The Humanity of the Unborn

Reflecting on God's good design of humans in the womb from Psalm 139

Photo by Anastasiia Chepinska on Unsplash

Recently my wife and I were talking in the morning before the girls woke up. She brought up a Facebook memory when she was pregnant with Piper, where she never felt her kick in the morning, but she was always active at night. But with Jovi, our oldest, she always kicked in the morning.

And nothing has changed. Jovi is a morning person and goes to bed effortlessly. Piper, as I’ve written before here and here, is unequivocally not a morning person and goes to bed with far too much energy. We were both astounded how things can remain the same for our girls even years since their respective births. It simply goes to show the humanity of the unborn.

That’s why advocating for unborn children is important. We’re not talking about a clump of fetal cells, as one college student said in a debate with a pastor. That euphemism and more are desperate attempts to dehumanize the unborn. It’s not going to work because not only does the science point to the humanity of the unborn from the moment of conception, but more importantly, so does the Bible. “For you formed my inward parts;” declares Psalm 139:13, “you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”

We advocate for unborn children — the voiceless — because they are made in the image of God (Gen. 2:26). God is the Designer, the Creator, the one who makes all of us. And to disparage that creation, to dehumanize His design is blasphemous. We are human from the exact point of fertilization. We don’t become human beings at birth or even at the time a heartbeat is heard (~6 weeks). Our personhood begins at conception.

And God’s creation of us is good, so it’s evil to try to murder that good design. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” Psalm 139:14 says. “Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well.” Society relentlessly tries to take away the imago Dei, to eliminate the preciousness of life. But God says otherwise. God tells us the creation of life is a gift, and that it all comes from His sovereign hands. Randy Alcorn wrote,

Each person, regardless of his parentage or handicap, has not been manufactured on a cosmic assembly line, but personally formed by God. All the days of his life are planned out by God before any come to be.

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance;” asserts Psalm 139:16, “in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” God doesn’t simply create us; no, He plans our days before we even live them. God ordains when our life begins and ends. Nobody can take that away from Him.

Friends, there is a reason we advocate for the unborn. There is a reason we fight for the right to life of the precious babies in mothers’ wombs. There is a reason we continue to speak out against a culture of death, a society that continues to murder these innocent little ones. That reason, of course, is God. It should be our utmost desire to uphold His good creation and to honor His holy name.

With my little girls, there personalities and quirks didn’t change from outside or inside the womb. One is still energetic in the morning, and one at night. Seeing how their personalities are the same now as they were in the womb is a thought worth meditating on by praising the Lord for His goodness, mercy, and creation.

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