The question is whether being human is enough.

Yesterday,  I wrote about what Scripture says about the unborn. I meant every word of it. The biblical case is clear, and for those of us who hold the Bible as authoritative, it should settle the matter.

But there is an uncomfortable reality.

The majority of women having abortions today have no loyalty to Scripture. They’re not reading Psalm 139 and weighing it against their circumstances. And if our entire public argument rests on chapter and verse, we have already lost the conversation before it starts. Not because we’re wrong, but because we’re speaking a language the other person has no reason to accept.

Jesse Ridgeway, the father who announced publicly that he and his wife aborted their son after a Trisomy 21 diagnosis, said something that stuck with me. When the response came from so called “Christians”, he addressed it directly:

“A lot of them use God and Jesus as their weapon and their justification but it doesn’t matter to me because I’m not religious, I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in the Bible… but I don’t judge people for believing it… when you start to use it like a weapon, it becomes problematic. People saying ‘Go to hell’… I can’t go there, I don’t believe in it.”

I’m not citing that to validate his decision. I’m citing it because he is telling us something important about the limits of our argument.

He’s not wrestling with Scripture. He has no framework that makes Scripture binding. Quoting Psalm 139 to Jesse Ridgeway is not going to land, not because the psalm isn’t true, but because he has no reason to treat it as authoritative. And he is not alone. He represents millions of people making this decision every year.

So today I want to make a different argument. Not instead of the biblical one. In addition to it.

I want to show that the abolition of abortion is not just theologically consistent. It is intellectually consistent and scientifically grounded.

In the book The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology it states,


Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).” Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. pp. 16, 2

From the moment of conception, the unborn child is a distinct living human organism. This is not a pro-life talking point. It is what the embryology textbooks say.

Separate DNA. A separate developmental trajectory. In many cases a separate blood type. He is not a part of the mother’s body the way a kidney is. He is a separate individual residing within it.

Consider how we treat DNA everywhere else in our legal system.

When investigators arrive at a crime scene, DNA evidence is used to determine exactly how many individuals were present. A single biological sample identifies a distinct human being. Nobody looks at DNA recovered from a scene and says that belongs to a potential person or a cluster of cells. They say it belongs to someone. A specific, identifiable, individual human being. That is the entire evidentiary basis of modern forensic science.

The unborn child has that same unique DNA from the moment of conception. Distinct from the mother. Distinct from the father. A genetic signature that belongs to one individual human being. If that standard identifies a person at a crime scene, there is no intellectually honest reason it should mean something different in the womb.

The question is never really whether the unborn are human. They are. The question is whether being human is enough.

And that is where the culture goes quiet.

Because if being a distinct living human organism is sufficient grounds for legal protection, then the conclusion is unavoidable. So instead, people reach for conditions. The child has to reach a certain size, a certain age, a certain level of development, a certain capacity for consciousness or pain or independence. Cross those thresholds and you count. Fall short and you don’t.

If size determines worth, larger people have more rights than smaller ones. I’m a fat man so I would have a lot of rights. If age determines worth, children deserve the least protection of anyone, which is exactly backwards from how we treat them. If development determines worth, a philosophy professor has more rights than a newborn, which no one actually believes. If dependency determines worth, then anyone on a ventilator or in a care facility is a candidate for reduced protection.

Every threshold people reach for to exclude the unborn, when applied consistently, would exclude people we have no intention of excluding. The frameworks don’t hold. They only feel like they hold because we apply them selectively, to the unborn and no one else.

Back to Jesse Ridgeway.

He and his wife announced publicly that they had aborted their son after learning he had Trisomy 21. Down syndrome. An extra chromosome.

Now ask yourself: would we accept that reasoning after birth? If a parent decided two weeks after delivery that a Down syndrome diagnosis made their child’s life not worth living, and then killed that child, would we call that a personal choice?

Of course not. We would call it what it is. Murder.

The child didn’t become more human at birth. The only thing that changed was location. And location cannot be a legitimate basis for determining who deserves legal protection.

Jesse Ridgeway says he doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t believe in the Bible, and I’ll take him at his word. That means the argument that should reach him is not a theological one. It is this one. A child with Trisomy 21 is a distinct living human organism. The same standard of equal protection we apply to every human being after birth applies to him before it

His son had unique DNA. Forensic science would have recognized that child as a distinct individual. The law should too.

Here is where I’ll say something that might surprise you.

I actually consider myself pro-choice.

Just not in the way that word is usually used. I believe in four choices,

The first is abstinence. It is the only method that completely eliminates the possibility of pregnancy. It is a real choice and a legitimate one, and our culture has spent decades mocking it rather than honestly presenting it as an option.

The second is physical barrier contraceptives. Condoms and other barrier methods reduce the likelihood of conception by preventing fertilization. They address the question of whether a child will be conceived, and that is exactly where the conversation belongs.

The third is motherhood. Hard, costly, beautiful, and worth it.

The fourth is adoption. There are families waiting. There are children who needed someone to choose this, and someone did.

I just don’t believe in murder

Abortion is not on my list. Not because I don’t believe in choice. But because choice has never been unlimited when another human being is involved. The forensic lab already knows that. The embryology textbook already knows that.

It’s time our laws caught up.

Love you dearly.

Jacob.