“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you..."
Jeremiah 1:5a
For you formed my inward parts:
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:13-16
My substance, when hid in the womb, nay, when it was yet but in fieri–in the forming, an unshapen embryo, was not hidden from thee; thy eyes did see my substance. [...] As the eye of God saw us then, so his hand wrought us; we were his work. [...] In [God's] book all my members were written. Eternal wisdom formed the plan, and by that almighty power raised the noble structure.
[...] The generation of man is to be considered with the same pious veneration as his creation at first. Consider it, as a great marvel, a great miracle we might call it, but that it is done in the ordinary course of nature. We are fearfully and wonderfully made; we may justly be astonished at the admirable contrivance of these living temples, the composition of every part, and the harmony of all together. As a great mystery, a mystery of nature: My soul knows right well that it is marvelous, but how to describe it for any one else I know not; for I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the womb as in the lowest parts of the earth, so privately, and so far out of sight. As a great mercy, that all our members in continuance were fashioned, according as they were written in the book of God's wise counsel, when as yet there was none of them...
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible – Psalm 139:13-16
Humanity begins before conception.
The Human soul is eternal, and God assigned a life, a body to our soul long before the physical was even imagined by the human mind. While the soul is eternal, it is not recycled; we do not float around in the cosmos awaiting the availability of a body; nor does each soul occupy more than one body; while the created soul awaits the body created for it, the soul is not queued up waiting its turn to occupy any random body that may need filling, and there is not battle between souls for an unoccupied body – each body is occupied by a specific, distinct soul, and each soul occupies one distinct body, and that body is occupied from the moment the egg is fertilized in the mother's womb. A soul's value is not defined by the status or circumstance into which it is born, nor is it defined by the value assigned by the parents. Each soul is valuable and worth saving, whether it be handicapped, unexpected, or unwanted, or even on the brink of death.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
James 1:27
Visiting is here put for all manner of relief which we are capable of giving to others; and fatherless and widows are here particularly mentioned, because they are generally most apt to be neglected
or oppressed: but by them we are to understand all who are proper
objects of charity, all who are in affliction. It is very remarkable
that if the sum of religion be drawn up to two articles this is one–to
be charitable and relieve the afflicted.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible – James 1:27*
But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet
closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:17-18*
Did not he who made me in the womb make him?
And did not one fashion us in the womb?
If I have withheld anything that the poor desired,
or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail,
or have eaten my morsel alone,
and the fatherless has not eaten of it
(for from my youth the fatherless grew up with me as with a father,
and from my mother’s womb I guided the widow),
if I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing,
or the needy without covering,
if his body has not blessed me,
and if he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep,
if I have raised my hand against the fatherless,
because I saw my help in the gate,
then let my shoulder blade fall from my shoulder,
and let my arm be broken from its socket.
For I was in terror of calamity from God,
and I could not have faced his majesty.
Job 31:15-23*
[...] learn to do good;
seek justice, correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow’s cause.
Isaiah 1:17*
We Have a Responsibility
God commands us to protect and serve humanity; those lowest, weakest, most hurt, most despised people. At this point in history, and you think of a more despised class of humans than the unborn, weak, or disabled? Society is telling us to eliminate those who contribute the "least" to society or experience the lowest "quality of life": the terminally ill, elderly, and unborn (even through earliest stages of infancy). Job states that the very same God who created me created each and every human being, the unborn (and his mother), the disabled or handicapped (mentally and physically), the elderly, whatever race or gender, and yes, even the homosexual**, the fornicator, the thief, the addict, the murderer***, etc., and because of this we are to treat each as equal, and protect each life at all stages with the same fervor as we would our own. We, as mere humans, are in no position to assign value on another human life, only the omniscient Creator has the power to do such a thing.
This is why I oppose racism, sexism, and all kinds of prejudice; this is why I am anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia: you cannot oppose prejudice and consider ending the life of another person for the sake of convenience a choice.***
"Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical, they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged.
"To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air into gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle."
"But... if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!"
"Yes. Anybody in the world. But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.
"Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly."
Dr Manhattan to Silk Spectre; Watchmen
* Socialism; please be patient; that is a topic for another post.
** Homosexuality: Again, please be patient.
*** The death penalty: please see above statements.
