Abortion Apologetics Gosnell-style

In the new film 3801 Lancaster: An American Tragedy, we will hear convicted murderer and late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell defend his actions on Biblical grounds:

“Until I really completed my first Genesis to Revelation reading of the Bible, which I did since I was incarcerated, I really didn’t feel as comfortable as I am. I think it’s Genesis 2:7, expresses the breath of life as the beginning of life that God breathed breath—breathed life—into Adam. The Bible, to me, is very clear that life does not happen until breath.”

As an example of how NOT to interpret Scripture, let’s just point out two simple things:

1) Adam was created from the dust of the earth as a grown man. He was not conceived in a womb, so it’s nonsensical to compare the “birth” of Adam to the birth of any human being after him. If we want to talk about when a fetus begins breathing, it’s actually at conception. In utero, oxygen is delivered through the placenta to the baby, long before the likes of Kermit Gosnell can get a hold of them.

2) Gosnell cites Genesis 2:7 but claims to have read the Bible from “Genesis to Revelation.” Did he skip Psalm 139:13-16, Jeremiah 1:5, Luke 1:41,44, Galatians 1:15, and Ephesians 1:3,4, passages that clearly establish the existence of life and personhood before the point of birth?

Such a bad hermeneutic employs classic cherry-picking, but while having the entire Bible to pick from, cherry-picking a verse completely irrelevant to a case for abortion. Even Gosnell’s own medical textbooks tell him that life begins before a child reaches the delivery room air, and his desperate moral appeal doesn’t change that truth. Gosnell is interested in saving one life: his own.

We don’t need more examples of terrible hermeneutics, but what we can gain from this one is a contemplation of the man behind it. Kermit Gosnell is an enemy, but we should practice praying for him. Whether he’s read the whole Bible is not evident in his apologetics for abortion, but he should do it again. In its pages are the gospel and the possibility for redemption, even for Kermit Gosnell.