Editor's Note: We have had several people ask about passages that relate to life before birth and which might be related to the abortion issue. Here is a partial list from the Marquette, Michigan, Church of Christ bulletin that we felt might be useful.

Exodus 21:22-24. When men strive together and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined.... If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.

Job 10:8-12. Thy hands fashioned me altogether, and wouldst thou destroy me? Remember now, that thou hast made me as clay; And wouldst thou turn me into dust again? Didst thou not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese; clothe me with skin and flesh. and knit me together with bone and sinews? Thou hast granted me life and loving kindness; and Thy care has preserved my Spirit.

Job 33:4. The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Psalm 139:13-16. For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substances and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.

Ecclesiastes 11:5. As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

Isaiah 44:2. Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you: Fear not.

Isaiah 44:24. Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the One who formed you from the womb, I, the Lord, am the maker of all things.

Isaiah 49:1,5. The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the body of my mother hath he made mention of my name. [He] formed me from the womb to be his servant.

Isaiah 49:15,16. Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget; yet I will not forget thee. Behold, I have engraved thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls [of Zion] are continually before me.

Jeremiah 1:5. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.

Luke 1:15. For he [John the Baptist] will be great before the Lord, and he shall drink no wine nor strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.

Luke 1:41-44. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit..."For behold, when the void of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy."

John 16:21. When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child* is born into the world.

*The word translated child here is the Greek word anthropos which literally means man or human being.

Galatians 1:15,16. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me,...I did not confer with flesh and blood.

Back to Contents Does God Exist?, Sep/Oct 1996