A friend of mine volunteers her time on the phone banks for Planned Parenthood. It's a centralized bank of phone counselors located in one city but where all the incoming crisis calls are received for an entire region of the US. As you can imagine, some of the calls she receives are from pregnant teens who don't know what to do.
"After I hear their circumstances, no finances, no family support, and they are so young, I just want to scream into the phone, 'Get the f--king abortion!', but I can't." She says. "We aren't allowed to tell callers what to do - we are just supposed to let them know all the information about all their options."
"So you wouldn't hesitate to tell someone to get an abortion?"
"No. If I could, I would tell a lot of them to do it."
"Wow." I said quietly.
She paused, "In my faith," (she's Jewish - maybe doesn't realize we have the same doctrine-rulebook-scripture...you know, Christians and Jews all follow the same foundational writings), "...we were taught that life begins at birth, yes, that God breaths life into you at your first breath. So I don't have a problem with abortion at all."
Later, I was confused by this. Was she really taught that? Jews out there, help me out. Where in our ancient writings - The Torah - does it say that life begins at our (earthly) birth? All I could figure is that she was talking about -without knowing it...without having personally read it herself - was when Adam was made out of mud and God 'breathed life into him'. But, why do we think that 'breathing life' is the same as 'breathing air'? How simple is that? When God breathes life into something, do you really think it's something as simple as AIR? What if it's something done on a molecular level? An emotional level? When is the computer chip programmed? When the computer is turned on? Or when the chip is designed? Like a computer chip, God may program us (breath life into us) way before we are formed into a physical thing, way before we survive in the earth's atmosphere on our own. I really don't believe 'breathing life into' a being is the same as 'breathing air out of' lungs.
My friend may have never read the Torah herself, but rather, relied on someone else's interpretation in it's umpteenth-or-so generational iteration. We all do it....rely on churches, religious leaders, parents, friends to inform our intelligence when it comes to faith. So many of us grow up without reading any historical writings ourselves. We rely on the verbal passage of faith...which can really screw things up if we don't ALSO qualify the stories told with direct personal study of what's been written and left for us.
You know, verbal history is pretty dicey. Have you ever played 'telephone' with kids? It's where you get a line of kids and at one end start a story, then that kid tells the next, and so on, and so on. Until you get to the end, and behold, the story is all screwed up. I think God left so many ancient writings in tact, and made it so we would collect them, bind them, and call it our Bible, Torah, Book of Law - - -just so we would stop the madness of screwing up His intent. So when any given generation relies solely verbally on the previous, it's problematic. This excuse for sanctioning abortion in a guilt-free way is an obvious example. We use mis-informed teachings to help us hide from morality.
Aside from the obviously ridiculous reason to be OK with killing a fetus, if you're a person of faith, do you really think God did not know Adam before he was formed? Do you really think He did not have a plan for Adam? How old do you think Adam was when God formed him out of mud and breathed life into him? 0? 1? 2? Adult? If he was 0, why doesn't the Torah mention Adam's infancy? If he was an adult at 'birth', does that mean life isn't breathed into people until they are adults? I mean following my friend's line of logic to it's end, it would mean that murder is ok up until some undetermined adult age...the same age Adam was when life was breathed into him.
It's wacky to think about. All I know is God says on more than one occasion that He knows us in the womb, that our names are etched in his hands. And if someone is accounted for before they are born who are we to snuff 'em out? Is our plan for someone else's life greater than God's?
If our kids think a sleeping puppy is dead, then throw it in the garbage, what is our first response?
Exactly. You would save the puppy and explain to your child how sleep is different from dead. You know the puppy has 'life breathed into it' even though outer appearances speak to the contrary to someone simple like a child.
Don't you see how simple-minded it is to try and pinpoint when life begins for the sake of deciding someone's life or death? You're either for killing or against it. You're either gonna do it or not. But don't, please don't, hide behind God or your limited understanding of God. His position is clear.
We must be responsible for reading ancient scripture ourselves - first person- if we are going to use our faith to sanction or defend our actions. The same reasoning my friend used for being OK with abortion is exactly what is wrong with religion - too many generations have had their faith informed by a childhood memory of what they were told.
I couldn't tell my friend that she was allowing a childhood version of herself - essentially, a little girl, guide her decisions about her faith, and other people's life or death. It would have killed our already kind of not-yet-fully-developed relationship, I think. But I do think of her a lot. I think of her being on that phone with scared teenagers and her opinion, though not stated, blaring through the phone lines in her tone, her pauses, her passion. I think about it a lot.
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