Does a miscarried baby even have a soul inside it?

Question

Or is it just a failed piece of human genetics? If it had a soul, why does it die before life?

Answer 1

According to Muslims it does have a soul at 120 days.

Answer 2

Micheele,

It's a good question, and a very difficult one to answer. At most, we can speculate. (I am using Christianity as a basis here; other faiths might differ in some ways.)

I have seen it projected that the number of fertilized eggs that never result in a baby being born is 35-50%. So we're not even talking about obvious miscarriages; if a soul exists before the body is born, then God is permitting a large number of "souls" to never even exist physically. This seems a bit odd to me.

The most commonly quoted Bible verse is the one where David sings about how God knew him before he was born, while he was in his mother's womb. Unfortunately, the Psalms are essentially "song lyrics" and these particular lyrics are meant convey the idea that God and David are intimately connected, that David was not an "accident," that David believed God had a plan for him, etc.; it was never meant as a scientific statement of when David's soul came into existence, it was meant to convey an idea.

(As a similar example, I could just as easily say that I "know" a character in a story I plan to write but have not yet written... Does that character yet exist, even if I have not yet "given birth" to him? Or does simply the IDEA of the character exist? I think, in their attempts to find solid answers, people read more into these things than they can.)

An interesting point: The Jews of the OT really did not separate the body from the soul as we do today in our culture; our beliefs are taken mostly from the Greek philosophers, in regards to soul and body being different. It wasn't as if the soul was the "person," merely housed in the physical body, as we imagine it. To the Jews, the body and soul were inseparable.

Thus the person would not really have existed until the physical body was developing and born, and the "soul" grew along with the body.

[This is also the reason that the resurrection of the actual body is so important in Christianity; we cannot be separated from our bodies and have just "souls," God is going to restore life to our dead forms because that body is an essential part of who we are.]

So I don't know the answer to your question, nor do I think we can know. I think the most we can say is that, if God is the creator of life, then to interfere with the process (example: abortion or harvesting tissue such as with stem cells) is a dangerous prospect from that moral ground; we are intruding into areas that we were never meant to.

The only other thing that could be said is that, if God is who He says he is (from the Christian perspective), then he will "do right" by the souls he has created, no matter whether he creates them before the body's conception or whether the baby never comes to term. We just don't know.

Answer 3

A dear friend of mine married her college sweetheart a couple of years ago--at the age of 42. She had two children from a previous marriage, but since she and her new husband had taken so long to finally get together, they wanted very much to have a baby together.

A month into her pregnancy, she miscarried, something she knew was highly possible due to her age. Sometime in the week after that was when...which state was it, North Carolina, that put a statewide ban on abortions? Anyway, we were watching the news on that, and she said to me, "I wonder if they know how it makes someone in my situation feel when they talk about how life starts at the moment of conception. I'm already grieving over my hopes and dreams dying, and I would hate to be grieving for a child dying as well."

Answer 4

The Bible says that God knows us before we are born. This would indicate that there is a soul. My guess would be that this soul would get a second chance in a new baby. Who knows

Answer 5

No. The soul has 'dibbs' on the life, but it doesn't 'move in' until the time of birth. In the case of miscarriage or abortion, that same soul will return in the next pregnancy by the mother.

Answer 6

I think a miscarried baby has a soul. I also think when we get to heaven, those that have lost their baby...will get to see them (as spirit...we will all be spirit.)

Answer 7

No. I was told that a soul entered a baby's body with the first breath that was taken.

Answer 8

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart... - Jer 1:5
So I think YES!

Answer 9

Yes definitly!