Baselessly Basing On the Bible

"God, now they're saying that frozen embryos are children", opined the Facebook post. The word order seemed to imply a negative opinion, disapproval. That seems warranted. Shortly, some excessively imperceptive evangelical Christian will doubtless respond that it is indeed God saying it, or who said it, thousands, millions of years ago, in a book. The "they're" is the Supreme Court of the great but perhaps benighted state of alabama. Somebody in Alabama removed a few frozen human embryos from cold storage, dropped them, and ended several lives in waiting. A great misfortune, beyond question, one which invites regret and overreaction. Now, murder charges are possible. The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos are human beings, specifically, children. The baseles basis of this state high court rendering was presented, quite predictably, as "biblical". All life is formed in the image of God, from the first biological molecule, and therefore, to destroy frozen children, whether by intent or accident, is "effacing God". It was not stipulated preciesly how God is thereby effaced, by whom, or perhaps most importantly, whtether it is even remotely possible to "efface" the lord, here on this speck of mote dust floating along on the outskirts of a remote spiral arm of a perfectly ordinary galaxy. To "efface", according to the dictionary, means to delierately remove something, usually, from someone, often, a cervix from a woman. Not stipulated in the ruling was exactly what is being removed from God, nor when fetal molecules are considered embryos, and not children. Also, the presumption impies that God may in fact be female, a concept likely untenable to the conservative Alabama Supreme Court justices. In the Judeo-Christian scripture there is no mention of embryos, frozen, thawed, or unbothered in the womb, and there is no mention of abortion. Early in the Pentateuch there is a passage saying that life begins not at the moment of conception, not at the formation of an embryo, but, sensibly, at the moment the infant takes his or her first breath. When you least expect it, the bible comes through with a bit of common sense. People who disparage the bible by mentioning specific passages are often accused of "cherry picking." Now, it seems the Alabama court is doing its own bit of cherry harvesting. excluding from the one which George Washington is alleged to have chopped down. Washington himself lived in an era in which abortion was considered normal, natural, acceptable. Washington's friend Benjamin Franklin even prepared a lenghty treatise on how to accomplish it. We've come far, possibly in the wrong direction. Abortion is not desirable to anyone. Arguably, it is murder. It is pure expediency, desperation, a last resort. The solution is obviously effective, affordable, accessible birth control, without violence done against "Planned Parenthood". We can and must maintain the faith that there is, somewhere in the hearts and minds of human beings, an aceptble definition of precisely when life begins, when it ends, and at what point in early pregnancy it is morally, legally acceptable terminate life, and by whose authority we should arrive at these decisions. But we are not likley to find adequate moral or legal authority in either the Alabama or United States Supreme Court, and most certainly not in the Christian bible, which, as Goethe said, is, like all other books written exclusively by human beings, at best designed only to give names to our mistakes.