This is another excerpt from my yet-to-be-published book, Agony of a Woman. This will be the last installment here on abortion. I will soon return to my discussion of “Forensic Theology.”

In this setting, the team is having an emergency meeting at the request of Dr./Father (archeologist and priest) Banducci, on the eve of publishing their paper in the journal Nature, about the discovery of the earliest New Testament manuscript, the letters of Paul, including a verse that condones abortion in certain situations. Present are (point of view) Dr. Caren Rose, the finder of the scroll; Dr. Jim Becker, an ex-evangelical and considered one of the leading authorities on early Christian manuscripts; and Dr. Jason Picard, a computer expert who developed the software for reading the old, burnt scrolls at Herculaneum. (Warning, I don’t sanitize language for an evangelical audience)

From Chapter Eighteen, Agony of a Woman

I pulled up a seat next to him. Once I was settled, Dr. Banducci began speaking.

“Thank you, team, for agreeing to this important meeting to discuss some critical issues before we submit our paper. I am a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Yes, I am a scientist too. Like all scientists, at least honest scientists, my highest pursuit is the truth. There’s no question that our scroll VPC-V-3 is authentic and is of the utmost importance to the world, the oldest New Testament fragment.”

He slowly stood, moved to the window, pulled back the curtains, and looked out to the sea. The other two men and I sat in silence, each of us glancing at the others.

In a moment, Dr. Banducci turned back toward us and spoke, “I have grave concerns that when our paper is published, it will open the door for abortions becoming as common as a woman going to the spa, or for a pedicure. You know, a convenient method of birth control.”

I moaned, louder than I meant to. The men all turned to look at me.

Father Banducci continued, “In my heart, I’m as pro-life as any Catholic. As my church teaches, I respect human life from conception. With this paper, I fear that I will become the executioner of the unborn.”

Jim cleared his throat and spoke, “Tony, isn’t it the responsibility of a priest to make the word of God clear to their parishioners? Is that not our goal as well? Don’t the scriptures self-proclaim that they are profitable for doctrines and training in righteousness and making the knowledge of God’s word in the clearest possible way part of that?”

Dr. Banducci stared at him.

“Tony,” Jim speculated. “Are you contemplating leaving our team? A priest-scientist will be important to this paper.”

Dr. Banducci turned to look out the window again.

“Dr. Banducci,” I said. “Let’s think about this as scientists. Only fifty percent of fertilized eggs make it to birth. The rest are not viable. If you believe God is sovereign, it makes God the most proficient abortionist, and therefore, it must be moral in those cases. In God’s eyes, an imperfect zygote is dispensable and is therefore in a different class than a mature human baby or even a fetus after the first trimester. Or God in his mercy causes the miscarriage for the sake of the mother’s health.”

Dr. Banducci snapped his head around to look at me. “But morality is based on the choice of man… or in this case, a woman. God is not held to our standards of morality. A miscarriage is God’s prerogative. Saint Augustine said, ‘If you know or believe that God is good—and it is not right to believe otherwise—then he does no evil.’ But when the woman chooses to end this new life, it is a sin because she is interrupting God’s prerogative. The woman can only choose to have sex or not!”

“No, she can’t!” I said in a raised voice. The Father’s and my eyes were locked for a moment. I added, “Some abortions come when a woman has no choice in the matter, such as rape.” I looked at Jason and Jim, “Think about this, too. Only one or two percent of abortions happen after this period covered in this verse. That delay is because the woman is not aware of being pregnant, the fetus starts showing signs of deformity after the first trimester, the mother’s health starts to deteriorate, or when there are obstacles to her getting an early abortion, such as state laws. While I’m doubtful this new verse will open the floodgates to abortion, it might soothe the souls of millions of women who live in the perpetual guilt that they murdered their baby, the worst possible kind of guilt a woman can bear.”

Jim quickly said, “If you believe the scriptures are the absolute authority on morality, it is clear in this passage that abortion, before quickening, is appropriate in times of agony. I suspect that rape is one of those times of agony, as well as poor health in the mother or fetus, and even poverty. How can you call this sin when the scriptures do not?”

Tony answered, “We hold both the scriptures and the church as the interpreters of those holy scriptures as the absolute voices on morality. As I’ve said, our moral authority is that the church asserts that life begins at conception and the deliberate killing of that life is the sin of murder.”

Jim yelled, “Tony, isn’t it inevitable that the church will change its position when it is faced with the clarity of this earliest manuscript that there is a place for abortion? When is there a cluster of cells without consciousness?”

Tony answered in a quiet tone, “Maybe… in another thousand years. However, although the zygote lacks self-awareness, it has the potential to develop full human consciousness. That’s what makes it special.”

“But if we are talking about the potential for human life and not consciousness or ensoulment,” I said, “then every drop of semen with sperm has the same potential as well as the egg discarded by a woman every month. Now we are going down a rabbit hole, not to mention all the zygotes wasted with IVF; over one and a half million such embryos are discarded each year, many by pro-life Christians. If you take your idea to the ultimate extreme, then every young man who masturbates, looking at a Victoria’s Secret catalog, destroys two hundred million potential humans. All boys become mass murderers on a scale that would put Hitler to shame. The wasting of the potential of human life. Now we are getting into the absurdities.” I paused for a minute, drew a deep breath, and sighed, “Here is another issue, the disrespect for women. When you make laws that limit our choices over our bodies, it is a patriarchal society telling us that we can’t be trusted to do the right thing. Maybe we should legislate the rules for when men can ejaculate and arrest them when they violate those rules. Why isn’t that fair?”

Jim chuckled, “I understand, Caren. You have a point. Victoria’s Secret? I think today’s boys have moved beyond underwear catalogs.”

I looked at the father and asked, “Tony, what makes a zygote human and protected from killing when the egg and sperm are not?” You’ve suggested that it isn’t ensoulment or consciousness.”

“A zygote is human because it has a unique DNA,” he answered, “separating it from all other humans.”

“You wouldn’t know this,” I said, “but I was in premed for two years before switching to archaeology. One of my classes was The Biology of Human Reproduction. In that class, I finally understood how the sperm and egg work. I don’t know if you know this, but in the father’s testes and the mother’s ovum, a normal cell of theirs goes through meiosis, which divides their chromosomes, or packages of DNA, in half, from 46 to 23. The sperm then carries the father’s 23 chromosomes into an egg, which also has 23 chromosomes. When the lucky sperm pierces the egg’s cell wall, it takes about 24 hours for it to migrate to the center of the cell and for the nuclear membranes of the sperm and egg to dissolve, releasing their chromosomes. Soon afterward, their chromosomes recombine to form 23 pairs, for a total of 46 chromosomes. So, why, starting at that very millisecond in time when the chromosomes stick together, is it murder to squish the cell? Is it magic? Before that, the identical chromosomes were floating inside the cell, unbonded, for a whole day. Was the zygote a human then? The identical chromosomes existed in the mother and father before that. Again, we have established that destroying an unfertilized egg and sperm isn’t murder, so I must ask myself, why, if we destroy the two, side by side, it’s okay, but when mixed, it’s murder, the same as killing a born child? Cells that have the same material, chromosomes, protoplasm, and a cell wall. No feelings, no pain… and no soul. On the other hand, if a unique combination of chromosomes inside a cell defines it as human, and not consciousness, then is it not okay to murder a  monozygotic twin?”

Silence gripped our office for a moment. Then Jason, who had been quiet for the whole morning spoke, “I don’t know the religious perspectives of this matter, only that I have great confidence that this text is original and clear, the writer, claiming to be Paul and consistent with what we call the New Testament, is encouraging those women who are in the earliest stages of pregnancy and in a difficult time or agony, that it’s appropriate to drink Silphium as an abortifacient. I have that confidence. Otherwise, I don’t have a dog in this religious fight.”

Dr. Banducci shook his head. “All I know is my church’s teaching is that life begins at conception and willingly ending that life is murder. Yes, it is magic. God’s magic. This will require personal prayer and contemplation.”

“Then, dammit, Tony, pray about it and let us know what God says. Do it quickly, as we need to submit this paper to Nature as soon as possible.”

Respectfully, Mike