In a recent radio interview, a politician invoked the Bible to support his horrific beliefs about abortion. Mayor Pete Buttigieg said, pro-life people “hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath.” https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pete-buttigieg-defends-abortion-suggests-bible-says-life-begins-with-breath/
That Mayor Buttigieg is rabidly pro-abortion is not much of an eye opener; that he twists the Bible to buttress that position certainly is. So, since a politician wants to “talk Bible,” it only makes sense that a preacher should be willing to join that conversation.
And I will. I will also add in the science that Mayor Pete either overlooks or twists as badly as he does Scripture.
To begin with, Mayor Pete alludes back to Genesis 2. This, other than a vision of a valley of dry bones, is the only one of the 42 references to breath in the Bible that even remotely indicates what Mayor Pete is driving at:
Genesis 2:7 … And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
This is the account of Adam being made alive by God breathing breath into him. Notice first of all that not one other human being in all of history has come into being the way that Adam and Eve did. They are the only two humans ever who did not grow in the womb and come into the world through a birthing canal. To use their experience to try and prove that a baby is not alive until it inhales air is to take the utterly unique and never again repeated experience of Adam and Eve and try to apply it to the lives of the all of the other tens of billions of humans who came into this world in the “normal” way rather than in that “never to be repeated way.” That is ludicrous.
It also ignores the fact that babies in the womb do have “the breath of life” in them, they just get it in a different way.
Medical News Today says, “After 5-6 weeks of pregnancy, the umbilical cord develops to deliver oxygen directly to the developing fetus’s body. The umbilical cord connects to the placenta, which is connected to the uterus. Both structures house many blood vessels, and continue to grow and develop throughout pregnancy.
Together, the umbilical cord and placenta deliver nutrients from the mother to the baby. They also provide the baby with the oxygen-rich blood necessary for growth. This means that the mother breathes in for the baby, and the oxygen in her blood is then transferred to the baby’s blood. The mother also breathes out for the baby, as carbon dioxide from the baby is moved out through the placenta to the mother’s blood, then removed with exhale.” (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318993.php)
To bring the full horror of what Mayor Pete is claiming into view, the U.S. National Library of Medicine says, “At birth, the baby’s lungs are filled with fluid. They are not inflated. The baby takes the first breath within about 10 seconds after delivery. This breath sounds like a gasp, as the newborn’s central nervous system reacts to the sudden change in temperature and environment.” (https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002395.htm)
In other words, please imagine a mother holding a gun to the head of a baby she has just delivered. Now count out nine seconds with me. 1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9… and she pulls the trigger, blowing that healthy, newborn baby’s brains out. According to Mayor Pete’s twisted theology, that is not murder, because the child had not breathed yet.
Get the picture?
Nothing in Scripture supports this. In fact, babes in the womb are consistently shown to be living human beings (Genesis 25:22, Ps. 139:14-16, Jeremiah 1:5, Luke 1:41-44). Nor does science support it. Nor should anyone else support it. Have we really fallen so far as a people that such bloodthirsty, monstrous views are to become not just normalized, but somehow post-scripted by political hands into the precious word of God?
No, Mayor Pete, just no.
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, a widely traveled evangelist and the author of several books. His books are available on Amazon and at www.wordofhismouth.com. Pastor Wagner can be contacted by email at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.