Abortion

I would like to talk about abortions today. First of all, I am an individual who was raised to believe that there is nothing wrong with abortions and that since the embryo has not been fully developed, it is not considered to be a human being. At some point in my life, I started realizing why they are wrong and I also read a religious book that talks about this.

First of all, according to the teachings of the orthodox church, the human being starts having a human soul from the time of its conception and not at a later point e.g. during pregnancy (Vasiliadis, 1999). Thus, even though its body hasn’t fully developed, it is considered to be a human being with body and soul. For this reason, abortion is condemned by the church as murder (Vasiliadis, 1999).

So yes, as far as I understand if you have a full human soul, you are a human, even if your body hasn’t fully developed all its organs. Apart from that, there are some other thoughts that I had about abortion. These are some personal thoughts. I am not sure if they are theologically correct, so the reader should check them with someone with theological knowledge before accepting them.

First of all, I am a biologist, so I know that biology actually considers the zygote to be the new human being and that from this point onwards, the cell/cells/embryo that exist are considered to be the new human being. Thus, I am not sure exactly why it has in parallel been decided that everyone with organs that are not fully developed is a not human.

Also, imagine a man that has been completely paralysed and has few organs left. Does the fact that this person is missing most of his organs mean that he is not a human and that killing him is not a murder? Humans are more than a collection of their organs. They are something deeper than that. Believing that you are a collection of your organs or possessions is actually narcissistic I think. Narcissists believe that they are their houses, their degrees etc. You are not your things. This is external validation and not true self esteem (people with narcissism don’t truly have high self esteem. They deep inside have low self esteem. This is why they constantly seek for external validation. They feel that they need to get validation from someone or something else because they do not believe in themselves enough to give it to themselves or they don’t understand the worth of their own existence, unless e.g. they possess something which is supposed to GIVE them worth. They don’t believe that they have worth on their own).

Similarly, humans are something more than the collection of their body parts (even though these are internal characteristics that we have. They are not external). When we die, nobody will remember us for the fact that we had 2 legs (if we did). Everyone will remember us for who we were and what we did. They will remember and have connected to our characters and soul and the deeper parts of us. They will remember our spirit, our choices, our impact, our soul and generally deeper things like these. Since the soul already exists from the moment of conception, what we actually more deeply perceive us a human exists to a big extent. It also has all the genetic material that will be associated to our future traits. It is as if part of what constitutes our future traits is already there. Thus, a zygote is not just trash that you can throw to a bin. It is more than that. It is something deeper than that.

There is also another thing that I thought. Let’s imagine for a moment that the zygote is not a human being. The fact that you are a human cell or you contain human cells and materials or the genetic material associated with human traits, means that there is something human in you. Something human about you. Saying that you can kill someone because they are not human themselves is a way to DOWNPLAY the value of humans instead of increase it. This is because, the very fact that an item has something human about it gives it some value, even if it has no value by itself! Even if it wasn’t a human, it would still be wrong to harm it, but less serious than harming a human.

Finally, there is one last thing that I thought about abortions. When you are aborting an embryo, you are deciding whether you should let a human being be born and exist or not. Honestly, guys when we do that, we are being prideful and arrogant. How do we even know who should live and who shouldn’t? Imagine aborting someone who would have been a big saint or would have made a big contribution to humanity. Also, even if we knew who should live and who shouldn’t, why and how do we have the authority and the right ourselves to stop a human life from its upcoming existence? God is the only one who has the right to give and take life. We don’t have the right to do that.

All in all, abortion actually equals to murder and shouldn’t be done. The belief that you have the right to abort an embryo is also likely rooted in pride.

References

Vasiliadis, N. (1999). When does the human embryo get a soul? The moment "zero" of human existence. 7th ed. Adelfotis Theologon "O Sotir", Athens, p.11-28.