When Does Life Begin?

Benedicamus Domino!

I've been hearing and reading a lot about abortion on both sides of the issue lately, and I thought it prudent to weigh in with my own thoughts. My relationship to this subject is a complicated one and involves many changes of opinion and belief over the years, so I trust that you who read this will view what I have to say as something which I have come to after much wrestling and struggle.

When I was a child, I heard the term "abortion" in the news a lot. Dr. Henry Morgentaler was crusading for the right for women to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term here in Canada. We had no Supreme Court decision such as that in the US at that time. I believe it later came because of Morgentaler's efforts and was similar to the famous US case. Anyhow, by some means or other, Canadians can now legally have abortions.

I remember that I asked my mother what an abortion was, and when she told me, she cried. We are not Catholics. We were not practicing or church-going Christians, but still, my mother cried when she told me about abortions. It reminded her of a time when she had just come from having me, actually. I was premature and in some difficulty at the time, and a woman was there who had just had or was contemplating having an abortion. (So, somehow, it was legal to do this even before the late '80s. Hmmm... I'm now suitably confused.) Anyway, this woman struck up a conversation with my mother and explained how it just wasn't the right time for her to be having a child, so she decided to take this route. My mother was pretty shocked by what seemed to her this very cavalier attitude. Of course, it may not have been cavalier at all, but that's how Mom saw it, and it left an impression on her and later, on me. Still, being a "good little Canadian girl who keeps up with the times and is not an unenlightened and backwards thinker" (TM,) I identified myself as being "pro-choice." I did this throughout high school and into university. It's what you had to do if you wanted to be perceived as an intellectual and modern woman, after all! Of course, my qualification was always that I was pro-choice but that my choice would be never to have an abortion. True pro-choicers would accept this answer, because if there is a choice, there must be two alternatives, and it must be acceptable for a person to take a choice that you might not consider to be the right one. So, I was happy in my little world of wishy-washy fence-sitting. I didn't realize that the fence I was sitting on was made of barbed wire and that it was, in effect, cutting my soul in two while I sat on it.

When I came to this realization was when I had to come to terms with the fact that I had joined a church whose official stance on abortion is that it is murder. I had to sit back and really think about this. For the first time, I was having to puzzle out this idea for myself and really try to come to a thought-out and cogent agreement or disagreement with this stance. I had to really think about whether I really believed that life begins at conception, and in looking at my own unwillingness to consider abortion as an option for me, I realized that I did believe that life begins as soon as egg and sperm have joined. That little miracle (which is in a way against a lot of odds to begin with!) is the beginning and contains in itself all the potential of the child and later the adult. This is my belief, and as such, it cannot only be a belief which remains with me. It can't be true for me and not true for every other human being. I mean, others are free to dispute it, but if I believe it, I must believe it to be true for everyone. It goes to the very nature of humanity really!

One of the main rhetorical arguments I've heard on the Pro-choice cide of things is that women's bodies are their own. I can see why this became an argument. The Catholic Church's encyclical of 1968 pretty-much stated that the child should be preserved at all costs and that a husband has the right to get his wife pregnant as many times as he can even though she may be ill or weakened or sickly. Once conception happens, this document stated, that's it. It's now God's will that the child be carried and hopefully born. Also, it denounced all forms of really effective birth control. I have a problem with this which I'll explain in a moment. However, back to the main point. Are our bodies truly our own to use as we will? If one is a Christian, one would have to say that no, our bodies are not our own. Do they belong to our husbands to do with as they please? No. Wives and husbands must mutually consent both to engage in intercourse and to abstain. So, in what sense then are our bodies not our own?

Every human being was made by God. Every Christian seeks to bring more and more of him or herself into line with God's will, with God's self, actually. Women then have a great responsibility! Nowadays, there are measures one can take to delay the time of getting pregnant, and if a woman feels that she cannot do it at this time, I feel that she should have the right to wait until she can commit emotionally and physically to carrying a child. As far as I know, the Orthodox Church is not so damning of birth control as that encyclical I referred to before. This is all done before conception. No life has begun as yet. However, if a baby begins and is considered to be alive at the time of conception, then abortion by its very nature is murder. One thing which helped me to deal with this belief was that in Orthodoxy, there's no crazy place for babies who are aborted to go. They just go to God and are deemed to be on the same level as the children murdered at Bethlehem by Herod for Jesus's sake. This may sound harsh to our modern minds, but it makes sense if abortion is deemed to be murder. There's no use in sugar-coating it.

Does this then follow that I think the laws sanctioning abortion should be done away with completely and rapidly? I'd love it if this could be done, but it isn't realistic without some major societal changes. We've got to create a society where having babies is more planned than it currently is, and where unplanned babies can be given good homes. If we don't want people to get abortions, we have to find ways to give them more options! There are some populations which statistics say will have a harder time having their babies adopted than others. This has to change! Just doing away with the law may seem like a solution, but all it will do is cause unsafe procedures to be done as they were several years ago. Abortion has been around since man has been alive. Is it right? I believe that it isn't, but if it must exist in a world such as ours, I'd rather see it done with the least amount of harm possible. (And yes, I realize how hollow that sounds to someone who believes as I do that killing a life, any life at any age, is murder.)

You won't find me waving signs outside any clinics. You won't find me showing you pictures of dead babies and asking you to change your mind. However, you will find me expressing the view to which I have come as clearly and unemotionally as I can, and the major crux of that view as that we have a crappy society which needs a lot of changes for abortion to truly be abolished. Till next time!

Deo Gratias!