The issue of abortion in the United States rests on one new, revolutionary idea, that the fetus is a “living human being” from the “moment of conception.” In his commentary, Dr. Andrew Oishi explains clearly and sincerely why he believes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling was scientifically, ethically, philosophically and practically correct (“On abortion, UH’s School of Medicine doesn’t speak for me,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, May 4). His belief is a statement of ultimate concern, a religious conviction that he professes and ardently defends.

Christian theologian Paul Tillich, in “The Dynamics of Faith,” identified ultimate concern as one’s authentic faith in a transcendent authority, God. Inauthentic faith, on the other hand, worshiped the state, earthly authorities, over the transcendent God.

The idea that the fetus is a human being is new in monotheism. Before the time of King David, devotees of Moloch sacrificed their first born. In the time of Jesus, Roman fathers could decide to kill a child after it was born. In the Judeo-Christian world, a child is a human being at birth, subject to the laws of society. To confer that status on an unborn fetus now, is revolutionary.

The God of monotheism condemns child sacrifice, is silent on the question of infanticide, and says nothing about abortion. Every human society decides who is a human being. Western societies decided over millennia that one becomes human at birth, not before.

Is there such a thing as a “moment” of conception? Time is a slippery thing. But let’s say there is a moment when egg meets sperm and a new cell divides, beginning the process of life. Is the group of cells a human being when it obstructs the fallopian tubes, ending its life in an ectopic pregnancy? Is it a human being when it develops abnormally and dies in the womb? “Life” is one thing. A “human being” is another. One routinely kills mosquitoes. One murders a human being.

Spiritually, ethically and legally, one becomes a human being at birth. Dr. Oishi and those who share his ultimate concern for the fetus promote a revolutionary view, a compassion misplaced on a “potential” human being at the expense of the pregnant human being.

As a physician, Dr. Oishi knows that pregnancy is a medical condition, and that fetuses die from random abnormal developments. But termination of a pregnancy is a choice made by the person and her doctor, on whom her future depends. Outlawing abortion values the life of a fetus over her life, takes her choice and gives it to strangers who don’t face the consequences.

Abortion is tragic even when it is necessary. When a child is pregnant, when a twin dies in the womb, when a fertilized egg blocks a tube, when a woman is unable to care for a child, when no one helps a single mother, when a fetus will die after birth — who should decide to continue a pregnancy? Here we come full circle to ultimate concern. What kind of authority are anti-abortionists worshiping, transcendent or earthly?

I can’t change the minds of the doctrinaire: men who will never be pregnant, women who defer to their presumed superiors. But I can challenge Dr. Oishi’s abstract prohibition, because abortion is about who is a human being, a pregnant woman or the fetus she carries. Everything else is commentary.

Jean E. Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is a historian of religions.