Here's why an unborn baby is not one person with its mom
Since unborn babies are completely defenseless, they need us to do whatever we can to help protect them. The main reason abortion is such a highly emotional issue in America is that unborn children are the most vulnerable people in our nation. And since unborn babies are too young to vote, they need us to go to the polls on their behalf. Ultimately, unborn babies need us to become their voice and their choice.
In spite of being too young to vote, unborn babies are not too young to feel pain. As reported a few years ago: “New Study Shows Unborn Babies Feel Pain at 12 Weeks.” The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act successfully passed the House of Representatives in 2013, 2015 and 2017. The bill states that "pain receptors are present throughout the unborn child’s entire body and nerves link these receptors to the brain’s thalamus and subcortical plate by no later than 20 weeks after fertilization.”
Author and legal scholar Stanley Fish wrote, “I should have known better. Pro-life arguments are now based on scientific evidence and the pro-choice arguments are not. That is a cultural, historical fact.”
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People assert that the mother and the unborn baby are only one person, in spite of millions of instances where one of them lived, while the other one died. Obviously, they are two distinct people. As author Randy Alcorn writes in his book, Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments, “A Chinese zygote implanted in a Swedish woman will always be Chinese, not Swedish, because his identity is based on his genetic code, not on that of the body in which he resides."
Abort73 is working to protect women and children from the violence of abortion. They point out this important fact: “If the unborn child was actually a part of the mother’s body, the unborn’s cells would have the same genetic code as the cells of the mother. That is not the case. Every cell of the unborn’s body is genetically distinct from every cell in the mother’s body.”
Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, wrote,
“If a woman plans to terminate her pregnancy, she commonly refers to the life within her as the ‘fetus.’ But if she intends to deliver and love and care for the little child, she affectionately calls him ‘my baby’.”
Sadly, young women often feel pressured into going through with an abortion. If a distressed pregnant teenager asked you to drive her to an abortion clinic, would you do it? If you were legally allowed to participate in some way, would you assist in the killing of that unborn child? Or would you become the voice and the choice of that unborn baby? Would you gently and lovingly try to convince the young woman to accept the truth about abortion and the truth about how much her baby deserves to live?
You can almost hear the unborn baby in that situation pleading with her distraught mother: “You be my voice. You be my choice. Mom, please choose life for me because I am currently unable to choose it for myself.” Every unborn baby would love to make the all-important choice to protect its growing little body, rather than to have someone destroy it. Every unborn child would choose to live, while not one of them would choose to be aborted. A death sentence can only be handed to them by someone outside the womb. When others choose death for an unborn baby, it is a catastrophic decision.
A headline earlier this year spoke volumes: “Democrats Set To Vote on Radical Abortion Bill that Legalizes Late-Term Abortion Up Until the Moment of Birth.” Unborn babies are too young to vote, but if they could vote, do you honestly think that even one unborn baby would vote for a Democrat today given the radical position that so many Democrats have chosen to adopt on abortion? If pro-abortion Democrats ever became interested in having the hypothetical support of unborn children, they would need to repent of their pro-abortion position and become pro-life. Repentance and a new heart turn a pro-abortion politician into a pro-life politician.
If unborn babies could speak to us, they would beg us to stop the killing of unborn children, immediately! Unborn babies want to live and these helpless little ones do not want an abortionist to enter their mother's womb and steal their life away from them. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). Abortion steals and kills and destroys human life. Author Dr. James Anderson wrote, “Abortion is a profoundly immoral and unjust act: the taking of innocent human life at its most defenseless. As Christians committed to justice and righteousness, we cannot stand by and just let that happen.”
A teenager named Courtney wrote, “When my birth mother was somewhere around 7 weeks pregnant, she had an abortion. Five weeks or so later, she went for a post-op checkup, and it was discovered that I was there in the womb. She didn’t know she was pregnant with twins when she had the abortion.” Courtney’s mother refused to have another abortion when she learned about the second baby. If Courtney and her twin could have voted prior to their mother’s abortion, they both would have voted to live.
Why should the right to life be taken away from any unborn baby? President Ronald Reagan said, “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion is already born.” It is completely unfair to unborn babies for anyone to choose death for these precious little ones. These unborn children deserve to be heard, but since they cannot speak, you and I must become their voice and their choice. Since unborn babies are too young to vote, they depend upon us to stand up for them when we cast our vote, and when we work to educate people about the preventable atrocity of abortion.
And of course, we must also express the grace of God to women who feel devastated after having an abortion. There is hope and forgiveness in Jesus Christ, and various resources are available to assist those who have questions or are struggling with guilt. As author Jerry Bridges wrote, “Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace."
Dan Delzell is the pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska.
