What view did ancient Egypt take on the status of the foetus, and what reasoning was given? Unlike several other ancient societies in the Ancient Near East, we do not have surviving records of Egypt’s laws, though we know that they were also written down. On this question, however, we have the witness of Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in the 1st c. BC. He noted that the Greeks derived several of their laws from the Egyptians, and the following quotation may give us reasoning behind the stated law from both:
Pregnant
women [in Egypt] who had been condemned to death were not executed until they
had been delivered. The same law has also been enacted by many Greek states,
since they held it entirely unjust that the innocent should suffer the same
punishment as the guilty, that a penalty should be exacted of two for only one
transgression, and, further, that, since the crime had been actuated by an evil
intention, a being as yet without intelligence should receive the same
correction, and, what is the most important consideration, that in view of the
fact that the guilt had been laid at the door of the pregnant mother it was by
no means proper that the child, who belongs to the father as well as to the
mother, should be despatched; for a man may properly consider judges who spare
the life of à murderer to be no worse than other judges who destroy that which
is guilty of no crime whatsoever (Diodorus Siculus, Library of
History I.77.9-10).[1]
A pregnant woman
condemned to death for a crime would not be executed until she delivered her
child. The reasoning might be restated
in separate points:
1.
The unborn child was his/her own person, a separate person from his/her
mother;
2.
The unborn child lacks
responsibility for the crime of his/her mother and should not be punished along
with the mother for the act—he/she is
not guilty of the crime;
3.
The unborn child lacks
intelligence and therefore cannot be punished along with the mother for intent;
4.
The unborn child belongs to
both the mother and the father, not just the mother, and therefore any
consideration of parental responsibility
that ties the child to a parent (including guilt) is not the mother’s alone but
is equally the father’s.
The reasoning
given may have certain assumptions about human identity and rights, but this is
not the focus. Rather, legal questions
regarding one’s own person, acts, intentions, and parental oversight are
considered. We might contrast Roman law
to highlight the point that parental responsibility could be considered quite
differently in antiquity. Roman law
placed the father in complete control over his household, and he had the power
of life and death over his children:
But the lawgiver of the Romans gave virtually full power to the
father over his son, even during his whole life, whether he thought proper to
imprison him, to scourge him, to put him in chains and keep him at work in the
fields, or to put him to death, and this even though the son were already
engaged in public affairs, though he were numbered among the highest magistrates,
and though he were celebrated for his zeal for the commonwealth (Dionysius of
Hallicarnassus, The Roman Antiquities
I.26.4).[2]
The master's authority over a slave in the Roman Empire was the same. If a master chose to put a slave to death, he could. Roman law treated the slave as property rather than as an enslaved human being (as in Egypt, Israel, and the rest of the Ancient Near East). We can lay the notion that some humans are not legally protected as humans, are 'things', at the feet of ancient Roman culture and law.
The thinking of many in the West today about the status of the foetus and about abortion rights develops along the Roman lines, rejects an important assumption of the Egyptians and Greeks, and introduces an entirely new concept. The Roman notion of parental responsibility and slavery that transferred all responsibility and authority to the father or master and therefore did not protect the child, born or unborn, under the law is still in view in the modern version of this line of thinking.
There are
three differences, however. First, the
present argument has to do with an unborn child and, for some, the child right
up to or at the time of birth. Second,
the present argument reverses the Roman thinking in that the mother, not the
father, is given all the authority over the child’s life. This is because, third, the Egyptian and
Greek thinking that the child is a separate person is rejected. Thus, the argument is often heard that ‘a
woman can do what she wants with her body.’
This treats the unborn child as a body part of the woman that can be
removed like a wart or, perhaps more specifically, like a life-depleting
organism that can be removed. The
Egyptians and Greeks thought more in terms of parental, not just paternal (or
now maternal) authority and
responsibility, and they also insisted that the unborn child was a separate person.
Those pressing
for abortion in the West today are beholden to a worldview that:
1.
Rejects the separate personhood of the foetus that
Egyptians and Greeks accepted;
2.
Turns lack of intent on the
part of a developing foetus from being a matter of innocence to being proof of dependency
and therefore a matter of not having rights;
3.
Transfers parental responsibility from the father (Roman) to the mother in the case of the unborn and,
more importantly,
4.
Treats the unborn as non-human, not to be protected by the
law, and an organic mass that a woman might remove if she chooses.
Remarkably, this
contemporary argument has been cast as moral through its association with ‘human
rights’ in the European, Enlightenment tradition and ‘women’s rights’ in the contemporary,
Western tradition. Western authorities,
and those like the World Health Organisation that are beholden to this
reasoning, try to force other cultures with their own and older moral
traditions to comply with their ethic.
The promotion of abortion through such organisations is cultural
imperialism at best and a recent innovation in moral reasoning that justifies the
death of the unborn child.
To be sure,
ancient cultures practiced abortion, and the Greeks and Romans practiced
infanticide. Something more was needed to protect the life of an unborn child.
The Jewish-Christian tradition added the moral justification that humans were
not to be put to death because they were different from animals in this regard:
they were created in the image of God:
Whoever
sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for
in his own image God made humankind (Genesis 9.6, ESV).
Not only is the unborn child
a separate person, innocent of criminal acts, without evil intent, and the
charge of both mother and father; the unborn child is also created in the image
of God. Christian tradition has also
emphasised and developed morally along the Jewish-Christian trajectory of protecting
the vulnerable. The Modernist focus on science moved the moral question of
abortion from protection of the vulnerable, including the foetus, to whether a
life was viable.[3]
The West, or a very vocal
and representative faction in the West, has been trying to unwind its own moral
development over many centuries for the past several decades, particularly in
regard to the protection of the life of the unborn, It has instead not only developed but also is
trying to enforce its new moral arguments for abortion on the rest of the
world, tying this to foreign aid or promoting it through ‘health’, education,
and women’s rights.[4]
In a postmodern world of
moral relativism, it inconsistently champions its moral reasoning as universal,
a human ‘right’ to choose life or death for the unborn. In a post-paternalistic society, it has
advocated the rights of the woman over the man, especially in regard to
abortion. In a post-Enlightenment world,
it advocates scientific grounds for morality on the basis of viability rather
than a Judeo-Christian concern to aid the vulnerable. While losing its own scientific arguments as
the early development of the foetus has been demonstrated more and more, it
nevertheless insists on abortion as a right (since the scientific argument was
all along really only a foil). In a post-Christian
world, arguments about the human person as precious and protected for its being
created in the image of God are rejected in favour of ‘my rights’ and ‘women’s
rights’.
[1] Diodorus, Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes,
Books I-II, trans. C. H. Oldfather (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1933).
[2] . Roman Antiquities, Volume I: Books 1-2, trans. Earnest Cary (Loeb
Classical Library 319; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937).
[3] See further, Rollin G.
Grams, ‘Abortion, Culture, and the Church: Moving from Questions of Viability
to Concerns for Vulnerability,’ Bible and
Mission (May 5, 2017); online at: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2017/05/abortion-culture-and-church-moving-from.html (accessed 3 October, 2023).
[4] This essay is not meant to be read as anti-Western but to explain
the West’s role in cultural imperialism in regard to abortion. China is hardly any improvement over the West
in this regard.
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