from Luke 1:41,and 44. I know it doesn't completely answer your question, but it does seem to imply that not only did the fetus have his own spirit, but was sensitive to the Holy Spirit, as well. But it's a moot point. The govornment does not consider it murder. Our job, as Christians, is not to Christianize govornment, but to evangelize the world.

I can't answer if it's murder, or not. But I can say with no hesitation at all that it is not God's will that we kill his gifts.

 

oops, double posted.

[ August 29, 2002, 05:45 AM: Message edited by: Mr. Curtis ]

 

Aki said:

7. in this regard, abortion is not taking away of life, but of potential life. it is destroying a biological life which has the potential to be a human life, but it is not destruction of the human life.

Sorry, but to me this looks like a completely arbitrary distinction. Since it presupposes that the fetus is not a human person, it begs the question.