The Death of "Personhood"/Abortion

“I survived Roe v Wade,” so read many of the t-shirts, worn by youth, at this year’s Right to Life March in Washington D.C.

I was startled and immensely heartened to see how the Pro-Life Movement is evolving into a movement of the young. At the same time, it broke my heart that any generation of Americans should have to suffer such sorrow for their peers, while thinking of themselves as, “survivors” of the post Roe v Wade era.

This is the issue of our time. All other issues, at their core, come down to the dignity of the individual, or, to put it another way, “personhood.”

“Personhood” is at the core of the abortion debate, but, it is also the core of Christian theology itself. It is western civilization’s view of “personhood” which has built our culture, philosophy, our pursuit of science, law, tradition, and every other value which has contributed to the most enlightened society in the history of the world.

Abortion threatens the entire edifice.

The modern mind takes the concept of “personhood” for granted. We are no longer taught in schools that it was not always so. In fact, the notion that each individual human being embodies a unique, valuable, non-repeatable personhood, worthy of protection and dignity, was a totally foreign concept in the ancient world.

In his remarkable book, “The Gifts of the Jews, How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels,” Thomas Cahill traces Jewish history, beginning from about 3200 B.C.; he uncovers the emerging spiritual consciousness among the Jewish people, (immeasurably ahead of their contemporaries,) which evolved into a revolutionary change in mindset.

As Christians, we owe to our Jewish forebears, the concept of linear time, monotheism, and the idea of “personhood.” The thought that time had a beginning, that it was not an endless meaningless wheel of life and death, with no purpose, offering man nothing more than a fixed fate, was a Jewish innovation. And, what an innovation it was!

What followed as a result of this astonishing change of paradigm is nothing short of miraculous in the history of the human species!

If “time” is linear, not simply an ever turning wheel of suffering, (like the Eastern Religions still see it,) then man can make a difference, it gives us the theological foundation for “free will,” for a concept of history, for human dignity, for purpose and meaning to existence, for moral law, for the pursuit of scientific discovery. If God is ONE, not a myriad of selfish deities mocking and manipulating the cosmos on jealous whims, and, if this ONE God, is “Being (in) Communion,” thus, perfect “Personhood,” then “love” becomes possible and, if love, than human will.

Therefore, the corner stone of western civilization is directly traceable to Jewish spiritual foresight. We are theologically, their spiritual descendents.

Abortion strikes a death knell to “personhood,” hence, at the foundation of western civilization.

How so? Professor Robert J. Spitzer, President of Gonzaga University, makes a scholarly, yet understandable, presentation of how “personhood” is the ultimate victim within every beating heart so ruthlessly snuffed out in abortion. The 7-part series can be downloaded here,

Briefly, he argues the following in his series, “Healing the Culture:”

1) A moral abyss awaits those who do not define “personhood,” (with all the constituent protections that embodies,) as human existence itself, ie., conception.
2) The definition of humanness, biologically testable, is a “living, metabolizing entity with a full human genetic code, all of which exists at conception.
3) When the Supreme Court destroyed the “objective criterion of personhood, it substituted, by necessity, a subjective criterion.”
4) Hence, the argument began, “when does life begin, is it at viability, respiration, “clarity, ie., when it looks like a human being?”
5) Once a subjective criterion is implemented, anything that does not fit that criterion can be destroyed. “No better definition of tyranny exists.”
6) The Roe v Wade decision, in one death blow, undercut the fundamental critical assumption of civilization, that every being of human origin has all the powers in potencia …worthy of dignity and protection, endowed with a sense for love, fairness, beauty, truth etc.

Parenthetically, I used to think, along with most secularists, including Karl Marx, that the Christian idea of a “personal God,” who actually took an interest in each person, down to the last hair on his head, was a ridiculous anthropomorphic crutch. I too spent a few of my earlier years enamored with eastern religions, which seemed, much more esoteric. Blending into some universal harmony, whether it was Nirvana or Taoism’s “Way,” was initially appealing.

However, what I failed to calculate, until my own “encounter,” was something Professor Spitzer articulates, philosophically, in a different set of lectures; (it may be his lectures on proofs of God’s existence, not sure,) namely, if God, who by definition is perfect, were incapable of “personable-ness,” then God would suffer a restriction, therefore, God is perfect Personhood, ie., “trinity,” ie., “personable-ness.

St Paul, who was a member of the Roman intellectual elitist class, probably thought the early Christians had a pathetically provincial outlook also, at least until he was literally knocked off his horse, in a most “personal encounter,” on his way to Damascus!

As Spitzer says, (I think I’m accurately quoting him,) “we need to impale our humanity on the spears of {these} outrageous fortunes.” Is this Hamlet?