By Charles L. Rulon
Emeritus, Life & Health Sciences
Long Beach City College ([email protected])

Fetal idolatry and ensoulment

Elevating tiny, mindless, senseless human em­br­yos and fetuses to a rever­ed exalted status is fetal idolatry according to Rev. John Swomley, Emeritus Professor of Social Ethics, St. Paul School of Theology.[1] Swomley writes that “Fetal idolatry is the major battleground issue for both the patriarchal and clerical control of women.” Fetal idolatry is strengthened by and dependant on the religious belief that what sets us apart from the animals and gives our lives ultimate meaning is the existence of a divine soul—a soul that appears with God’s miracle of fertilization.

Yet, given the importance of the soul in Christianity, the Bible is surprisingly vague regarding what a soul is, who has one, and when it enters the body. As a re­sult, over the ages Christ­ian the­o­lo­gians have variously assert­­ed that the soul en­tered at conception, at the time of “quickening” (the 15-16th week), at birth and a short time after birth.

Churches over the centur­ies have also repeatedly changed their posi­tions regarding the time of ensoulment, as have popes.[2] In addition, for centuries there have been arguments over whether females, non-white races, and members of other religions had souls. Recently there have been debates over whether “test-tube” babies had souls, or sentient beings from other planets. Theologians have even argued over what happens to a soul if a blastula divides to become identical twins. Thus, rationality dictates that there’s just no way to tell for sure which religion (if any) to listen to regarding the time of ensoulment.

Many liberal Christian groups have endorsed a woman’s right to choose based on a belief that the soul can enter the fe­tus only after the brain and body have be­come sufficient­ly developed to receive a soul. For still others, it’s when breathing becomes potentially possible.[3] Most conservative Christians, on the other hand, disagree. They claim that human life is sacred and to be protected from the moment of conception (which most believe is the time of ensoulment).

Fetal idolatry and the paranormal/supernatural

The possibility of divine souls in embryos would not seem so scientifically implausible if para­normal and/or super­natural phe­­nom­ena (e.g., mind over mat­ter, psy­­chic read­ings, seeing into the fu­ture, past-life regres­­sions, communi­cating with the deceased, near-death experiences, and weep­ing religious statues) were actually known to exist. Yet, after 100 years of negative research findings regarding the existence of paranormal and supernatural phenomena—after all the experi­mental vari­a­bles have been tightly con­trol­led to elimi­nate chance, errors, bias, careless­ness and fraud—not a sin­gle person has yet been found to pos­sess para­normal pow­ers; not a single so-called supernatural event has ever been scientifically validated. All such claims have turned out to be unverifiable, scien­tifi­cally ex­plain­­able, wish­ful think­ing, illusions, hallu­cina­tions, or fraudulent.[4]

Fetal idolatry and scientific advances

Many religious folk consider pregnancies to be miracles from God and the chemical reactions of life imbued with “super­natural en­er­gies” and “vital forces”. Yet, after several hundred years of extremely fruitful research into the physics, chemistry and bio­l­ogy of life, including our four billion-year evolutionary history, it’s now widely accepted by scientists world­wide that all processes in liv­ing orga­nisms (from fertiliza­tion to death) strict­ly obey the laws of nature. No super­­natu­ral inputs have ever been found (or even appear necessary) for fertilization to occur, for embryos to develop, or for life to function. This includes the human mind which appears to be totally a function of the neuro-anatomy and physiology of our evolved brain. While modern neuroscience cannot conclusively rule out the possibility that disembodied consciousness could exist, there now is a staggering amount of evi­dence to the contrary.[5]

Today, the chemical reactions of life are routinely carried out in laboratories around the world. In fact, it’s now possible to insert the genetic material from a body cell (like a cheek cell) into an unfertilized egg and have it grow into an embryo. It is now possible to take living human cells (like the ones shed every time we scrape our knee) and coax them into developing into human embryos.

With advances in scientific knowledge, the need for supernatural forces to explain life and all its processes disappeared as a belief system for the large majority of scientists over 50 years ago. Today, the large majority of scientists are quite skeptical that an immortal soul (or anything else of a paranormal or super­natural nature) exists. However, fetal idolaters and other anti-choice supporters tend to either remain willfully ignorant or to reject all scientific knowledge that conflicts with their religious dogmas and beliefs.

Fetal development and evo­lution

The way a particular structure develops in an organism has proved successful in providing a window into how that structure evolved. The use of development to clarify evolutionary questions has spawned a new field: evolutionary develop­mental biology.

The hu­man embryo first re­sembles a gen­er­al­ized verte­brate em­bryo with a number of fish embryo characteristics, then an amphib­ian-rep­tilian-like em­­­bryo, then a gener­alized mammal embryo, and finally a pri­mate embryo. A six-week hu­man em­bryo has a tail which occupies about one-fourth of its entire length. This tail does not continue to grow but remains a vestige along with a few tail mus­cles.

The early human embryo pos­sesses a kidney very simi­lar to that of a jaw­less fish. This kidney is com­pletely replaced later by an amphib­ian-like kid­ney which, itself, later be­comes part of our repro­ductive system as the mammalian kid­ney makes its appearance.

The human embryo has a series of six gill clefts in its neck, fully equip­­ped with cart­i­lage gill bars and gill arter­ies as in a fish embryo. But the gills never develop as they do in fish em­bryos. In­stead, the first two bars end up form­ing the ba­sis of the human em­bryo’s future jaws, repeating the evo­lu­tionary process that led from the jaw­less fish to the bony fish with jaws some 450 mil­lion years ago. The re­main­­ing gill bars become our larynx and sup­ports for our tongue muscles. And the “gill” arteries in the hu­man embryo either de­velop new connections or disap­pear altogether.

Male mammals have nipples. Female mammals evolved nipples for nur­s­ing. But males and females of each species are mere­ly vari­a­tions of the same embryo­logical plan for that spe­cies. Thus, embry­onic path­­ways for nipple devel­op­ment exist in all mam­mal fe­tuses, but later become more de­velop­ed and func­tional in females. Simply put, males have nip­ples be­cause they had strong survival value in fe­males and so were selected for. For the same reason, human male embryos have ducts for making uterine tubes and a uterus. And human female em­bryos have ducts for making two vas defer­ens, the sperm carrying tubes in males.

In conclusion

The beliefs that a divinely planned human being with a soul exists at conception and that this event has special moral and religious significance are unprovable theological beliefs, not scientific facts. Yet, legis­lators continue to pass laws based on medieval theo­logies and pseudoscience that demean and endanger women and, in effect, treat them as obligatory breeding machines.

Although birth control has come a long way, contra­cep­tion is still not perfect. There are also major religious, patriarchal, financial, educational and social obstacles to birth control. In addition, humans are a very sexual species that can be quite fallible and careless. We are into denial, sexual guilt and embarrass­ment. There’s also alcohol and other drugs which lubricate sexual behavior, while reducing responsibility. And never forget the hundreds of millions of young, sexually aggressive, deter­­mined, macho males.

As a result, we live on a planet literally awash with 80 million unplanned and mostly unwanted mindless, senseless developing human embryos every year, year after year! That’s an entire United States full of unplanned embryos every four years! And every year over 40 million women choose to, or are driven to abort, legal or not.

Yet, for those who are driven by power and money, medieval religious beliefs, male dominance, moral zealotry and fetal idolatry none of this matters. The enemy must be defeated. “We are called by God to save all His unborn children from being slaughtered by the baby killers.”

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[1] http://www.population-security.org/swom-98-06.htm

[2] Maguire, 1989, Abortion Rights and Fetal Personhood

[3] The Bible seems clear to many that a person does not begin at conception, but with breathing. In Genesis 2:7, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being” (in some translations, “a living soul.”) The Hebrew word for a human being or living soul is nephesh, the word for “breath”. “Nephesh” occurs over 700 times in the Bible as the identify­ing factor in human life. Thus, if the fetus is not breath­ing (or if its lungs have not yet developed, (before the 24th week) it is not yet a person in God’s eyes.

[4]Druckman,D., & Swets, J. (eds). Enhanc­ing Human Performance: Issues, Theories and Techniques (Nation­al Acad­­emy Press). The National Acad­emy of Sciences concluded em­phatic­ally that 130 years of research had produced no scien­tific justi­fication for the exist­ence of any paranormal phenomena. Also, in 1997 the James Randi Educational Foun­dation reported that anyone who could demon­strate any para­nor­mal, or psy­chic abil­ity under tightly controlled scien­tific conditions would be paid $1,000,000. Many have tried and so far no one’s col­lected a dime! See . Also see and

[5]Zeman, A., 2003, Consciousness: A User’s Guide (Yale University Press). Zeman is a neurologist in Edinburgh;

Fischbach, G., 1992, “Mind and Brain,” Scientific Ameri­can, September. Dr. Fischbach is a professor of neuro­biology and chairman of the department of neuro­biology at Harvard Medical School.;

B. Hinrichs, “Brain Research and Folk Psy­cho­logy,” The Humanist, March/April 1997;

By Charles L. Rulon
Emeritus, Life & Health Sciences
Long Beach City College ([email protected])

No fetal pain until 28th week

By 8 weeks a fetus in utero will react to needle stimu­lation. But as with paraplegics, this is a reflex media­ted by the spinal cord, not the brain. It’s not a conscious reaction and no pain can be experienced. Although fetuses have started to form pain receptors by 8 weeks, the thalamus (that part of the brain which routes information to other areas) doesn’t start to form until after the 20th week. Without the thalamus, no information can reach the cortex for processing. That includes the nerves from the skin and other pain-sensitive areas. Thus, no aware­ness of pain is possible.

Finally by the 28th week the necessary nerve pathways have formed so that the fetus might begin to experience pain. Even then, the myelin sheath (the insulating cover on nerves that is required for efficient conduction of pain signals) does not begin to form around neurons in the spinal chord until about the 24th week and is not found in most of the cerebral cortex until after birth.[1]

On the other hand, the global suf­­fer­ing to women and girls with unwanted pregnancies due to medieval religious dogmas, entrenched patri­archal laws and customs, the desire to punish “loose” women, plus pro­found ignorance and grind­­ing pov­erty is simply staggering.[2]

Pregnancy can be extremely dangerous

Preg­nancy constitutes a major biological invasion with potentially dangerous conse­quences. Pregnant women exper­ience 7-9 months of sym­p­toms of varying sev­erity, often includ­ing nausea, vomiting, bloating, insom­nia, varicose veins, hemorr­hoids, back pain and indigestion. Their uteruses increase to over 500 times regular size. One out of four needs serious medical attention. Finally, preg­nan­cies cul­mi­nate in a physiologi­cal crisis that can be excru­ci­atingly pain­ful and occasionally fatal.

Pregnancy is particularly dangerous for the world’s poor. Every year throughout Africa, Asia and Central and South America 600,000 women and girls die worldwide every year from pregnancy and childbirth (140,000 bleed to death, 100,000 die from infection, 40,000 die from the agony of prolonged labor, 75,000 women die each year trying to end their pregnancies.) Most of these women are in their teens and early twenties. They have been coerced by their societies into bearing children at a young age and far too frequently.[3]

Restrictive abortion laws have not stopped the large majority of abortions any­where on Earth according to a 2007 study from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization. Every year on our planet some 20 million women with unwanted pregnancies are desperate enough to attempt a self-induced abortion or to seek out a danger­ous illegal one. The U.N. estimates that 50,000 women and girls try to self-induce each day. Millions end up in hospitals hemorrhaging and badly infected. Over 70,000 die each year. UNICEF’s statistics show that for every woman who dies, 30 survive with gruesome injuries and disabilities. Many will face life-long, disabling pain. The seriously injured and dead often leave behind young, unattended children whose chances for survival are bleak.

Add to that the exhausting burden of repeated pregnancies and births, and you have a global picture of suffering on the part of women that demands a global response. Of the millions of women each year who are coerced into carrying unwanted pregnancies to term, hun­dreds of thou­sands will die from pregnancy-related com­pli­cations.

These deaths and tragic injuries are almost entirely preventable. Yet, they go on year after year while powerful religious men and their male political allies (lackeys) continue to publicly revere the sanctity of mind­less, senseless embryos and fetuses, buttressed by pseudo-science and pseudo-history, and attempt to outlaw abortions. In the meanwhile, U.S. support for family planning information and services has been slashed and a concerted effort to block emergency contraception and abortion has intensified.[4]

Fetal idolaters and dishonest propaganda

When informed about all the above pain and suffering, the fetal idolaters and other anti-choice supporters respond that “murdering the innocent unborn” is a barbaric solution to unwanted pregnancies and continue to obsess over the imagined “excruciating pain” experienced by fetuses being aborted.

“It is unbearable to contemplate the ex­cruci­ating pain the unborn must feel as their lives are torn asunder. It is a wrenching nightmare to see in the mind’s eye the delicate little hand of an unborn infant reaching out play­fully to touch the very curette that is poised to rip him apart.”

— U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch

The Silent Scream

In order to more dramatically create the illu­sion that a tiny mindless senseless fetus is actually a conscious sentient baby aware of in­tense pain, the anti-choice/ pro-forced-pregnancy-continuation activists pro­duc­ed a 28-minute propa­ganda film enti­tled The Silent Scream. This film was viewed by former Presi­dents Rea­gan and Bush Sr. and by the entire U.S. Con­gress, each of whom re­portedly received a personal copy. It has now been seen by over fifty million Americans in churches and in schools throughout the country and can quickly be found on the web.

The Silent Scream depicts a 2nd trimester abor­tion through the use of ultrasound visualization. Although all the audi­­ence re­ally sees are black-and-white moving blobs, it’s the narra­tor’s voice-over that’s so chilling as he describes to the audience what they most feared, the tearing to shreds of a scream­ing defenseless tiny human being. Dishonest incendiary propaganda at its best.

“Who Killed Junior”

Another inflammatory propaganda publication to appear (and easily found on the web) was a 24-page car­toon book entitled “Who Killed Junior?” The car­toons trace the growth of a fertilized egg in the womb. By the 6th week “Junior” is depicted as a fully formed baby, standing up and smiling. By the 11th week he is running in place and has a decent command of English. By 12 weeks Junior has his hand cupped to his ear, listening in alarm. The caption says, “His mother and her doc­tor are discussing how to kill him.” Then follows several cartoon pan­els in which the basic methods of abortion are illustrated. In one, Junior screams as he is being sucked out of the womb. In another, he screams as a knife slices him to pieces. A later panel shows a fully formed baby with a knife through him and the caption, “If You’re a Teenage Girl, You Need to Know Abortion Means Killing a Human Being.”

Millions of copies of “Who Killed Junior?” were print­ed and distri­buted to high school students across the coun­try. “Junior” didn’t stop high school students from having sex. But it did increase all of the phy­sical, emotional and social problems that arose when, later, those teens with unwanted pregnancies now felt too guilty to abort and so carried to term.

Closing thoughts

Elevating a tiny, mindless, senseless, partially formed, human em­br­yo or fetus to a help­less, innocent, unborn baby with awareness and feel­ings—a “conscious baby that will under­go excruciat­ing pain as it is torn apart in an abortion”—is dishonest, incendiary propaganda. It is also fetal idolatry according to Rev. John Swomley, Emeritus Professor of Social Ethics, St. Paul School of Theology.[5]

But even if the scientists are wrong and an embryo could feel pain, it doesn’t change the fact that a woman’s personal body integrity is being violated if she is forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and to give birth. After all, since we all are legally protected from having our bodies invaded against our will (like being forced to donate blood or bone marrow), even if it means that someone else is then doomed to pain, suffering and even death, why aren’t women who discover they have an unwanted pregnancy given the same right? Yet, anti-choice legis­lators continue to try to pass laws based on medieval patriarchal theo­logies and pseudoscientific propaganda that demean and endanger women and, in effect, treat them as obligatory breeding machines.
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[1] S.J. Lee et al., “Fetal pain: A systematic multidisciplinary review of the evidence,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 294(8), 947-954. In addition, see “Fetal Pain: A Red Herring in the Abortion Debate” by Joyce Arthur in Free Inquiry, Aug./Sept. 2005, an excellent summary article with current references.

[2] http://www.populationmedia.org/who/message-from-the-president/

[3] http://www.populationmedia.org/who/message-from-the-president/

[4] Time, March 14, 2011, p. 66. Planned Parenthood and other reproductive care facilities in the U.S. provide information and birth control to about 5 million women a year at over 4,600 health centers. Over one million unintended pregnancies a year are prevented, half of which would likely have ended in an abortion. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that for every $1 spent by our taxes for contraceptive care, taxpayers save around $4 in Medicaid costs for mother and baby in just the first year. Only about 3% of Planned Parenthood funds go toward legal abortions, none of which comes from taxes.

[5] http://www.population-security.org/swom-98-06.htm

By Charles L. Rulon
Emeritus, Life & Health Sciences
Long Beach City College ([email protected])

Fetal idolatry

Elevating human em­br­yos and fetuses to a rever­ed, exalted, even sacred status is fetal idolatry, according to Rev. John Swomley, Emeritus Professor of Social Ethics, St. Paul School of Theology.[1] Fetal idolaters have trans­formed a mindless, senseless fetus the size of my thumb into a kind of demigod—a help­less, innocent, unborn baby with awareness and feel­ings—a baby that is playfully suck­ing its thumb and only needs to grow—a conscious baby that will under­go excruciat­ing pain as it is torn apart in an abortion—a pre-born baby with the sacred, inalienable, self-evident, funda­mental right to life. Yet, the scientific reality is quite different.

Human embryology

When does life begin?

Regarding the abortion issue, a central question is “When does life begin?” The scientific answer is that single-celled life forms evolved from non-life by natural processes almost four billion years ago. This first question is usually quickly followed by the second: “When does a human being first appear?” The answer is that it depends on one’s definition of “human being”, since what was once an ancient ape-like primate slowly evol­ved over millions of years into many different species of the genus Homo and finally us, Homo sapiens. Many fetal idolaters, however, reject the fact of our evolution in favor of some variation of an ancient creation myth in Genesis.

Fertilization

Fetal idolaters believe that a divinely planned human life with a soul begins at the moment of conception. But there is no magic “moment” of conception. Instead, there is a time span of up to 48 hours. After a sperm penetrates the egg, its genes remain separate from the egg genes for a day or more. Sometimes several sperm penetrate the egg and it takes time for the egg to eject the extra chromosomes.

Also, although fertilization brings together all 46 human chromosomes a great deal of information is still miss­ing in the human embryo. This information can only emerge inside the uterus from the biochemical and physi­cal interactions of the develop­ing em­bryo with its sur­round­ings. As one example, our 20-30 thousand genes can’t possibly control the precise develop­ment and inter­con­nections of the 100 billion neur­ons in the human brain.

Cloning

In addition, with our rapid advances in cell biol­ogy, biochemistry and genetic engi­neering tech­nolo­gies it is now possible to clone humans from body cells. So if my appendix is removed and thrown out, mil­lions of potential human beings would have been “killed”. (Cloning has become a “tunnel of madness” for the Roman Catholic Church.)

Stages of embryological development

Following fertilization the zygote (fertilized egg) be­gins to divide. After 3 days it has become a ball of 16 cells, still about the same size as the original zy­gote. This ball of cells then hollows out and be­comes a blastula. By the 7th day, if not destroyed, it has attached to the in­ner lining of the uterus and pregnancy has medically begun.

By the 4th week follow­ing concep­tion, the human embryo is about the size of a pencil eraser. It has no human face, hands, feet, or cerebral cor­tex. It has no function­al sense organs to see, smell, hear or exper­ience anything. It has a pro­nounced tail and super­ficially looks something like a tadpole. It also has a barely vis­ible embryonic tubular heart that has started to beat. (The recorded sound of this beating embryonic heart continues to be used by the anti-choice forces, even in the U.S. Congress. But our heart is just a very good pump. Fish, reptiles and mammals all have beating hearts. We are not human because of a beating heart!)

By the 6th week a human embryo is about one-half inch long. It has an eye spot on each side of its head. Its reptilian-like face has slits where the mouth and nose will eventually be. Arm and leg buds have appeared. By the end of the 7th week the tail is almost gone and the face is more pig-like than human.

By the 8th week the developing fe­tal skele­ton is carti­lage, not bone. Very tiny arms and legs with fin­gers and toes are developing. (Technology now allows these fingers and toes to be photo­graphed and sent across the web, galvanizing the anti-choice supporters.)

By the 9th week most major organs exist in rudiment­ary form. But it will take several more months for these organs to grow in size, complexity and organization to the point where they can function. The abortion pill (RU-486 or Mifepristone) can still be used at this time.

About 50% of all abortions in the U.S. have occurred by the 8th week and about 90% by the 12th week. These percentages would be much higher if all the legal obstacles erected by the anti-choice male power structure were overturned. Only 2% of abortions occur after the 19th week, almost always because of a wanted pregnancy that went terribly wrong.

By the 23rd week the human fetus is still too under­developed to live outside the uterus. Its lungs can’t exchange air, its skin is not waterproof, its kidneys will fail, and the blood vessels in its brain will collapse and rupture. Almost all will die if delivered. If delivered one week later, at 24 weeks, only 20% of infants will have good out­comes. Another 40% will have serious ab­norma­li­ties and the re­maining 40% will likely die.

Brain development and humanness

Those who picket reproductive care centers often carry greatly magnified photos of tiny baby-looking fetuses with arms and legs, fingers and toes. They also play recordings of fetal heart beats. But what make us human are not our fingers and toes, nor our eyes, legs, or hearts. Many other mammals have sharper vis­ion and more pow­er­ful legs. And our heart, although a superb pump (as are the hearts of all mam­­mals), can be replaced without any claim that a new “person” now exists.

What makes us human is our large brain. Our humanness—our sentience, reason and will—our ability to love, hate, enjoy, grieve and suffer—is all found in our brain. If my brain could be trans­­­­­planted, my “person­hood” would go with my brain, not stay back with my body. Scientists know for a fact that this brain of ours gradually evolved over hundreds of millions of years from an ancient fish brain.

By the 10th week of pregnancy a fe­tus still does­n’t have function­­ing eyes, ears, a cerebral cortex, or brain waves asso­ci­ated with con­scious­ness. Its brain volume is about l/500th that of a newborn. There is some reflex motion that doesn’t require a brain. But the groundwork for human con­scious­ness and aware­­­­ness still does not exist.

By the 24th week, the large scale linking up of neu­rons criti­cal for human conscious­ness and aware­ness has just begun. Continuous brain waves do not begin to occur until about the 28th week and EEGs asso­ci­ate with thought and conscious­ness don’t occur un­til some­­time after the 30th week. Fe­tuses young­er than this still lack the nec­es­sary brain archi­tecture to think like humans. Significant development of neuronal activity in the cortex continues long after birth.

Regarding fetal pain, although fetuses have started to form pain receptors by 8 weeks, the thalamus (that part of the brain which routes information to other areas) doesn’t start to form until after the 20th week. Without the thalamus no aware­ness of pain is possible.

Furthermore, there is no scien­tific evidence for any “ghost in the machine” that is separate from our brain and lives on after death. While modern neuroscience cannot conclusively rule out that possibility, there is now considerable evi­dence to the contrary.

“Without the brain we are merely a lump of thoughtless meat that might respond automatically in some simple ways as an amoeba might.”

—Isaac Asimov

Some final thoughts

The argument that a fer­ti­lized egg or embryo is somehow a prepackaged human des­tined to be born contradicts all that scientists have learned. Knowledge of human embryology is why biologists use words like “zygote,” “blastula,” “embryo” and “fetus”, not “baby.” Possibly the public’s attitude toward abortions would have been more mature and reasonable if students had learned some basic human embryology in school. But instead, in dozens of states students are only taught that “abortions murder babies” and legis­lators continue to pass laws based on medieval theo­logies and pseudoscience that in effect, treat women as obligatory breeding machines. Who is asking the question: when will women, themselves, achieve full personhood?

Appendix

Demigod or parasite?

Fetal idolaters elevate embryos to demi-god status. But a desperate woman seeking a quick abortion may view the same embryo as she might view an internal parasite, to be quickly removed. Of course, it’s abhor­rent to most people to compare a human embryo to a parasite and there are differences. But there are also similari­ties. An internal parasite and an unwanted embryo are both un-welcomed organisms that live and grow inside a host at whose expense they obtain food and shelter and release wastes. They both harm the host in one way or another. The host’s defenses often attempt to expel both. In fact, up to 25% of all preg­nancies are spontaneously expelled.

What about miscarriages?

Christian fundamentalists believe that the millions of new “American” embryos coming into existence each year all have divine souls and were all planned by God. Yet, research reveals that 10-25% of all pregnancies miscarry.[2] In addition, every year over 100,000 women have dangerous tubal preg­nan­­cies requiring emer­gency surgery. Obviously, a significant percentage of conceptions are never “destined” to be born.

Fetal idolaters dismiss miscarriages as God’s Will and show little interest in pouring money and energy into reducing the miscarriage rate. One would think that if they were really committed to saving these millions of “innocent human beings” miscarried they would support spending billions of dollars to stop all these “little people” from being flushed down the toilet. Terrorism pales in significance to this vast ongoing tragedy—a disaster of biblical proportions! All of these saved pre-born humans could then be implant­ed into millions of women, or else frozen until extremely expensive technolo­gies can be invented for their ongoing develop­ment, birth and adoption.
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[1] http://www.population-security.org/swom-98-06.htm

[2] The Guttmacher Foundation reported that in 2008 there were 6.4 million pregnancies to the 62 million women of reproductive age. Of those, 19% ended in abortion, 66% ended in live birth, and 15% ended in miscarriage. That means there were approximately 1.21 million abortions. Another study revealed that anywhere from 10-25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies will end in miscarriage.

By Charles L. Rulon
Emeritus, Life & Health Sciences
Long Beach City College ([email protected])

Part 1: The birth of fetal worship & extremism

Personal body integrity

In the United States we have the right to personal body integrity. This means that I am legally protected from being forced to donate my blood or bone marrow—from having my body invaded against my will— even if it means someone else will die. It means that if a baby were to be medically attached to me to keep it alive, but without my consent, I could have it removed, even though it would then die. Yet, prior to 1973 there was one major exception—an exception where a person’s body could be invaded without her expressed consent and with potentially dangerous conse­quences, but where it was against the law for her to have the invasion removed. I’m referring to the millions of women with unwanted pregnancies who were being forced to carry to term and give birth. In 1973 Roe v. Wade changed all that. One half of our entire population now became legally and safely protected from forced childbirth—from being unwilling embryo incubators.

The right to personal body integrity is threatened

Yet, for the last several decades Catholic, Fundamentalist and Evangelical male leaders and their political allies/lackeys have attempted to turn back the clock and once again force women with unwanted pregnancies to stay pregnant and give birth against their will. Today, women’s bodies are once again in real danger of being involuntarily conscripted by a religiously conservative patriarchy to preserve the lives of tiny mindless senseless embryos and fetuses. Many of these anti-choice religious and political male leaders are driven by power, money, male domination desires, and/or moral zealotry. Many are also driven by an obsessive desire to prevent any further weakening of medieval relig­ious dog­mas devastated by hundreds of years of scien­ti­fic and ethical advances. And many want to punish­ “loose” women and those women who are trying to “selfish­ly shirk their mater­nal duty.”

Fetal idolatry is born

These anti-choice men in power have largely disguised their real (but politically unacceptable) motivations. Instead, a strategy was born that would emotionally galvanize tens of millions of committed followers. This strategy elevated tiny human em­br­yos and fetuses to a rever­ence, an exalted status, a God-planned sacredness that, according to Rev. John Swomley, Emeritus Professor of Social Ethics, St. Paul School of Theology, could only be described as fetal idolatry.[1] “Fetal idolatry [becomes] the major battleground issue for both the patriarchal and clerical control of women,” declares Swomley.

These powerful religious and political leaders willfully ignore the fact that a five-week em­bryo is no bigger than a pencil eraser—that it has no face, hands or feet, no higher brain centers, no function­al sense organs to see, smell, hear or feel anything. They suppress the fact that the large majority of abortions occur while the fetus is still smaller than my thumb. They deny the fact that as late as the 19th week the human fetal brain still has no nerve con­nec­t­ions to the sen­sory environment and thus is incapable of experiencing pain or touch, or that the fetus doesn’t have a brain capable of the most rudimentary level of human conscious­ness until well into the 3rd trimester.

None of this well-established embryology makes any difference to those bishops, televangelists, pastors, elected politicians and other men who promote fetal idolatry. They dismiss all these “pesky” sci­entific, medical and embryological facts. Terms like “zygote,” “blast­ula,” “em­bryo” and “fetus” are replaced with “child” and “baby”. The fetus is elevated to a kind of demigod—“a help­less, innocent, unborn baby with awareness and feel­ings”; “a baby that is playfully suck­ing its thumb and only needs to grow”; “a pre-born baby with the sacred, inalienable, self-evident, funda­mental right to life.” Ultrasound images of “our baby in utero” now grace the family fridge, with the “baby” imagined to be smiling, waving, or sucking his thumb. Such ultrasound images have become an important propaganda staple for those who attribute to embryo and fetal life a sacredness and mythical level of awareness that has taken precedence over all else.

The “ultimate civil rights is­sue”

With the idolatrous creation of “conscious pre-born babies under­going excruciat­ing pain as they are torn apart by the baby butchers”, the abortion battle metamorphosis into the “ultimate civil rights issue of the century—the vital issue of pro­tect­ing the weak­est, most in­no­cent and most vulner­able among us.”

The anti-choice male power structure ignores the fact that our country outlawed abortions in the past, not because embryos and fetuses had a right to life, but because abortions had been extremely dangerous and deadly for women. Also, Protestant clergy had been motivated more by the declining birthrates of adherents than by any concern for the embryo. In addition, clergy had been opposed to abortions because women were seeking out abortions to try to escape the shame and punishment for the sexual sins of extramarital sex and non-procreative sex.[2]

These men ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s findings in Roe v. Wade that there was little agree­ment among scientific, medical, religious, political, philosophical and social groups as to when per­sonhood (and thus the right to life) appears (if at all) dur­ing fetal development. In fact, the last several decades of wide­spread acri­mo­­nious dis­agree­­ments among ethicists, theo­lo­gians, politi­cians, medi­cal personal, clergy, and the public clearly confirms the fact that when the “right-to-life” actually occurs in fetal development is not a specific point in time ever to be discovered scientific­ally, or agreed upon religiously. And they also willfully ignore or dismiss the fact that the large majority of civil rights groups in the U.S. support Roe v. Wade, as do numerous public health, psychi­atric and pedi­atric asso­ciations, along with vari­ous medical organ­i­zations representing hundreds of thousands of doctors and medical students.[3] So do dozens of religious organ­i­zations[4] and women’s groups.[5]

“As a public re­lations wea­pon and grass-roots organizing tool, [abortion] was the perfect smoke screen for the launching of larger political salvos” wrote Conway and Morris. “Abor­tion was almost guaranteed to ignite the apathy of un­regis­tered ‘born agains,’ and to sway many Demo­crats over to the conser­­vative Republican side.”[6]

Fetal idolatry and extremism

Fetal idolatry fuels moral zealotry and extremism. It justifies lying, distorting, misquoting, libeling and repressing, all in the service of defeating the enemy. There is no room for compromise. Fetal idolatry fuels the mass production of incendiary flyers which refer to emergency con­tra­cep­­­­tion as “baby pesticides” and to doctors who perform early abortions as “blood thirsty child kill­ers” and “baby butchers comparable to those who ran the Nazi death camps in World War II.” Abortions are called “America’s holocaust” and pro-choice supporters “Nazis”. Congregations are told that atheists are “slaughtering God’s children” and that “tear­ing a developing fetus apart, limb by limb, simply at the mother’s request, is a barbaric act of depravity that society should not permit.”

Truth is the first casualty of zealots. Those who label the morning-after pill a “baby pesticide” and early abortions as the “mur­der of unborn child­ren” have stooped to error-filled propaganda and dis­honest rhetoric designed to inflame. Also, equating the abortion of embryos to the Nazi Holocaust is rationally absurd and morally re­pug­nant. It raises the temp­era­ture of the abortion debate intol­erably. It is harmful, ex­tremist propa­ganda.[7] Such incendiary phrases have been a major contributing factor in the terror­izing, bombing and burning of repro­duc­tive health clinics for the past three decades. Tragically, tens of millions of conservative Christian Americans have swallowed this dishonest, inflam­­­ma­tory rhetoric.

Fetal idolatry has been a major factor in the terrorizing, bombing and burning of repro­duc­tive health clinics in the U.S. for the past three decades. It has resulted in intimidation and even murder of those who take a different position. Since 1980 the National Abor­tion Federation has identified more than 10,000 reported acts of terrorism and violence against lawful repro­duc­tive rights sup­porters in the United States. There have been thousands of abor­tion clinic block­ades. Clinic workers have been regularly stalked. There have been several hundred clinic arson attacks and bomb­ings. There have been kidnap­pings and shootings. Doctors must wear bulletproof vests. Nine abortion providers have been murdered so far.[8] And according to Swomley “There is no evidence that major religious leaders of the “pro life” movement have engaged in any effort to stop this violence.”

Religious violence, writes Rabbi Robert Wol­koff, never needs a poli­ti­cal purpose, since reli­gious extrem­ists “identify with divine power in annihilating the forces of chaos”. Extremists believe they are engaged in an apocalyptic war between light and dark­ness. Their role in this cosmic conflict is to demon­strate the des­tructive power of the One True God against evil. There is little room for com­pro­mise, since human laws are irrel­evant next to “God’s Laws.”[9]

Some final thoughts

Fetal idolatry is only able to thrive in religiously conservative, scientifically ignorant, patriarchal cultures with seriously flawed anti-rational educational systems. It has no place in any civilized, rational society that values the separation of church and state and values female equality. “Glamor­i­zing” and “personalizing” mindless, senseless human embryos has distracted us for decades from the fundamental question: Do we really want to live in a country that tries to force women to use their bodies against their will to incubate unwanted embryos—a country that outlaws a woman’s right to have herself freed from this potentially dangerous and unwanted bodily invasion? Historic­ally, the answer has almost always depended on the beliefs, needs and interests of MEN in religious and political power, certainly not on the needs of those who were actually burden­ed with unwanted pregnancies.
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[1] http://www.population-security.org/swom-98-06.htm

[2] J. Mohr, Abortion in America (1978).

[3] A national organization known as Medi­cal Students for Choice (MSFC) has chap­ters in over 100 medical schools and represents more than 3000 med­ical stu­dents nationwide. Also see Phy­sicians for Reproductive Choice and Health (www.PRCH.org).

[4] The Religious Coalition for Repro­duc­tive Choice, repre­sents over 40 dif­ferent denominations and faith groups in this coun­try. (www.rcrc.org).

[5] Examples include the American Association of Uni­ver­sity Women, the Association for Women in Science, Women’s Law Associations, the International Women’s Health Coalition, League of Women Voters-U.S., Nation­­al Edu­ca­tion Association (NEA), Women for Racial & Economic Equality, and the YWCA.

[6] Conway, F. and Siegelman, J. Holy Terror. 1981

[7] Using words as they were never in­ten­­d­ed in order to emo­­­­tionally galvanize people to various causes has long been an indispensable propa­ganda tool. Propaganda is not education. It is one-sided communica­tion design­ed to tell people what to think. To do this it must deaden the power of reasoning; it must stifle thought, not stimu­late it. Some main ingre­dients for success­ful prop­a­ganda are:

— Greatly simplify the issues down to easily remem­bered slogans.

— Be repetitious. If a falsehood is said thous­ands of times, people will act­u­ally start to believe it.

— Appeal to the emotions, not to the in­tellect.

— Have no gray areas, no room for com­pro­mise.

[8] For further updates on anti-abortion terrorism check . Also google [Abortion Terrorism], or check and .

[9]Wolkoff, R., “The Clash of Dark­­ness and Light,” L.A. Times, 3/3/94. B8.