Contemplating Culture : The Beginning of Life

Life is such a precious thing but if you were to listen to the news or to look at humanity at large you wouldn’t get that impression. With the amount of violence and abuse  Instead of seeing all humanity as precious and valuable, people are given value and status based on their race, gender, achievements, connections, abilities, looks, characteristics even their religion or lack thereof and the list goes on and on.
 
As such the embryonic human inside the womb, at the very beginning of his or her development as a single, unique and self directed human is as dignified as the fully grown adult human. Whether we are at the beginning of our journey or towards the end, whether we are a 1 cell human or a 37 trillion cell human, we are all dignified because we are human. Unique and precious from every other human. Fearfully and wonderfully made. And it is precisely because we are created by God and in the image of God that we have intrinsic value.
 
This is why the practice and endorsement of abortions is unjustifiable. It is the ending of the beginning of human life. To be clear, the single cell embryo, is not a potential human but an actual human in himself or herself. Like every actual adult human can have their developmental history traced back to when they were teenagers, toddlers, and babies, if you keep going back you get to the very beginning of each of our development when we were but tiny embryonic humans. And though you may not see the resemblance between your singular cell embryonic form and the man/woman in the mirror, from the moment of conception, you have always and only ever been you – an actual human. Even your gender was clear at conception. You either had the XX chromosome or you had the XY chromosome. The point is, you didn’t go from being a potential human to being an actual human. You were either a human being or you did not yet exist.
 
 All human life is precious. Your physical features do not make you any more or any less valuable. Nor do your spiritual features make you any more or any less valuable. Committing the sin of abortion does not make you any less precious. It doesn’t mean it is not serious, but it means to say that those who have sinned even in abortion are still people made in the image of God. As we should not dehumanise people based on their looks, we should not dehumanise people based on their sin. Indeed, we should never dehumanise anyone, for we are then robbing God of his glory and making a mockery of his work in creating people in his own likeness.  
 
In fact we ought to have more compassion on those who have had abortions. No one ever plans to have an abortion as if it is something to accomplish and experience. You will never see “have an abortion” on anyone’s bucket list. The irony with the pro-choice movement is that, the reason why people have had abortions is because they have had no other choice. They had no choice but to abort the baby. They had no support, they had no help, they didn’t see a future for themselves, they didn’t see a future for the baby, they didn’t think they could do it.
 
So, lets be pro-active in giving people the choice to life and eternity.    

Boon Quah