Why Prolife? Bible about unborn children.
Job graphically described the way God created him before he was born (Job 10:8-12):
8 Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether.
9 Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust?
10 Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese?
11 You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.
12 You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit.
The person in the womb was not something that might become Job, but someone who was Job, simply a younger smaller version of the same man. To Isaiah God said, “This is what the LORD says: he who made you, who formed you in the womb” (Isaiah 44:2). Isaiah was not just a “potential person” but an actual person while in his mother’s womb.
Psalm 139:13-16 paints a graphic picture of the intimate involvement of God with a preborn person:
13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; 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 created David’s “inmost being”, his soul, not at birth but before birth. David says to his Creator, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Each person, regardless of his parentage or handicap, has been personally knitted together by God in the womb. All the days of his life have been planned out by God before any have taken place (Psalm 139:16).
When Rebekah was pregnant with Jacob and Esau, “The babies jostled each other within her” (Genesis 25:22):
22 The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord.
The word “babies” is the same Hebrew word used for already-born children. Hosea 12:3 says “In the womb he [Jacob] grasped his brother’s heel; as a man he struggled with God.” It was the same Jacob in the womb, younger and smaller, who was later the man who struggled with God. The Lord tells Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5):
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Luke 1:41 & 44 refer to the unborn John the Baptist, who was at the end of his second trimester (sixth month) in the womb:
41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,
44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
The word translated “baby” in these verses is the Greek word brephos. It is the same word used for the already-born baby Jesus (Luke 2:12, 16) and for the children brought to Jesus to receive his blessing (Luke 18:15-17). It’s also the same word used in Acts 7:19 for the new-born babies killed by Pharaoh. To the writers of the New Testament, like the Old Testament, whether born or unborn a baby is a baby, a person is a person. The preborn John the Baptist responded to the presence of the preborn Jesus, when Jesus (judging by the time it would take Mary to get to Elizabeth) was no more than ten days beyond his conception (Luke 1:41). Since implantation does not begin until six days and is not completed until ten, it is probable that Jesus was not even fully implanted in his mother’s womb when the preborn John responded to his presence.
Scripture says Mary “was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.” The angel told Joseph, “What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18-20). To be pregnant, even at the very earliest moments after conception, is to be with child, not simply with what might become a child.
Where did the incarnation take place? Where did God first “became flesh and dwell among us”? Even Christians could think “Bethlehem,” but that is wrong. Christ became flesh when the Holy Spirit conceived a child in Mary — that was at Nazareth, nine months before she travelled to Bethlehem.
In light of the full humanity of the preborn child, we must do nothing to take his life (Exodus 20:13):
13 You shall not murder.
Furthermore, we should do all in our power to protect his life (Proverbs 24:11):
11 Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
And Proverbs 31:8-9:
8 Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute.
9 Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.
-- Adapted from
Andy Alcorn's book "Why Prolife?"