WHEN DOES LIFE ACTUALLY BEGIN?

 Let’s revisit the issue about abortion. This post would be focusing on the responses to our earlier post, “Don’t Die Under Guilt: What Everyone Should Know Or Consider About Abortion”. You have to read it to be fully involved in the on-going discussion.

Photo by Toro Seleng on Unsplash

The first comment goes thus. “Where you missed the point is that the owner of the building, whether complete (as in already delivered or grown person), or uncompleted (as in foetus), is not the tenant or caretaker (mother) but the Landlord (the creator Himself)”. It went further, “we don’t go amending a property you do not own, talk less of demolishing it, just because the Landlord made you a caretaker”

“Immediately after conception, life begins; whether in form of blood or foetus. No one has the right to murder (abort) life” wrote another. 

And yet another, “it is an abomination to cut one’s life because it is God’s. It is incomparable to houses or any such physical structures”

 There were other comments but these three sum up the views most people have about abortion from the article. Their gist:

     The human life belongs to God. As such no one should take it.

      Life begins immediately after conception.

     The woman who bears the pregnancy has no right to abort it; she is only a caretaker.

Life begins at conception. This is the opinion most people hold, but ironically, this may be far from the truth. And the fact that most people hold this view does not confer it any validity. People have gotten stuck with popular views in the past only to discover later that it was wholly wrong.  They even killed, legally, or backed by the state, on that basis, until the light of truth shines on it. Examples abound.

 In October, 1992 Pope John Paul II formally apologized to Galileo Galilei for the wrongs done to him by the church. What was the issue? Galileo had told the world that the earth revolves around the sun, contrary to the general belief of the Roman Catholic church, and the world, that it is the other way round. As a result Galileo was arrested, and condemned in 1633. He would have been burned on the stake but Galileo knew better. He recanted and was given life imprisonment instead. He fully served the sentence. The advancement in science later proved Galileo right, and Pope John Paul II, with all humility, had to apologize to Galileo.

The march of truth.  William Tyndale believed that everyone should be able to read the Holy Bible in their own vernacular or native language. As a result Mr. Tyndale wanted to translate the bible into English; but the church saw this as heresy. He escaped from England, and went ahead with the translation, much against the authority of the church. After, he printed some volumes which later found their way to England. By some complicity, he was later hounded and arrested. The result? He was burned on the stake, executed publicly.

Today, the Holy Bible has been translated into various languages; and that act, mainly, has been responsible in part for the survival, growth, and spread of Christianity. Tyndale was a lone voice, but was he wrong? I guess you know better.

There are numerous cases in the same vein. Can we consider the case of abortion in another light, or would we continue to look at it as in days of inquisition?

The fact is that you won’t get anywhere with the truth about abortion until you discover the reality of Soul, which is the real prospective tenant of the house under construction (foetus- the human body).

The reference to the foetus or body as temple was not used first by me. The bible from where most of the comments are based referred to the body as temple, even Christ himself. “Destroy this temple and in three days I would raise it up”. And he did rise on the third day. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of the most high God”?  Paul too did. Stephen did. So the body can be compared, and is analogous, to a temple or a physical building –only meant for housing something more important and valuable from the hazards direct exposure may occasion.  

Creation is finished, we are told, and man’s place in it is to further it. Science tells us that we can neither create nor destroy, but can only manifest or recreate what is already there.

 This means that Soul being part of the already created thing could not be coming into existence by the mere meeting of a man and a woman; just as it is not possible that “death has swallowed life” when Soul pulls out of the house it has inhabited and the body empty of the energy (Soul, life force) that sustained it, dies.

Conception is therefore the willful initiation or construction of the temple (foetus) of the body; and Soul is the individualized Spirit of God, invested in, or that inhabits that temple of the body. You cannot kill Soul anymore than you can kill Spirit. “Before Abraham I was” implying the timeless existence of Soul. The conception of Soul is beyond time, and older than the universe.

  Further, through the charge to further creation, man (Soul) derives his freedom of choice of action. Soul being intelligent of Itself can decide to reject a house which is under construction (foetus) for Its habitation. Or it may be for some other extraneous reasons beyond the scope of this discussion. This act of refusing or rejecting a house being built for it, can be by the act of the woman in whose land (womb) the property (foetus) is being developed (abortion), or if rejected by Soul itself results in stillbirth.

There is a Latin maxim, which has been adopted in legal quarters, “quicquid plantator solo solo cedit”, meaning, whatever is affixed to the land belongs to the land, and passes with it the title to the land. In other words, the owner of the land can do whatever he or she likes with the property.

So the woman in whose stomach the building is being constructed (foetus) following the position of that law, and our natural freedom, has all the right to decide what to do it. Retain, or abort.  She is not just a Caretaker but also the Landlord, in whose property the foetus is planted.

The woman, not even the man, is very central in the case of abortion. She has the final right, should I say, in both heaven and earth, on what to do with the pregnancy.

Further, I think, a thing unknown has no right in law, and with that I even wonder if the courts or government has the right to legislate over abortion. The right of the government start should start once the baby is delivered, and assume a citizen of the state.

As a final word, and as pointed out in the first part of this piece, we have the freedom to do what we want but also should have the courage to accept that responsibility that go with our choice of exercising that freedom. An informed choice is very necessary.

written by Ali Elias
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