Saturday, April 3, 2021

19th-century Church leaders opposing Abortion Even Prior to "Quickening"

 It is rather common for some pro-abortion members of the Church to point to some early Latter-day Saints holding to a form of "quickening" (*) (i.e., the spirit enters the body when the unborn child begins to kick, so a few months into pregnancy) to support their agenda. However, anyone who reads their comments about abortion itself will see that they opposed it even prior to when they believed "quickening" took place (such a view was common at that time period, and would, of course, be improved due to increases in medical science--another area where pro-abortion activists have to ignore science [other areas include gender and the benefits of nuclear power]).


Consider the following comments from Lester Bush:


 

Although there was no formal statement of church policy on abortion until very recently, the reviews of early church leaders were very clear: abortion to the nineteenth-century Mormon mind was synonymous with murder. Polemically, at least, no distinction was made between “foeticide,” the “destruction of embryos,” or abortion, on the one hand, and “infanticide” or “infant murder” on the other. President John Taylor (successor to Brigham Young), for example, spoke with some regularity of “pre-natal murders,” or “murders . . . committed while the children are pre-natal”; or infants killed “either before or after they are born”; of murdering children “either before or after they come into the world.” Similar language can be found in the related sermons of nearly all late-nineteenth-century Mormon leaders.

 

Given this perspective, it is not surprising that the church viewed those involved in such “hellish” practices as under grave condemnation. George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency was perhaps the most graphic: “they will be damned with deepest damnation; because it is the damnation of shedding innocent blood, for which there is no forgiveness. . . . They are outside the pale of salvation. They are in a position that nothing can be done for them. They cut themselves off by such acts from all hopes of salvation . . .” (JD 26:14-15 [1884]; see also JD 22:320 [1881])

 

This early commentary was fueled largely by national agitation on the subject rather than a perceived problem within the Mormon community. With the passing of the general ferment, the subject largely disappeared from church commentary—for nearly a century. (Lester E. Bush, Jr., Health and Medicine Among the Latter-day Saints [New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993], 159-60)

 

The following comes from a sermon preached by then-President John Taylor:

 

INFANTICIDE CONDEMNED

By President John Taylor

 

It has become unfashionable in the east for women to have large families. I have heard remarks like this: One lady was asked, How many children have you? One or two. Is that all? What do you take me for, do you think I am a cow? Why no, you are not a cow, for cows do not murder their offspring. What a horrible state of affairs is here exhibited. And I am told that some of those iniquities are being introduced here. I tell you, in the name of God, if you do, we will be after you. I am told of physicians who are acting as they do in the east, as the butchers of infants. Let us look after these things, you Bishops if you do find it our, bring them up. As God lives we will not permit such infamies in our midst; you will not commence your fashionable murders here. And I will say now, Woe to this nation and to the nations of Europe, or any people among any nation, that sanctions these things. Have you not read that no “murderer hath eternal life abiding in him?” What shall be thought of these unnatural monsters, the slayers of their own offspring. This revolting, unnatural, damnable vice may be fashionable, but God will require this crime at their hands. Wo to men and to women that are licentious and corrupt, depraved and debauched, and especially wo, tenfold wo, to the murders of helpless innocence. I tell you this in the name of the Lord. If these things are not stopped, God will arise and shake the nations of the earth and root out their infamies. (Excerpts from discourse delivered at the General Conference, Salt Lake City, on Sunday afternoon, April 9, 1882).) (N.B. Lundwall, comp., Assorted Gems of Priceless Value [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1944], 190-91)

 

In the footnote to the above (ibid., 191), we read:

 

A prophecy made by Elder Thomas Ball at the Heman Ward meeting house January 1, 1921: I testify unto you in the name of Israel’s God that the crime of race suicide will be the means of bringing down the judgments of an offended God upon this nation. Beginning with this year and in the years to follow this nation will undergo some of the greatest punishments that she has received since her existence as a nation. In yonder heavens there are thousands, yea millions, of bright intelligent spirits waiting to come down here to tabernacle in the flesh. They do not ask to be clothed in silks and satins but they desire us to prepare bodies for them so they may gain the experience of mortality and get a chance to exalt themselves into the eternal worlds and Latter-day Saints who are guilty of this heinous crime, if they do not speedily repent, will sink into the depths of hell and their Priesthood will be taken from them.

 

(*) Representative of such a view is the following:




When does the spirit enter the body? One example may be available in the scriptures. Does the spirit enter the body at the time of conception or at the moment of birth? Most theologians of the restored Church teach that the spirit enters the body at the moment of birth. Thus the fetus before birth is not considered to be a personality with a God-given spirit, and none of the ordinances, such as baptism for the dead, is performed for still-born infants.

In the book of Moses (6:59) there is a passage which seems to say that the spirit enters the body at the time of birth: “. . . and inasmuch as ye were born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit, which I have made, and so became of dust a living soul, even so ye musts be born again . . . “ Furthermore we have one excellent example in the Book of Mormon. Christ spoke to the prophet Nephi on the day before his birth in Bethlehem. (3 Nephi 1:12-14.) Here it is quite obvious that his spirit could not have been present in his as yet unborn fetus.

This solves the problem. If revelation tells us that a fetus can exist in the mother’s womb, showing the manifestations of biological life even though the spirit is not present, then we have scriptural precedent for a simple solution of the old vitalism problem. The metabolic functions which the biologist thinks of as life are not dependent upon the presence of an individual spirit but may be considered in a purely mechanistic sense. The student does not need to be troubled by a tissue culture. The problem arises from a false concept in religious teaching.

Incidentally, recognition that the spirit first enters the body at the moment of birth avoids another problem the biologist might mention. Identical twins are known to develop from a single fertilized egg that splits apart after the first division. If the spirit entered at fertilization, the twins would only have one spirit to share between them!

A minor problem remains with this viewpoint of the human fetus as a mechanistically functionally organization of tissues, maintained alive by diffusional contact across the placenta but not containing the spirit which will only enter for the first time at birth. The problem touches some of our deepest feelings. Many a devout mother will proclaim that she sensed the spirit of her unborn infant during her pregnancy. Perhaps the spirit ns nearby, probably anxiously awaiting his grand opportunity to enter mortality, certainly apprehensive of his responsibilities, but anxious nevertheless to take part in the test. Might it not be as comforting to the mother to realize that her unborn offspring is not only present but still capable of rational thought and free choice? It will only cross the veil at the moment of birth.

We should not confuse this problem of biological function and the spirit with another great truth revealed to the prophets: “ . . . and the power of my Spirit quickenth all things.” (D&C 33:16.) Life is, then, indeed, dependent upon Spirit, but this is not the spirit which will occupy the individual organism, but rather the Spirit which emanates from Christ to fill the universe. (See also John 1:9; D&C 88:6-13; 93:2; Moroni 7:16.) This is a great and wonderful truth for mankind to comprehend. It is, however, not a problem between science and religion, for science has never claimed that it could investigate something as fundamental and supernatural as life in the universe being dependent upon the Spirit which emanates from God. The religious man can accept this but the scientist cannot study it and therefore need not worry about it.

Only the question of whether or not the life of an individual organise depends on a specific spirit prepared for it can be questioned in light of scientific findings. Here the revelations of God (when they are not simply silent) indicate that life in the biological sense and the spirit of the individual are not the same. This agrees with scientific observation, and so there is no problem. (Frank B. Salisbury, Truth: By Reason and by Revelation [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1965], 202-4)


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