Buttigieg Defends Abortion by Suggesting the Bible Says ‘Life Begins with Breath’

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;" (Jeremiah 1:5).

I listened to an interview of Pete Buttigieg in which he was asked about the issue of abortion. He gave all the normal ditch and divert responsive that have become the stock and trade of pro abortion activists. However, the interviewer pressed him harder eliciting a response regarding the Pro-Life's claim that all human life is sacred.

Buttigieg's response was that Christians often have many views on the same Scripture passages and that there was no universal agreement among Christian's on the meaning of passages that related to abortion. He continued to say that the primary decider on abortion should be the woman involved.

In the past he demurred to the standard pro-abortion arguments of the past. It is a woman’s body and no one should be able to tell her what to do with it. It’s a decision between her and her doctor. A fetus is nothing more than a mass of tissue and blood like a cancer tumor. In the past he never sought to identify just when human life begins.

However, in a recent interview he seemed to have discovered a religious argument for then life begins. He quotes Genesis 2:7, “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” and then he boldly declares that a baby does not become a human until it takes it’s first independent breathe outside the womb. Before that moment it is just a well organized mass of cells and blood.  Couple this with the governor of Virginia advocate for post birth infanticide and I think we need to take a loom at what Buttigieg called the “cosmic question of how life begins.” I suggest that he means how and when a new life begins.  Some have gone so far as to suggest that if we do not see the breathing of life into Adam as analogous to when life begins for a baby then we are theologically looney. I suggest that people who see them as analogous neither know the Scripture or the power of God.

I have no intention of talking about the superficial how new life begins in the sense of the union of a man and a woman becoming one flesh and how that produces a new life. Though I must confess that simple answer is at the heart of the more detailed, technical and sterile answer.

I suppose if one wanted to be sarcastic I would answer that the same Bible that he quoted also says in Leviticus 17:11, ““For the life of the flesh is in the blood.” I would suppose that could mean that the embryo becomes a living being the moment blood begins to flow within it and a human is considered alive as long as the blood continues to flow through his/her veins. A really strong case can be made for this argument including both man’s physical and spiritual life.

However, I want to deal with his own argument that life begins at the moment a baby draws its first breath.

First, making the moment life begins in a baby analogous to when Adam became a living soul is simply absurd on its surface. Such a view fails to see the glaring differences with how Adam came to be and how babies come into being. The first thing I might say to him is what Jesus said to the Sadducees in Matthew 22:29, “You err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God” as they tried to trap Jesus on the question of the resurrection (in which they did not believe) and equally difficult question.

I just said that the analogy of Adam’s becoming a living soul and the moment a baby becomes a living soul is in reality clear apples and oranges comparison. Apples and oranges both grow on trees and both are basically round in form. Adam once wasn’t living and became a living soul and the same can be said for babies but after that the analogy is inapplicable.

First they are different in how they came into being. Adam was created from the dust of the Earth and even the name God gave him means “red dirt,” i.e., clay. God literally fashioned Adam from the clay of a creek bed. In that state he was nothing more and nothing less that Michelangelo’s statue of David . . . an inanimate stature. With that assessment of Adam at this stage of his creation Buttigieg would probably agree.

God, having created Man out of the Earth, now placed his very own life within him by blowing into the nostrils of the inanimate man the breathe of life causing the statute to become a living soul “created” by God in His own image and after His own likeness. This very process makes humanity significantly distinctive from the rest of creation. No one from this point on in the history of mankind will come into being the way that Adam does . . . his coming into being is unique within creation.

Now, let us contrast the creation of Adam with the birth of a baby. Clearly Adam became a living being when God breathed life into him. Even in Buttigieg argument this is the case. Adam had no mother and he had no father and he could not breath on his own. It took an external living being, God, to place within him the breathe that gave him life.  Babies on the other hand are not created are conceived not created.

What does that mean? Isn’t creation and conception essentially the same thing? Well, no, no they are not. At no time in the process of making another human being is there an absence of living material. Adam was a miracle of God, babies, while we see them as miracles, are in reality  are the product of the natural order. God created Adam and then commanded him to “go forth and multiply.”  That means just as God created Adam after His own image and likeness man is to create posterity after his own image and likeness.

To carry this further let me suggest that Adam had to have the very breathe of God himself to become a living being made from the clay of the Earth to become a living being consisting of flesh, blood and bone. Babies on the other hand because they are conceived and not created only need the union of a egg and a sperm from a woman and a man to do the same. That egg and sperm when united bring together two sets of DNA . . . . . half of which come from the father and half from the mother.  This DNA is actually the record of the baby’s ancestry. It is this DNA that enables men and women to create a child with their likeness and in their own image making each child unique just as Adam was unique.

Keep in mind that Adam was inanimate until God gave him the breathe of life. Adam Had no Father and no mother to conceive him. Adam and Eve’s DNA was humanity’s first. Adam and Eve were created from an inanimate form to a living being. Babies however from their simplest state of egg and sperm are highly animate, especially the sperm element. At no point from conception to birth right on through until death is a human non-living.  So in abortion you are terminating a human life regardless of the stage of development.  My friend that is simply a biological fact of life.

But perhaps someone would argue that may be the case but that doesn’t mean that the baby is a “living soul.”  That is what Adam got from the breathe of God he became a lining soul and that animated him.  Let’s stipulate that in Adam’s creation that is the case. It had to be that way because Adam was created not birthed. 

One of the wonderful things about God creating man in his own image and after his own likeness and breathing into Adam the breathe of life is that it made all those present in every person born since Adam. The whole point of the description of how God created man was to point out that we, in may respects, are like God. He has shared with us something of His own creative self. In the same way that God made Adam a living soul we give our children not only their physical attributes but also their spiritual breath that makes them living soul.

This is why David would say, “Behold, I was shaped in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” He didn’t mean that she somehow sinfully conceived him. Rather that through his conception he received from his parents their sinful nature. Perhaps DNA comes into play at this point as well. At conception he came to be as a living soul that unfortunately also shared in the sin of our first parents, Adam & Eve.  I suspect what is said about God and marriage could also be said about conception and birth, namely, “what God hath joined together let no man cut asunder.”

So, find another excuse if you can to perpetuate the lie of abortion. Me I am going to sand with old King David and say, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Oh, and do take not that when the breathe of God leaves our body in any other way but to create another human we are said to be dead and that is evidence by the total absence of power in the physical body.  The great thing is that the only eternal part of us is “the breath of God” which made us a distinctive living soul does not cease to exists. The Apostle Paul assures us that we can be “fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8).