When Does Life Begin?
The inspired psalmist observed: “For you formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well” (Psalm 139:13-14).
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
The Lord said to the prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you;” (Jeremiah 1:5).
The prophet Isaiah confirmed: “Listen, O coastlands, to Me, and take heed, you peoples from afar! The Lord has called Me from the womb; From the matrix of My mother He has made mention of My name… And now the Lord says, Who formed Me from the womb to be His servant” (Isaiah 49:1,5)
When James observed that “the body apart from the spirit is dead” (James 2:26), the corollary must also be true in that if the body is living, then the spirit must be present.
After experiencing terrible tragedy, Job asked: “Why did I not die from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bore me?” (3:11). How can something die if it is not first living? In Job 3:13-16, the patriarch listed several formerly-living-but-now-dead people with whom he would have had something in common if he had died in utero. He mentions kings and princes and child who experienced a “hidden untimely birth” (i.e., a miscarriage). Job considered the miscarried child to be in the same category as others who once lived but had died.
It is obvious from the text that God views life to begin at conception rather than birth.