God and the Child in the Womb

Among professing Christians, there are people who give a pass to abortion because they have accepted that preborn babies aren't people, whether because they are "potential" individuals or for other reasons.

Let me first ask those people this rhetorical question: If, as Christians, you claim to receive the Bible as your guide in life, where in the Bible do you find any such concept? However, I won't leave the argument at merely the lack of biblical support. Rather, I suggest that Scripture allows no such detestable doctrine.

Consider two people in the Scriptures, one in the Old Testament, the other in the New.

In the Old Testament, we have an account of Isaac, the son of Abraham. He plays a major role, because he is the son of promise, through whom the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant would continue in the world. I assume that no Christian would be ignorant of that story. However, does every Christian believe that Isaac was more than potential before he was born? In fact, God placed great value on him before he was born, promising His blessings on Isaac before he was born: "Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him" (Genesis 17:19; compare Jeremiah 1:5). God knows this preborn child by name, and makes promises regarding him. Can anyone say that God treats him merely as a potential person? What, then, would have happened to God's covenantal purpose if, as in modern America, Isaac had been aborted? Would God have said, "Oh, sorry, Abraham. It was just a thought"?

In the New Testament, we have another preborn child, John the Baptist. John is unique in that he is the only human in all of Scripture who is described as regenerate in the womb: "He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15). If God tells us that He already had a saving relationship with this child in the womb, a mere fetus, how can any professed Christian say that the child was only a potential human being?

The problem here isn't merely a love of death, which one expects from unbelievers. We have professed believers who have adopted a doctrine of unbelief and claimed it as justification for their belief. Those two things are inconsistent: "To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn" (Isaiah 8:20). God's judgment is that the follower of an unbelieving worldview is an unbeliever, no matter what title that person may claim.