Thursday, September 25, 2014

Countering Convenient Constructs of Personhood


Dr. James T. McMahon, the now deceased late term abortionist, epitomized cognitive dissonance regarding personhood.  While  Dr. James McMahon abstractly opined about the incarnation of the soul comes when the fetus is accepted by the mother, the partial term abortionist offered a more revealing opinion when commenting for the American Medical News.

“If I see a case…after twenty weeks, where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over it because the potential is so imminently there…On the other hand, I have another position, which I think is superior in the hierarchy of questions, and that is “who owns this child?” It’s got to be the mother.”

No wonder why so called Pro-Choice partisans bristle at the analogy between abortion and slavery.  But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, unless a person is protected by society in utero, the fetus' fate is dictated by "who owns" the child.

But the Bible clarifies when personhood occurs. Psalm 139 13-16 instructs:



For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
 My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.






That certainly does not sound like personhood is optional depending on the disposition of the parent. Or if one considers it from a religious perspective, your Heavenly Father claims you from the moment of conception. 


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