A WOMAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO CHOOSE.. july, 2006(edited Sept 28, 2011)

The inherent value of a potential, yet unborn, human being is not the same as that of a present living human being. There, that is what I, through the evidence available, have gradually come to fully believe. Since I was first confronted with the idea of aborting a potential human life, I began to ask and to consider what the moral implications of such a decision are. I offer my perspective acknowledging that this is not an easy , sweet or sentimental view. But every religion makes it clear there are hard and necessary truths that for justice and love's sake need to be  consciously and  unapologetically accepted.

I believe that the carrier of a fetus is the one who is in the best place to have final responsibility  whether this potential child should become an actual child, and  I also see the decision to abort as one of the most serious moral dilemmas that a female human can face.

We should be ever aware of the long history in Western culture, going back to the paternity laws of the Old Testament, of  the determined male control over  female reproduction. Many have not noticed  the reason it was wrong for a man 'to have another's' wife or daughter was because it was a sin against another 'man's property rights.'  In  Mosaic paternalism it was essential that a man 'know for sure' his children were his and not another's. These laws were never really about sexual love and morality  as  we have usually  been led to think. This archetypal  male-control emotional force shows itself in all anti-abortion  movements. This  unethical need to keep women's bodily  reproduction  rights under male control is still  alive in America and in all the patriarchal societies.

To decide to abort is to undoubtedly carry the responsibility of facing feelings of sadness, remorse and loss that are as strong and real as the loss of a new born child. But, that being accepted, the assumption that many people have that an unborn potential human is to be considered as having the same inherent value as a living human is not spiritually or psychologically supportable.

Male-owned Women Must Cover Face

Gospels Speak of  Mary's Potential Shame  If   'out of wed-lock' Pregnancy

Every natural seed is an embryo with potential to become a fully developed life specimen. Yet most view interrupting the seed from becoming an actual plant or creature in the world as not the same as destroying one that already occupies space and stands in need of life sustenance. I am not suggesting that any natural plant or creature is of equal value to a human being or an embryonic human. 

The value that Christianity holds as the highest is the full realization of human life. The determining question is, "What is it that makes a human person much more to be valued and supported compared to all others?" Physically, biologically and genetically a human is insignificantly different from other animal life forms. But most people intuitively believe that if a living human and any other animal are compared in value as deserving society's strongest efforts to support it, it is unquestionably the human person. This is(or should be) any human person who is occupying individual space on the planet, who is breathing, receiving nutrition, receiving and expressing emotion and insisting as best it can that it have what it needs to live and thrive. This value should be ethically the same regardless of age, ethnicity, socioeconomic factors, sex or any other description of difference. To be a born human is by all spiritual and moral standards to be the supreme value in the order of all reality.

Adulterous Woman Far More 'Shamed' Than A man.

The answer to the above question which I find consistent with above considerations, with the stories of Jesus' words and actions and with other respected areas of human knowledge is this: The reality supporting a human's high value is what is usually called 'human consciousness.' Every person has, to some extent from the time of birth and potentially to a much fuller extent, a consciousness of themselves, others and the whole world environment. Jesus' words point to this highest value when he rhetorically asks, "What good is it if one gains the whole world but loses his/her own soul(consciousness) or What shall a person give in exchange for his/her soul(consciousness)?"

Some are going to push this human consciousness back to the womb and even to conception. That is the flaw in perception and logic that I am seeking to challenge in my statement. The most poignant way to describe the difference between the value of a fetus and one born into beginning
'consciousness' is the realization that also at birth begins the reality of conscious human 'suffering.' (This explains why it's said that only God's suffering ,a cross, rather than His existence is able to affirm the high value of each person).  Genesis speaks of 'God breathing the breath of life and Adam became a living soul.' With the glory of human consciousness(religiously that which makes us all carriers of the image of God) comes also the experience of emotional and physical suffering. From the Judeo-Christian perspective this commonhuman  suffering is an indication of the 'fall from God'. Jesus was focused on recognizing and relieving the 'conscious' suffering of human beings. His followers should be as well.

Being more conscious makes us at once more fully human, more divine and the identified highest value of all reality. The joyous glory and suffering of human consciousness begins when a person is hurled by birth, no doubt with significant but necessary suffering, into the world to be an actual 'separated' human being. (This 'birth to consciousness' is a spiritual meaning of Adam and Eve being cast from the garden of paradise.) It is only the born human child with its developing consciousness who stands in essential need of humanity's direct concern, love and interaction. This need is to assist the child on its path of becoming as fully conscious human being as possible. It is upon the born child there is such a need in our world of the highest value being placed. We most value the human fetus by valuing the conscious and sometimes suffering mother who carries it.

Whatever value we attach to an unborn fetus, it is not the value of human consciousness. Only when we look into the eyes of a human being, whether soon after birth or even near the time of death, are we glimpsing into a developing suffering consciousness. That alone is the reality that has a claim on each of us to value as an equal life form. This deserves from us the religious value expressed as that which 'God so loved that God gave God's very self (God's consciousness) that such a value might not perish but live forever". This is the reality implied in our near sacred U.S. constitution that seeks to provide all humans with the" inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

What many are so certain shows that an embryo has  the same value as an arrived human being is actually not the potential human person, but the expectant  wishes of surrounding adults having(even demanding) that a new person come into life and fulfill someone's , other than the mother, personal meaning for it. I do not make light of that for surely every child needs to arrive with a strong welcome. But for us to take our own desire and need for a child as the equivalent to valuing an actual born child is somewhat selfish. I think the flaw of such valuing is seen in that there is seldom such emotional interest among people to help meet the needs of actual born children who are experiencing their developing consciousness. Here is where there is often much suffering that is more often quite ignored and certainly not as strongly demanded by some who claim a value of 'pro life.'.

I began to learn this view when looking into the concerned suffering face of a pregnant woman who intuitively knew that the potential human she carried did not have the 'fullness of time' (religiously the 'kairos') to have what it deserved and needed to begin a life of consciousness. To not listen to that woman's intuitive truth is, to me, to not listen to the voice of God who is speaking through her, the only a actual carrier of the fetus. 

I've been aware of several incidents of the motherly suffering decision to abort . Later the same women, in the 'fullness of time', gave birth to a child. Had she not used her best judgment before, this presently attended to child would not have likely ever been received to its grand and waiting world, to begin its glorious path to joyful consciousness. The mystery and profundity of life causes me to wonder if this '2nd'  child were not perhaps the same unconscious potential child she previously decided to abort?  I can find no spiritual reason to not consider this gracious understanding behind responsible  abortion.