COLLEEN TINKER
This week I have been watching the polarized responses to last Friday’s Supreme Court decision to overturn the nearly-50-year-old ruling commonly known as Roe v. Wade. On the one hand people are crying out that this overturn has made abortion illegal in the United States (not true: it simply removes constitutional protection for abortions because such protection was never guaranteed in the constitution. Rather, the legality of abortion was sent back to the individual states for legislation for or against it).
On the other hand people are praising God for this ruling—a ruling which many people felt they would never live to see.
As I have watched the nation react to this decision, I have been remembering my own unquestioning approval of the concept of abortion when I was an Adventist.
As I have watched the nation react to this decision, I have been remembering my own unquestioning approval of the concept of abortion when I was an Adventist. In fact, I saw an online article published by the staff of the Seattle, Washington, National Public Radio station KUOW which reminded me of my own viewpoint as an Adventist.
One of KUOW’s reporters, Kate Walters, had requested responses from Seattle clergy regarding the SCOTUS decision. Interestingly, the one response the station published was from an Adventist pastor. His remarks convinced me that I needed to address this issue of pre-born life once again.
The pastor, Derek Lane of Seattle’s Maranatha Seventh-day Adventist Church, sent an short article to KUOW. I will quote from it below:
It’s sad because there is an assumption that all people of faith stand in solidarity with this decision. While my own particular religious denomination recognizes the multi-layered aspects of the debate, it does lean towards a more conservative stance and emphasizes the sanctity of life.
But upon closer examination people of faith within my faith tradition as well as many others who represent a “silent majority” have long recognized another valuable and equally important aspect of faith, and that is freedom…
As a faith-based leader and community activist I lean towards freedom because that is what I see my sacred text and values promote above all else.
It’s a sad day because the same court that restricts freedom and promotes life by denying women the right to choose also expands that same freedom to make it easier to take a life by granting permission to carry a concealed gun outside of the home.
It’s a sad day because abortion providers will now have to close their doors to the poor and BIPOC communities who already experience limited healthcare options because of economic injustice in our healthcare system.
It’s a sad day because we have finally exposed the hypocrisy of a system and society that places more value on life before the womb than after.
As Derek Lane alluded, the Seventh-day Adventist organization does publish a conservative-leaning statement about abortion on its official website. Significantly, this statement was amended in October, 2019, and its wording is even harder to read as a pro-choice statement than the previous statement was. What is impossible to understand in this statement, however, is that since 1971 the Adventist organization has supported two different statements on abortion: one for the public, and one for internal use by Adventist physicians and health care institutions. That internal document has allowed abortions to be done inside Adventist hospitals and clinics for decades.
The story of the development of these two documents has been detailed in a Proclamation! article published in the Summer, 2014, issue of the magazine: “Abortion In Adventism: Why Seventh-day Adventism Promotes Choice”.
If you haven’t yet read this linked article, I urge you to do so.
In spite of the new, improved public statement on abortion, the Seventh-day Adventist health systems do, nevertheless, provide abortions—at least they are allowed to do so. In the first week of June, 2022, I received an email from a friend. In it she said she recently encountered a new colleague who had worked with an Adventist labor and delivery unit. My friend asked this colleague if that Adventist provider performed abortions.
“Oh, yes,” was the response. “They called them D & E—Dilation and Evacuation.”
Adventist health providers have changed the way abortions are coded and managed over the years.
I understand that this account is anecdotal. Nevertheless, as the linked article above explains, Adventist health providers have changed the way abortions are coded and managed over the years. They have moved from being in-patient procedures to out-patient procedures, and by changing the names of the procedures, they have been able to “hide” them in the hospital statistics so that, if anyone looks, they will have a harder time finding them.
According to this email I received not yet a month ago, abortions are still being done in Adventist hospitals and by Adventist providers.
My point in introducing this email quote is to say that the Adventist pastor quoted above by KUOW is not an anomaly within Adventism. His personal view that abortion is an issue of “freedom” and not an issue of murder is the common view within Adventism. Even those Adventists who personally oppose abortion (and there are many who do oppose it) usually favor the position of “freedom” rather than of “legislation” of personal choice.
Why Do Adventists Condone Abortion?
And now we reach the dark secret in the foundation of Adventism that shapes their worldview and hence their understanding of abortion: Adventism teaches that humans are purely physical. They have no immaterial part of themselves separate from their bodies. Instead, they believe that the human “soul” is the living, breathing person, not a part of the person separate from the physical body. They believe their literal breath in their respiratory system is the “spirit” that enlivens their physical bodies, and when the person breathes, a “soul” comes into existence.
In fact, this understanding is stated in chapter 7 of their book Seventh-day Adventists Believe—the chapter explaining their Fundamental Belief on the Nature of Humanity:
In Genesis 2:7 it denotes humans as living beings after the breath of life enters into a physical body formed from the elements of the earth, “Similarly, a new soul comes into existence whenever a child is born, each ‘soul’ being a new unit of life uniquely different and separate from other similar units” (Seventh-day Adventists Believe, 2018 edition, p. 94, internal quote from SDA Bible Commentary, rev. ed., [1979], p. 1061).
Here we find the “secret sauce” that colors all Adventist belief: man is merely a body that breathes. If, as the official statement above declares, a living soul does not come into existence until a body breathes, then abortion is just a technical decision. Adventists can ponder endlessly the questions of “viability” and “identity” and “life”, but at the bottom line, Adventism teaches that a person does not have life unless he or she breathes.
A baby in utero has not yet breathed. Oh, its potential and odds for survival increase as the fetus grows, but until it is born and breathes, it is not a soul.
A baby in utero has not yet breathed. Oh, its potential and odds for survival increase as the fetus grows, but until it is born and breathes, it is not a soul (and note that Adventists say that humans ARE souls, not that they HAVE souls). Prior to being a soul, it is just a bundle of potential and not a full life. Thus, abortion cannot be murder.
There are many reasons why Adventism protects and provides abortion—not the least of which is the money to be made. In addition, arguments of quality of life for the mother as well as for the child drive this industry. The ever-present belief in human “free will” is never far from their minds—but that “free will” cannot apply to an unborn baby because it is not yet alive, and it is not able to make its own decisions.
What Is a Life?
Without the understanding that humans HAVE souls instead of ARE souls, Adventists have no framework for understanding that the human spirit is a literal, immaterial reality. When God forms a baby in its mother’s womb and determines all its days before one of them comes to be (Psalm 139), He gives that baby its true identity: its immaterial spirit which is housed in its physical body.
A person’s spirit is not the air in its lungs; it is the non-physical part of him or her which can know God and worship Him. In fact, Jesus revealed this fact to the Samaritan woman at the well when He said,
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:21–24).
Furthermore, Paul let us know unequivocally that “we” live in mortal tents that will be torn down. When we are at home in these tents, we are away from the Lord, but we desire to be away from these tents and at home with the Lord. Read his own words:
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him (2 Corinthians 5:1–9).
Notice all the things Paul said that identify “us” as immaterial realities that live in mortal bodies. First, he contrasts our earthly, mortal tents with our heavenly dwellings not made by hands. Second, he says that we long for those heavenly, eternal dwellings because without our earthly bodies, we would be naked. We cannot be naked if we do not exist!
Third, Paul states that this promise of an indestructible heavenly dwelling is what God has prepared us to receive, and He has given us His Spirit as the guarantee that we will receive a new dwelling.
Fourth, Paul contrasts our condition on this earth with our future with the Lord. He states that as long as we are at home in our bodies, we are away from the Lord—and we long to be with the Lord! Fifth, he states absolutely that when we are away from this body, we are at home with the Lord.
Finally, Paul makes a startling statement: whether we are at home in our mortal, destructible tents or away from them—whether we are away from our earthly tent or at home with the Lord—“we make it our aim to please Him.”
A non-existent, “soul-sleeping” person cannot please God if he is away from his body! In other words, whether we are on this earth living and breathing in our bodies or AWAY from our bodies and AT HOME with the Lord, we make it our aim to please Him.
WE exist, no matter whether we are in our bodies or away, at home in the mortal house or away from it and at home with the Lord. Whether in life or death, we actively choose (as His born-again believers) to PLEASE Him!
We exist!
About the Babies
Since we know from Scripture that the essential “we” that is our identity is housed in mortal flesh on this earth or in Christ during death until we are reunited with our resurrection bodies, since we know that we do not cease to exist or to have the cognitive ability to CHOOSE to please the Lord whether in the body or out of it, then we also know that the unborn babies have immaterial spirits that are their identities.
This fact is why God could say to Jeremiah, “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” (Jer. 1:5). A scientist doesn’t “know” his laboratory creation. He may understand it and be able to replicate it, but “knowing”—an intimate, personal word— is never the word we use for a person who understands his intellectual property.
Unborn babies are alive. They are fully human with identities—not just potential identities—and even in the womb they can worship God. Luke 1 tells us that the Holy Spirit filled the unborn John, and when Mary, pregnant with his Savior Jesus, walked into Elizabeth’s house, the unborn baby leaped in his mother’s womb, recognizing the presence of his own unborn Savior.
Mere physical, not-yet-alive potential cannot know and respond to the presence of God. Only a person with a unique spirit, an identity given by God, can worship.
Mere physical, not-yet-alive potential cannot know and respond to the presence of God. Only a person with a unique spirit, an identity given by God, can worship.
God does not make laboratory life. He makes full humans when He brings a baby into existence. When He creates the physical parts of each child, He also gives that child its immaterial—but real—identity. When that baby is born, a soul does not “come into existence”. Rather, the physical act of breathing simply continues the physical development of the full person whom God created the moment of conception. (Importantly, babies in the womb are fully oxygenated through their umbilical cords. Breathing is not The Source of oxygen. The Adventist belief that an unborn baby who has not breathed cannot be fully alive is an illogical assumption. Comparing an unborn child who is living on oxygen from its mother is not in any sense comparable to a person who has died and ceased to breathe. Breathing, in other words, does not define the presence of life or a living soul.)
Aborting babies is taking human life.
When I left Adventism and realized that humans actually have spirits that are not merely breath, that we have immaterial identities that separate from our bodies at death and are at home with Jesus—when I finally understood that unborn babies have spirits and are fully human, alive in every sense but with still developing physical functions—I wept.
I repented and asked God to forgive me for my earlier belief that abortion was justifiable. I had not understood that abortion killed full human beings.
Our Savior came to us as a baby formed in His mother’s womb, born like any other baby, and He first breathed when he entered the world outside the womb. But Jesus’ birth was not the beginning of His life. His spiritual life was from God, and as He developed inside Mary’s womb, His Spirit was never separated from His Father. He was spiritually alive from conception, and when He was born, He merely continued his preparation for the world and breathed.
Jesus’ breath was not His life—no, our Lord Jesus was all of Himself from the moment He was conceived. Our Savior lived as an unborn human baby, yet He held all creation together. (Col 1: 17). No non-living “potential” could do that! He was fully God as well as fully human, and nothing of His identity was missing.
The unborn are fully alive, not just almost-alive. God’s command that we not murder applies to unborn babies as well as to all humans.
The miracle of hearing the gospel of Jesus’ blood shed for our sins and of believing and trusting Him for forgiveness and life changes us. When we are born again, we see reality from a God-centered perspective. We see that we were created to know and worship Him, and we understand that we have been known by Him before we were born.
Praise God that every baby killed before it breathed is known by our Creator. Praise God that He knows how to care for those babies, and we rejoice that even the sin of abortion is forgivable.
The Baby of Bethlehem was born to atone for our sin—even if that sin included killing an unborn child. In Jesus we are forgiven and reconciled to God, and through His blood we can have the hope of sharing eternity with the babies who even now are in His care. †
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Good article! I hate the word “fetus”, I don’t think we should use that word with people because it takes away from our humanity. It is another word used to promote evil by those who control the narratives. Today many words have been changed to take away from the truth. I did not know the Adventists promote abortion. There are “evangelicals” who do the same. I want to mention R.B. Thieme, Jr for instance who today is still pushed as a Bible scholar/teacher see here because I want you to see it: https://deanbible.org/latest-classes/message/a-tribute-to-pastor-r-b-thieme-jr They are Chafer Theological Seminary teachers and I wonder how many of those teachers agree with him? R.B. Theime taught it is okay to have an abortion because the baby did not have the spirit until it is born. See here: https://thiemite.blogspot.com/2007/08/r-b-thieme-quotes-regarding-roe-v-wade.html I personally can testify to this myself hearing Theime say this. I believe we must expose all false teaching. A baby is a baby the moment the egg is fertilized. Anytime a baby dies in the womb via abortion the baby is murdered, the person who performs it, and the persons who promote it, and have it done are murderers. Any person can repent (change their mind) of this evil and seek Jesus as Savior. But facts are facts. “If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
and if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,.” Exodus 21:22-23. We are not under the law but this scripture says the BABY IS ALIVE! Blessings! Thank you, Coleen!