A Christmas View of Life from Story of

Jesus' Birth
Andrew Tallman | “The Andrew Tallman Show,” KPXQ-Phoenix | Friday, December
19, 2008

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December 19, 2008

"The Bible says nothing directly about abortion." Have you ever heard this
claim before? I know I have. And the uncomfortable truth is that, in a
certain sense, it's accurate. The deliberate termination of a pregnancy is
not directly addressed anywhere in scripture.

On the one hand, this could mean that the practice is merely a matter of
personal choice, having been left alone by even God Himself. On the other
hand, this could also mean that the culture for which the Bible was written
was so deeply affirming of childbearing that the idea of aborting a baby
would have been literally inconceivable to them. After all, there are no
commands in the Bible to breathe, presumably because Jewish culture is
staunchly pro-air.

But even if the Bible doesn't quite give us a definitive proclamation on the
overall question of abortion, that doesn't mean it says nothing relevant at
all. One of the key points of contention in this debate is whether the fetus is
a person and, if so, when in gestation this occurs. Most pro-lifers believe it's
at conception, but those who believe abortion is morally acceptable think
this happens at some later stage of pregnancy such as implantation,
quickening, viability or birth.

Until the other day, I would have said the Bible was somewhat
indeterminate on this issue. But now, I would be as bold as to say that it
plainly teaches us that a fetus is a person at most within the first four weeks
of gestation and, more likely, even within the first few days after
conception. If so, then Christians who haven't previously realized this would
have to acknowledge that even early term abortions end the life of a
person. And this would, in turn, affect the advice they give to others who
might currently be contemplating abortion, even perhaps their own
daughters. Let me show you what I found for the first time the other day.

I was reading the Christmas story in Luke 1 and 2 when I made what were
for me several new observations. First, I noticed that Luke (a doctor and
scholar) specifically tells his audience (Theophilus) that he has thoroughly
investigated everything he is about to write and that he has decided to
"write it out for you in consecutive order" (1:3). Unlike the other Gospel
writers, Luke will tell us his story in the form we modern readers best
comprehend: chronologically. This means we can rely heavily on the order
of things in any of our conclusions. I know this may not seem very
important, but stick with me for a moment and you'll see why it matters.

Reading on, we learn that Elizabeth (Mary's cousin) has become pregnant
and secluded herself for five months, hiding her very late-in-life first
pregnancy from everybody, even her close family (1:24). Then Luke tells us
that the angel Gabriel makes his famous visit to the engaged virgin Mary in
the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy (1:26). These time references are
no coincidence.

Continuing to read, Gabriel tells Mary that she is going to give birth to the
Messiah and name him Jesus (1:31-33). In the process of answering her
rather understandable question about how this may be so, Gabriel uses the
not-quite-as miraculous pregnancy of her elderly cousin Elizabeth as
evidence that this can really happen. And once more, as if for emphasis,
we have the time reference as he declares that Elizabeth is in her sixth
month of pregnancy (1:36).

After his departure, Mary immediately went as fast as she could (1:39) to
the hill country to see her cousin, presumably to both verify the news
(remember Elizabeth's seclusion) and to share her own story. When Mary
comes close enough to greet her, Elizabeth feels her baby (John the
Baptist) leap in her womb with joy at the presence of his Messiah and Mary
(1:41-44). By any reasonable standard, this shows that the fetus, John, is a
person at this moment and nothing less.

But John is close to his third trimester by now, and even the most strident
pro-choice person will usually concede that third trimester abortions are
heinous for essentially this reason. Roe v. Wade even affirmed this idea.
So nothing observed thus far is particularly persuasive on the subject of
abortion. But that's when I saw something that I hadn't ever considered
before.

Whose presence is John leaping at? Well, obviously the (much younger)
fetus, Jesus. Yet Jesus must be only in his first trimester when John
recognized him through the Holy Spirit.

But perhaps the trip from Nazareth to the hill country took a while. A terrain
map of ancient Israel would lead us to think this journey take a few days at
most, plus the text clearly says she went "with haste" (1:39). But perhaps
some longer time frame is involved here that might extend the likely age of
fetal Jesus. Luckily for us, we needn't guess. The text itself answers these
questions if we just keep reading.

After Mary sings the Magnificat (1:46-55), Luke tells us she stayed with
Elizabeth for about three months before returning home (1:56). Immediately
after she departs, John the Baptist is born (1:57). In the following chapter,
the much more famous narrative of Jesus's birth is told. But the key facts
have already been laid out with the precision that only a medical doctor
would include.

Working solely with the calendar of Elizabeth's pregnancy, Luke has told us
that Jesus was a person with sufficient individual identity that His cousin
could recognize him through the assistance of the Holy Spirit (1:41-44). But
Luke has also told us that when this occurred, Jesus could only have been
a maximum of four weeks old and probably was much younger than that.

Gabriel announced the conception to Mary in Elizabeth's sixth month

(1:26). Thereafter, Mary traveled to the hill country (1:39), where she
stayed for about three months (1:56) before leaving prior to John the
Baptist's birth (1:57). This means that fetus Jesus must have been less
than four weeks old when she arrived, a maximum given the parameters.
But, given the fact that she went immediately and in haste (1:39), a much
more likely reality is that He was only a few days old (perhaps not even
implanted yet) when John recognizes Him. Mary certainly wouldn't have
even been able to know by ordinary means that she was pregnant yet.

So the pressing point of all this analysis is not that John (in his third
trimester) was a person in the womb when he leapt for joy. The
unavoidable and much more forceful point is that Jesus was in the very
earliest portion of His first trimester when He was recognized by John as a
person. And unless Jesus is not a human child, this means that all children
are people at this early stage.

I realize that all of this will be of very little interest to those of you who either
do not care about the Bible or else do not care whether the fetus is a
person. I also know this doesn't really do much to address the question of
the legality of abortion, since the basis of my investigation is a faith text.

But for those tens of millions of Christians who every year celebrate this
story and also believe that early term abortion is compatible with their faith,
the point seems embarrassingly clear: It is no longer honest to say that we
can't know whether the first trimester fetus is a person.

So as we prepare to celebrate Christmas and the birth of our Savior, Jesus

Christ, this year, I have a simple question. Since we now know that Jesus
was somewhere between a few days and a few weeks gestation when he
was recognized in scripture as a person, then who or what is it in the young
woman's womb today if not a person—and somebody's grandchild?