A pro-choice organization called Catholics for Choice recently stated, “remember that Mary had a choice, and you should too.” The choice here refers to pregnancy, and the point is that Mary could have said no to the pregnancy. Mary’s choice, so they imply, means that we also have a choice when it comes to pregnancy because we can abort fetuses in the womb.
I disagree.
The dogma of the virgin birth denies the logic of abortion. It rejects the possibility of ending life in the womb because Christ became fully human when the Spirit overshadowed Mary from the moment of new life in the womb (Luke 1:35). He was like us in every way except without sin (Heb 2:17; 4:15), and this every way applies to his gestational growth in the womb.
The alternative would be that the Word adopted flesh once it became sentient or viable, a position rejected as heresy amongst early Christians.
As Jesus remembers his time in the womb of Mary, he says, “On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God” (Ps 22:10). Ecclesiastes reminds us that “the Spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child,” and for this reason, God is the one who “makes everything” (Ecc 11:5). As the Lord and Giver of life, God knits together new life in the womb of a child naturally begotten (Ps 139:13–16).
Whatever else we may say about a fetus in a womb, we must affirm that God is the maker of the fetus that we naturally beget through sex. As the opening chapters in Genesis clearly explain, “Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: 4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters” (Gen 5:3–4 KJV). These terms beget, begat, and begotten point to the entire process of sexual act and birth.
It is a generic word, although a word less used in English today, which has lessened our ability to imagine theologically how life comes into being. But it is because God is Father of the Son eternally, that humans in time relate to another as Father and son or parent and child (Eph 3:14–15).
The death logic of Catholics for Choice gainsays the dogma of the virgin birth. But the virgin birth crucifies the logic of abortion.
The way fathers and sons relate today through a relation of begetting and being begotten provides an analogy for us to understand how the Father and Son relate to one another while remaining the one God of Israel: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18 KJV).
This relation implies life—eternal life since the Father has eternally generated the Son, who is eternally begotten of the Father. Hence, Jesus will say, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26). With God is a fountain of life (Ps 36:9), his Spirit gives life (John 6:63) because the Spirit proceeds from the Fountain of Life through the one who received life In Himself. God is abundant and eternal life in himself.
So Jesus says, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). To know Life from Life is to know eternal life.
And this Life from Life became flesh (John 1:14), when the Spirit descended upon Mary (Luke 1:35), became the union of divinity and humanity in his Person. The Word, remaining what he was, became what he was not. He became like us in every way gestationally so that he could heal us fully. For what he did not assume, he could not heal; but he assumed our whole humanity so that he could heal our whole humanity.
So John the Baptist leapt in the womb when he came into contact with Jesus in the womb of Mary, “And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb” because “when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:41, 44). And already, Elizabeth can call Jesus “my Lord” while he remains in the womb of Mary (Luke 1:43).
The virgin birth tells us that the Son of God took on the form of a servant, fully and completely, at the moment the Spirit descended upon Mary. It tells us that Christ did not adopt a fetus when it became viable or after its birth. If so, he would have elevated a human into a lordly man and would have taken a human person into his life. But Christ was always the person of his human body. He always made flesh his own.
And even if one might still dare to speak of the life within the womb of Mary as not yet human, know that God the Son is begotten, not made, but every other creature in the womb is begotten naturally and made of God. And shall we unmake by abortion what God knits together in the womb? Shall we unmake what God has made?
God has not given us dominion over the fetuses in the womb but has made life in the womb through his Spirit. “Did not he who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?” (Job 31:5). That begotten life belongs to God its maker, and he has always intended human generation to be the matrix of life.
This is why Adam names Eve because her name means “mother of all living” (Gen 3:20). And with Yahweh, she cocreates life (Gen 4:1). God makes life; Eve bears begotten life in her womb.
No, I do not find Catholics for Choice to make a persuasive argument. Instead, I find their logic to be one of death, of the power of the one who uses death to enslave the human race (Heb 2:14–15). The matrix of life in Mary’s womb—that womb wider than heaven—bore within itself Life Itself so that through childbirth she might save not only herself but bear the Redeemer of the whole human race.
The death logic of Catholics for Choice gainsays the dogma of the virgin birth. But the virgin birth crucifies the logic of abortion. It tells us that the Son of God became flesh, and so was knit together in the womb of Mary. It tells us that the eternally begotten Son of the Father became the temporally begotten child of Mary. And he did not adopt that flesh, but Christ made that flesh his very own at every moment it was.
