Partial Birth Abortion Then and Now
The term “abortion” is not an invention in the 20th century by pro-choice activists. But the first recorded partial birth abortion in history is found in the Scripture.
The Midrash says, “If you destroy one life, you have destroyed the whole universe”.
Life is a gift from the Creator, which we did not deserve to receive, and like a whisper in the wind, life means nothing without Him.
Life is a Creator-given privilege man cannot expect, demand, or claim. None of us has done anything to deserve it! We did not ask to be born; we did not know we would be born. We did not know what is to be born. And when we were born, we did not even know we were born, for how long, and born for what.
Life is not a right given by one human being to another; neither is life a right granted by a government; if it were, the one who has given it can take it back.
Nor is the murdering of babies in the mothers’ womb a human or civil right. Read more about what “the right to choose” has done in America.
However, there is another America!
In Proclamation on National Sanctity of Human Life Day in 2020, President Donald Trump said,
“My Administration is also building an international coalition to dispel the concept of abortion as a fundamental human right. So far, 24 nations representing more than a billion people have joined this important cause. We oppose any projects that attempt to assert a global right to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, up to the moment of delivery. And we will never tire of defending innocent life — at home or abroad.”
Further in his proclamation President Trump called for concrete steps to be taken to defend the innocent life of the unborn. He said,
“I call on the American people to continue to care for women in unexpected pregnancies and to support adoption and foster care in a more meaningful way, so every child can have a loving home.”
[source: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-national-sanctity-human-life-day-2020/]
By the wisdom given from above, President Trump called for a fundamental solution to the controversial issue of abortion not only in America, but in the entire world; a solution, that no other president, priest, pastor, or pro-life activist, has ever made, namely, “support adoption and foster care“.
One soul in two bodies
In Gen 2:24, by the leaving of father and mother and becoming one flesh (which applies to both the woman and to the man), the conjugal union between one man and one woman is shown to be a decree of oneness in a marriage as a union of one soul (two soul mates) in two bodies. What does it mean?
And Elohim created the man in His image, in the image of Elohim He created him – male and female He created them. (Gen 1:27)
And Yehovah Elohim formed the man out of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils breath of lives. And the man became a living being. (Gen 2:7)
As we explained in other places, the narrative in Genesis 1 is reiterated in Genesis 2, this time in more details.
In Genesis 1, it is said that “male and female He created them” on the sixth day of Creation, and in Genesis 2 it is said how He created man[kind], namely, by “breathing the breath of lives” so that he became a living being. Therefore, on the sixth day of Creation both the male and female mankind He created, and female mankind was created the same way as the male mankind was: by the breath of lives.
As the female was derived from the male, two bodies of flesh were created. However, her soul was created for the purpose to become a soul mate of the male soul. Hence, they were created to be a unity of mate souls in order to become kindred souls, or one spiritual soul. Hence, we derive the concept of one soul in two bodies.
And indeed, when a man and a woman love each other and are in a proper marital status, they are like one soul before their Creator, which no one can separate. They are in unity.
And they became one flesh
The design of Elohim in the creation of the woman is perceived by Adam, without a revelation from Him, as soon as he awoke, and the woman was brought to him. He said,
This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one is called ‘woman’, because she was taken out of man.
The word אִשָּׁה ishah, rendered as “woman”, is a female mankind that comes from אִישׁ ish, man[kind]. The suffix ה hey turns the masculine form of a noun into feminine. From the context in the creation narrative, where the terms אָדָם Adam and אִישׁ ish are used, it is apparent that they are used interchangeably.
For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen 2:24)
The words, however, “therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall become one flesh” create confusion as they cannot be regarded as Adam’s, because he could not have possibly known what “father” and “mother” supposed to mean, and he did not know what was to have a father and a mother.
And as Adam did not know what was to have “father” and “mother”, this statement could not have been made by him but only by a narrator, (1) who was a witness to the event of creation the first mankind, and (2) who did know the terms “father” and “mother”. Moreover, the above statement would make sense only if this narrator had narrated it to a listener that could understand it.
And since Adam being the first man[kind] did not know what “father” and “mother” could mean, and Mosheh was not a witness of those events, this narrator could have only been a non-human being, who narrated it to a listener that could understand it.
As we explained in the article “The Messenger of His Face and how the Torah was given“, the whole Genesis story was a narrative written by Mosheh as a fact but given by a narrator. Such a narrator could have been the one who had not only been a witness to the Creation of the universe (Co 1:15) but also the one who had the authority to re-instate it verbatim as the words of the Creator,
Did you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what the Creator has joined together, man is unable to separate. (Mat 19:4-6)
The concept of one soul in two bodies is understandable; the Creator created the woman from the body of the man to become a separate human being. And although man and woman look very similar—they both have two arms, two legs, one torso, one head, etc. —but as a matter of fact they are also very different.
Women are different from men; their bone and muscle structure are different, even though the first woman was created from the first man.
Yet, the Creator’s decree in Gen 2:24 states that they (man and woman) “shall become one flesh”.
The concept of two bodies in one flesh indeed seems contradictory to the concept of one soul in two bodies. Did He not created one from the other to become two? And now He wants them to become one flesh?
Indeed, both statements above seems contradictory. If the Creator created them once to become two bodies, it is difficult to reconcile His decree, according to which they are to become one flesh again.
How they became one flesh
The answer to our dilemma can be found in the following decree, which immediately followed the creation of the man and the woman. After He blessed the mankind, He said to them,
Be fruitful and increase, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over all moving creatures on the earth. (Gen 1:28)
From the very beginning of the world, the mankind has been decreed to be fruitful and increase, and thus fill the earth. This propagation began with the first human beings—Kayin and Hevel—who knew what was to have a father and mother.
When a man and a woman come into a set-apart matrimony ordained by the Creator to become one kindred soul, they also come together to become one flesh to propagate in order to fulfill the decree to fill the earth.
As a result of this union of two mate souls and two bodies into one, a new living being is created: progeny. Thus, the man and the woman become one flesh in their offspring, the child.
That was the understanding of the Sages stated in Sanhedrin 58a, “The fetus is formed by them both, and there [in the child] their flesh becomes one.
The medieval Tanak commentator Rashi (Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040 – 1105) also confirmed that the term “one flesh” in Gen 2:24 is to be understood as both parents are united in their child.
The first recorded partial birth abortion
Pharaoh commanded the Hebrew midwives to destroy the male children at their birth and to leave only the girls alive (Exo 1:15).
When you deliver the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall put him to death, but if it is a daughter, then she shall live. (Exo 1:16)
Why did Pharaoh separate the newborn males from the females? Was he more merciful towards the Hebrew women? Hardly!
Hebrew does not have a word for a deliberate termination of pregnancy but calls it what it is: putting to death a child at birth (Exo 1:16). In our “civilized” world, this barbarous act of taking the life of a newborn child is conveniently called “partial birth abortion” in the manner of political correctness. It is not a murder but “just” an abortion.
This is what the so-called “civilized” world call “abortion”.
Pharaoh commanded the Egyptian midwives to watch carefully during the labor and if the child was a boy, they were to put him to death as he was coming out of the womb; but if it was a girl, she was to be spared.
When you deliver the Hebrew women, and look them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall put him to death, but if it is a daughter, then she shall live. (Exo 1:16)
This ugly scene of partial birth abortion of the Hebrew boys is not quite well understood, partially because of intentional obscurity. The plain reading of the verse will tell us that the midwives were not ordered to passively watch the delivery, as if someone else were to put to death the children but to actively kill them at birth.
How that heinous act of murdering of newborn was to be executed we are intentionally not told, but there must be a reason for this. Perhaps, the Torah wanted to spare us from having to know the manner of killing the children and has left it to us to read between the lines and judge.
But one thing is certain: this is the first recorded partial birth abortion in history of mankind. But the Egyptian midwives feared the Elohim of the Israelites and disobeyed the king.
Now, the question is: If Pharaoh wanted to decimate the Israelites, would he not have ordered to kill the baby girls, not the boys, or all of them? Because, it is the number of women, not of men, that matters for the birthrate and propagation of a population.
The sages explain that Pharaoh sought to get killed the baby boys to eliminate any future uprising, because the Israelites had become too numerous and strong for Egypt. But the girls he wanted assimilated into the Egyptian religion and culture and make them Egyptians.
And when Pharaoh learned that the babies were spared, he commanded all his people to throw every Hebrew boy into the river and keep alive every girl (Exo 1:22). And the Egyptians complied with king’s decree.
How the devil destroys the family
We will continue our study to the forgotten book of Enoch the prophet.
The Book of Enoch, translated by R. H. Charles, D.Litt., D.D., London, Society for promoting Christian knowledge, 1917, Chapter LXIX, is giving us the answer to the question concerning the knowledge the ancients had in order to perform abortions.
In this chapter (this is also the Third Parable of Enoch), verse 12, the name of the fallen angel and his wicked work to teach humans how to do abortions are disclosed,
And the fifth was named Kâsdejâ: this is he who showed the children of men all the wicked smitings of spirits and demons, and the smitings of the embryo in the womb, that it may pass away, and [the smitings of the soul] the bites of the serpent, and the smitings which befall through the noontide heat, the son of the serpent named Tabââ‘ĕt.
In Enoch, the seventh from Adam through Seth, godliness attained its highest point, while ungodliness culminated in Lamech, the seventh from Adam through Kayin, when the men and women had already known how to kill a baby in the mother’s womb. Who gave them this knowledge but the fallen angels? This is how the devil has been working from the beginning: giving knowledge from the tree of good and evil.
By destroying the flesh through which a man and a woman are decreed to become one, he does not just kill an innocent human being (in which he exceedingly delights), but he also destroys the matrimony between the man and woman. Then, ever wonder why the abortion activists are also pro same-sex marriage?
With this we are coming to our days.
Partial birth abortion now as it was then
The women, not the men, are the primarily target in the crosshair of the entire campaign for pro-abortion indoctrination. The deceiver, as in the Garden of Eden, when he said, “Is it true that Elohim has said …?” has craftily designed his wicked work. He has replaced the murdering of innocent human beings with the vague term “abortion” or “partial birth abortion”.
In his plan, a woman should not even think that she is killing her child. No, this is unacceptable for the deceiver. The vague “abortion” and even the better and easily acceptable deception “partial birth abortion” is what is being sought.
There is no truth in the term “partial birth abortion”. The term “abortion” is only the veneer, the façade, of the real thing the devil does not want a woman to see. Abortion of what? Abortion of takeoff? No!
“Birth abortion”, which is the proper term for the impersonal and non-descriptive “abortion”, is a murder and a murder cannot be “partial”; either there is a murder or not. A person cannot be partially murdered.
Likewise, if some say, “partial refers to birth”, birth cannot be partial either: a new life begins with it. When the labor starts nothing can stop it, only death. Therefore, “partial birth abortion” is a contradiction in terms.
But on the other hand, “abortion” or “partial birth abortion” is way more acceptable and deceptive to sell. Now, with this disguise, the devil can lure the women into his net, as he lured the first woman.
As it was the case of the first woman and man, so is the case today: “Is it true that Elohim has said, ‘You shall not murder’?”
But the devil wants to get to the man too. To get to the man, the devil must first get to the woman. This is why the abortion activists are primarily if not exclusively women, or at least they are more vocal.
Once the woman is deceived that the abortion is her “human right to choose”, and this is her body (the baby in her body is not her body; it is another human being), the rest comes easily into place: the man.
It is easy to deceive a man; a man is more gullible and indifferent to abortion. After all, woman gives birth, woman labors in pain, not man. Why should a man interfere in what is her “right to choose” for her body?
But, how many men and women know what the Creator has ordained from the very beginning of the world, “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh”, and what it means?
Yes, men are indifferent to abortion, after all, this is her body; and this too is a part of the deception.
But with the exception of one man: President Trump—the last standing man in defense of the unborn.
President Trump’s speech delivered in his State of the Union Address in 2019:
“There could be no greater contrast to the beautiful image of a mother holding her infant child than the chilling displays our Nation saw in recent days. Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments from birth.
These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world. And then, we had the case of the Governor of Virginia where he stated he would execute a baby after birth. To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb. Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life. And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: all children — born and unborn — are made in the holy image of God.”
And this is why (but not only) President Trump is under vicious attacks from the liberal left, especially in the remaining days until the Presidential election in 2020: the nastiest Presidential election in the history not only of America, but of the entire world.
In his enemies’ dismay, His righteous deeds are well recorded in heaven and no liberal Democrat is able to take them away from him.
Whether re-elected or ousted, President Trump will remain for sure the most righteous President of the U.S.A., and perhaps the last one. America after him will be nothing but liable to judgment at the coming of Mashiach.
Navah
May we merit seeing the coming of our Mashiach speedily in our days.