[1] Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the abortion debate has entered a new phase.\u00a0 And yet in another sense, nothing is new.\u00a0 The same old arguments get made on both sides with neither side really engaging the other.\u00a0 On one hand, there are those of the Pro-Choice movement, in accord with Roe vs. Wade\u2019s decision on the right to privacy and Feminist arguments concerning a woman\u2019s right to control her own body.\u00a0 On the other hand, there are those of most Pro-Life proponents arguing that since human life begins in the womb, abortion is the murder of a human life.\u00a0 (Some Christians taking this position also argue that personhood begins in the womb on allegedly Biblical grounds, for God is said to have known us in the womb [Jeremiah 1:5].)\u00a0 Both sides are talking past each other, with the Right claiming it has both science and Christian faith on its side concerning the personhood of the fetus.\u00a0 Even the media seems to depict the dispute this way: Women\u2019s Rights vs. Science and Faith.<\/p>\n
[2] \u00a0Yet, science cannot specifically identify when human life begins.\u00a0 The origin of human life is ultimately a question of politics and philosophy, not biology.[i]<\/a> Findings in neurobiology suggest that, despite bodily similarities between homo sapiens and the fetus, the fetus may not become recognizably human until well into mid-pregnancy.<\/p>\n [3] I confess a definite perspective on this question.\u00a0 It runs in the family.\u00a0 My Norwegian grandmother Anna, born in 1879 with a Haugean, daily Bible-reading piety inherited from her elders, frequently functioned as a mid-wife in her rural Southern Norway homeland.\u00a0 I am told that there were times when pregnancies were suddenly terminated on her watch, especially in the case of some struggling families and unmarried women.\u00a0 Her youngest daughter, my immigrant street-wise theologically conservative mother, Edna, was known to educate me on sexual questions as early as the late 1950s with phrases like, \u201cYou know, Maak [her Brooklyn accent], men can make all the laws they want about abortion.\u00a0 But the truth is, a girl can always get one.\u00a0 And I want her to get it if she must in a hospital, not with a coat-hanger in some back ally.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m married into a family with a similar point of view.\u00a0 My wife Betsey never met her Aunt Edna, because her father\u2019s sister died tragically while receiving the kind of coat-hanger abortion care which my mother lamented.<\/p>\n [4] Yes, I\u2019ve been nurtured with a definite proto-feminist openness to abortion, a position with 19th<\/sup>-century roots (if not older).\u00a0 But I can say that the members of my family with their openness to the legitimacy of abortion never accused anti-abortion proponents of being less Christian than we were.\u00a0 We could even have friends on the other side, and we never demonized them.\u00a0 The disagreement we had with those on the other side was over whether you should prioritize a fetus over the welfare of a pregnant woman \u2013 a philosophical or ethical concern, not a faith disagreement.\u00a0 I\u2019ve even grown up to make a case for the conclusions of my family.\u00a0 In a comprehensive study of every church\/denominational statement issued on abortion prior to 1990 I demonstrated that theological differences do not divide these denominations on this issue.\u00a0 You can identify similar theological arguments for both the pro-life and the pro-choice positions in these statements.\u00a0 Indeed, in their social statements disagreeing about abortion, the core of the disagreements is that Christian denominations disagree over philosophical questions of when human life begins, and over which philosophical concepts best depict human nature.[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 Little has changed in these denominations\u2019 positions in the last 35 years.<\/p>\n NEW RESEARCH ON THE BRAIN\u2019S DEVELOPMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n [5] Neurobiological research on the fetus combined with new insights from the theory of evolution offer fresh perspectives on when human life begins.\u00a0 Evolutionary scientists are starting to contend that what distinguishes homo sapiens from other animals is our superior ability to cooperate across genetic lines.[iii]<\/a> And it seems that our superior abilities to cooperate are largely functions of the proportionately larger frontal lobe of the brain which human beings have.\u00a0 This part of the brain seems to be what makes social interactions, abstract thought, language, and consciousness possible.[iv]<\/a> In short, a case can plausibly be made that the fetus is not really human until these mental tools have developed.\u00a0 And new research, especially that conducted by Miikihito Shibata, Kartik Pattabiraman, Nenad Sestan, and others at the Yale School of Medicine found that it is the 2nd<\/sup> trimester of pregnancy which is the most crucial time for the formation of the neural connections of the prefrontal cortex with the rest of the brain, the connections which creates human cognitive flexibility and the possible growth of working memory.[v]<\/a><\/p>\n [6] These same Yale researchers also found that retonic acid in the brain is crucial in the expansion of the prefrontal cortex \u2013 acid which then in turn promotes human complexity.\u00a0 Apparently this acid switches on the gene CBLN2 which is crucial in forming connections with the frontal cortex, all not happening until the 2nd<\/sup> trimester.[vi]<\/a> Only after this happens is the fetus capable of \u00a0distinctively human thought and behavior, capable of the cooperation which distinguishes humans from other living things.<\/p>\n [7] Let\u2019s now review the consensus in the neurobiological guild about human brain development.\u00a0 In the first trimester, the various parts of the brain rapidly develop and separate as distinct parts.\u00a0 Neurons and synapses (brain connections) develop.\u00a0 In the 2nd<\/sup> trimester, the brain begins to take command of bodily functions.\u00a0 At this point, there is little unique about the human fetus\u2019 brain in comparison to the brains of other living things.\u00a0 Only by the end of this trimester (6 months since initial conception) has the fetal brain begun to look structurally like the adult human brain.\u00a0 It is not before the 3rd<\/sup> trimester that the brain is capable of learning and that consciousness is possible.[vii]<\/a> Indeed, then, a case could be made that the fetus is not truly human until the 7th<\/sup> month of pregnancy (human uniqueness understood in terms of being capable of cooperation or even of consciousness)!\u00a0 In that case, abortion prior to the 7th<\/sup> month would not be the termination of a human life.<\/p>\n IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ABORTION DEBATE: NEXT STEPS<\/strong><\/p>\n [8] Above all, this article is about getting both sides in the debate to take the science seriously.\u00a0 The Pro-Life group needs to concede that it is by no means firmly established that human life begins at conception or in the first trimester.\u00a0 Life begins at this time, but it is not necessarily human life.\u00a0 The Pro-Choice side needs to recognize that its position is being heard by the Right as advocating murder and that the Left\u2019s strongest arguments are provided by scientific data possibly supporting the non-human status of the fetus until 6 or 7 months of pregnancy.\u00a0 Grappling with the scientific data may open the doors to a civil debate, based on common data.\u00a0 It is worth a try to get the neurobiological data into the public forum and media.\u00a0 In that case, we ought collectively to get this word out in the ELCA, the ecumenical community, and the public at large.<\/p>\n [9] One other issue to be addressed in the dispute is the Christian Pro-Life tendency to appeal to the Bible (see Jeremiah 1:5 noted above and related texts).\u00a0 The new scientific data I have been recounting do not rule out that late in the pregnancy human life exists in the womb.\u00a0 And when we keep in mind the simultaneity of time from God\u2019s perspective[viii]<\/a>, it makes sense to identify a human being with the fetus and even the embryo as the Bible might seem to make.\u00a0 In God\u2019s sight, at this very moment as this 73-year old writes these words, my mother is carrying the fetus which would develop into this author.\u00a0 In that sense, God knows me now in my mother\u2019s womb.<\/p>\n [10] We\u2019ve learned from Quantum Physics that scientific results are always only probabilities.\u00a0 We may discern new data yet on when human life begins, which entail that these reflections and other efforts to use scientific data are always revisable.\u00a0 If such scientific modes of thought were to take root in the abortion debate, American society and all of us could become a lot more civil, as we became a little less certain about the \u201cabsolute truth\u201d of our positions.\u00a0 Let\u2019s try to get more scientifically-minded and get these insights better known among Lutherans and in American society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [i]<\/a> Sahotra Sarkar, \u201cWhen human life begins is a question of politics \u2013 not biology,\u201d The Conversation <\/em>(September, 2021)<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> see Mark Ellingsen, \u201cThe Church and Abortion: Signs of Consensus,\u201d The Christian Century<\/em> (Jan. 3-10, 1990): 12-15.<\/p>\n [iii]<\/a> Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind <\/em>(New York: Harper Collins, 2015).<\/p>\n [iv]<\/a> Bill Hathaway, \u201cMid-pregnancy may be defining period for human brain,\u201d Yale News<\/em> (Oct. 4, 202)..<\/p>\n [v]<\/a> \u201cRegulation of the prefrontal patterning and connectivity by retinoic acid,\u201d Nature<\/em> (Oct. 2021): 483-488.<\/p>\n [vi]<\/a> \u201cHominini-specific regulation of CBLN2 increases prefrontal spinogenesis,\u201d Nature<\/em> (Oct. 2021): 489-494.<\/p>\n