Voices: Is a fetus a human being?

In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and with growing debates over IVF, the question of whether and when a fetus is a human being is getting ever more urgent.

I will try to give a simple theological answer to that question.

Three clarifications

First, some clarification.

I won’t tell you what to do about abortion. That’s up to you. I won’t make any political point about abortion. I leave that to political pundits.

Second, I don’t expect a non-Christian reader to believe what I’ll write here. I’ll take for granted what God has revealed in Christ is true. My ideal reader is the Christian who sincerely believes Jesus is the Savior but doesn’t know what to think about abortion, someone who even may call herself pro-choice because she thinks things are too complicated for a clear answer.

Third, I won’t address the process of abortion or IVF. I don’t think the debates ultimately are about abortion, anyway—whether there are good ways of doing abortions or times an abortion is good or not. Instead, they depend on something a bit deeper: what’s true or not true.

Whether you think abortion is right or wrong most likely depends on whether you think it’s true the fetus in the womb is a human life or not, and if so, when.

The God-man

Now, for the answer.

God has shown us what a human being is. And he didn’t just give us a definition of what counts as human. God doesn’t work in abstract definitions, at least not here. We can figure out what’s human because God himself became a human—a very specific person, Jesus of Nazareth.

As I was taught in Baptist Sunday school, Jesus is 100-percent God and 100-percent man. If you want to know what God is, you can find it, 100 percent, in Jesus. If you want to know what a human is, you find it, 100 percent, in Jesus.

Jesus didn’t become human just for kicks. As John 3:16 tells us, God sent his Son to become human to save the world. And as Gregory Nazianzen figured out, “Whatever he has not assumed he has not healed, but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved.”

If God didn’t take something into a part of himself, it wasn’t healed; it stayed in sin. But thank God, the Son, 100-percent God, became 100-percent human. And 100 percent of what it is to be human has been saved, because, as Gregory said, it was “united to his Godhead.” That’s wonderful news—the gospel.

The fetus

Now, is a fetus a human being? How does Jesus’ being human answer that question?

Jesus could’ve come down from the clouds at the ripe age of 32, ready for his death on the cross. God is powerful enough to have done that. But he didn’t. Why?

Well, there’s only one simple answer. God wanted to save every human being and every necessary part of being human, and to do so, he had to become totally human.

Part of that must have involved being “conceived by the Holy Spirit” and “born of the virgin Mary,” as the Bible (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:31) and a famous creed say.

The Scriptures, creeds and confessions don’t tell us Jesus, at some point, got around to being human at about 11 weeks in the womb. Or that he became human once he got self-consciousness at about age 4. Instead, Jesus was conceived, and he was born.

Now, if Jesus is 100-percent human, then part of that 100 percent is where Jesus began his human life: conceived in the virgin Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Apparently, being a fetus in the womb, right from conception on, is necessary enough to what it is to be human that Jesus became one to redeem us. Being a fetus in the womb, from conception on, counts as what’s human, because Jesus was a fetus in the womb.

My answer to the question

So, the theological answer to this pressing question: Since Jesus was a fetus since conception in his mother’s womb, and Jesus is fully human, a fetus from the time of conception is a human being.

That must mean one thing: Abortion is the killing of a human being. It doesn’t matter when it happens—6 weeks, 12 weeks, 34 weeks. From the time of conception on, an abortion is the killing of a human being. And just as much, IVF, if at any point it destroys a conceived embryo, is the killing of a human being.

This answer sounds much too certain in a time full of so many uncertainties. But it’s just what’s true if you accept the most basic point of the gospel. For affirming Jesus is 100-percent God and 100-percent human, and he became so to redeem us all from our sins so we may be fully human—all that makes up the simple definition of what it is to be a Christian.

If you believe Jesus is your Savior, then you must believe a fetus is a human being. And if you must believe a fetus is a human being, then you must believe abortion is the killing of a human life.

Casey Spinks is a member of First Baptist Church in Waco. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.