Presidential aspirant Pete Buttboy recently said:
[Pro-life people] hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath. Even that is something that we can interpret differently. . . . No matter what you think about the cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on board with the idea of, ‘I might draw the here. You might draw the line there.’ The most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision.
1. What are the many ("lots") of Bible passages that say life begins with breath? I'm only aware of two explicit passages:
Gen 2:7
Ezk 37:1-14
i) These aren't discussing the inception of life in general. Gen 2:7 is about the creation of Adam. But that's unique. That's hardly the norm for human beings.
ii) The Valley of Dry Bones vision is surreal.
2. The word ruach means more than one thing: wind, breath, spirit. It's often a designation for the Spirit of God, although it trades on metaphorical associations with the breath of life. So it can denote the creative Spirit rather than "the breath of life".
3. The Bible is addressed to a prescientific audience in which cessation of breathing is a criterion for death. And, indeed, that's still the case outside of the E.R.
4. That's a roughhewn criterion for people who are born (e.g. 1 Kgs 17:17). Prenatal life is not in view.
5. If you wish to get technical about it, while babies in utero don't breath, they require oxygen:
6. If the absence of breathing is a justification for abortion, then by parity of argument we shouldn't attempt to resuscitate people who stop breathing as a result of drowning, cardiac arrest, &c. Likewise, we shouldn't put patients on ventilators who can't breathe on their own.
7. It's not surprising that an active sodomite like Pete Buttboy, who's "married" to a "husband," doesn't care about babies. He's in rebellion against natural normal family life.
Since we know from Nietzsche and Buttigieg that there are no facts, only interpretations, there is no actual line as to when life begins, or if there is, we can’t say with confidence where it is. Ergo, drawing the line is a matter of choice, not fact. That being the case, the question is who has the “right” to choose? His answer is “the woman.” She gets to draw it wherever she wants because because, which is my favorite reason of all. If you dare suggest that the father (siblings, grandparents, etc.) has a legitimate interest in the birth of his unborn child or that the unborn child has a legitimate interest in not being hacked to death and vacuumed out of his or her mother’s womb, you’re wrong - because because. And surely, Buttigieg could point to all the Bible passages stating that anyone who refuses to acknowledge a woman’s right to murder her unborn child already has one foot in Hades.
ReplyDelete"how life begins with breath"
ReplyDeleteDepends what Petey means by "breath". That's too vague. For example, the world renowned pulmonologist John West has pointed out in his book Respiratory Physiology (10th ed.), p 176: "The fetus makes very small, rapid breathing movements in the uterus over a considerable period before birth."
In addition, the following is from a Christian OB/GYN named Dr. Brent Boles:
DeleteIn fact, fetal breathing occurs long before birth. We watch on ultrasound as the baby inhales amniotic fluid by expanding the rib cage to pull fluid in and contracts the rib cage to exhale the fluid.
This action uses the fluid to distend the alveoli, the tiny air sacs in the lungs and allow them to properly develop. If this did not occur, the child would be unable to breath air after the delivery.
Fetal breathing is a widely used medical term. Look up the term “biophysical profile” and you will see that the observation of fetal breathing on ultrasound is a universally accepted description of what is observed. It is a sign of reassuring fetal well-being.
https://stream.org/mayor-pete-wrong-on-science-and-scripture-says-ob-gyn-and-christian-author/