Celebrated author C. S. Lewis, who built a career on the basis of his love for words, distinguishes in Mere Christianity (1952) between two radically different meanings that the ancient Greeks had for the word “life.” The Greek word bios (from which we derive the word biology) refers to individual biological life, the life that pulsates throughout any living thing. Zoe, on the other hand, refers to life that can be shared, life that expresses itself beyond the biological existence of the individual. Attending to this important distinction, Lewis states that bios is “the Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe.”

In order to express the gap between bios and zoe, Lewis compares them to a statue and a living being. With Christianity in mind, he says that, “We are the statues and there is a rumor going around that some of us are some day going to come to life.” Here, for C. S. Lewis, is the vital difference between a person who sleeps through life and one who is animated by the grace of God. It is the difference between a person who lives only for himself and the Christian who shares his life with God and neighbor.

In John 10:10, when the Gospel writer cites the words of Christ—“I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly”—he employs the word zoe. It is clear from the text that the life that radiates from God can be given to others, so that human beings and God can share the same life. Creation also exemplifies how God can spread His life throughout the cosmos. Zoe is life enriched far beyond bios, which, by comparison, is static. This important distinction in the Greek language provided the context in which the life of Christ could be understood and appreciated. According to Christian theology, the life that Christ gives transforms a person from a mere individual to a person who awakens to a world beyond himself and thereby lives on a broader level, as a person who shares himself with others.

Given this important distinction between bios and zoe, a question of utmost importance may be asked: What type of life characterizes the unborn child? The Christian answer to this question is found in Luke 1:40-42, when Mary “entered the house of Zachary and saluted Elizabeth. And it came to pass, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe in her womb leapt . . . For behold, the moment that the sound of thy greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leapt for joy.” The “babe,” John the Baptist, was enjoying something more than a self-enclosed life (bios). His response to Mary’s voice was a clear example of zoe, a life that reached out beyond his biological individuality.

What happened during the Visitation is an account that is acceptable to Christians. We ask, then, whether we can find examples in the secular world in which there is evidence that the unborn can participate in a zoe form of life. Tom Verny, a Toronto psychiatrist, penned The Secret Life of the Unborn Child (1981, Simon & Schuster) with John Kelly. It was the product of seven years of clinical study on 300 patients and documented medical research from European and North American scientists. It is evident from Verny’s investigations that more is going on in the psychic life of the unborn than most people realize. “Within the past decade,” he writes, “the unthinking infant I learned about in medical school during the late 1950s has suddenly given way to an amazingly resilient, resourceful creature who emerges from the womb with what—to physicians of my generation—seems like a breath-taking array of emotional, intellectual and physical capacities.”

Scientists are perennially discovering realities that have always been there. Oxygen was always there, but it was not “discovered” until Carl Wilhelm Scheele confirmed its presence around the year 1772. (Joseph Priestley usually gets credit for the discovery of the gas in 1774 because his work was published first.) How much more there is to the unborn child remains to be discovered. It is very likely that considerable insights will be found in this small but wondrous creature.

Verny cites an interesting study done by Dr. Michelle Clements, an audiologist. She found that the unborn child has distinct musical likes and dislikes. When the music of Vivaldi or Mozart was played, fetal heart rates invariably steadied and kicking declined. On the other hand, rock music “drove most fetuses to distraction,” causing them to “kick violently.”

Boris Brott, conductor of the Hamilton Symphony Orchestra, confessed in an interview that, “music has been a part of me since before birth.” He was mystified that he knew musical pieces sight unseen. His mother was a cellist. “All the scores I knew sight unseen,” he averred, “were ones she had played

while she was pregnant with me.” In another example, a mother found her two-year-old daughter sitting on the living room floor chanting, “Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.” These were the very words that were part of her Lamaze exercise.

Dr. Alfred Tomatis, a Parisian professor of psycholinguistics, treated an autistic child. What was baffling, however, was that the child’s comprehension improved markedly whenever her parents spoke to her in English instead of French. This was especially puzzling since no one before had ever spoken to her in English. It was finally ascertained that, for most of her pregnancy, the mother had worked in a Paris import-export firm where only English was spoken. The child was more adept at learning a language before she was born than after she was born. Sir William Liley, the founder of fetology, found that a fetus from the twenty-fifth week on will literally jump in rhythm to the beat of an orchestral drum. A pregnant mother may defer going to a concert that features Ravel’s Bolero until her third trimester.

The famous English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) attributed his premature birth to his mother’s panic over the Spanish Armada’s impend-ing invasion. He famously stated in his autobiography, “my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear.” It is a matter of conjecture as to what extent his traumatic delivery (on Good Friday, no less) affected his pessimistic philosophy. Nonetheless, fear played a decisive role in Hobbes’s thinking. It seems that he found it difficult to make the transition from bios to zoe. His most celebrated quote in Leviathan is that the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” We find affirmation of the mother and her unborn child’s shared life in Leonardo da Vinci’s Quaderni: “the same soul governs two bodies . . . the things desired by the mother are often impressed upon the child which the mother carries at the time of the desire . . . one will, one supreme desire, one fear that a mother has, or mental pain has more power over the child than over the mother, since frequently the child loses its life thereby.”

The evidence that Verny collected indicates that the life of the unborn is more than bios. It enters into that realm of zoe, in which there are specific forms of communication relayed from one person to another. The zoe aspect of the unborn makes them easier to recognize as human beings and members of the human family.

Verny’s book was controversial. No Canadian publisher would touch it. “People in this country want nice safe ideas. They aren’t willing to take any risks,” Verny stated to the press. It was, however, published in the United States by Simon & Schuster. The book was controversial not because it was unscientific, but because it ruffled the feathers of those who do not want women to be discouraged from having an abortion. Presumably, a mother

would hesitate to undergo an abortion if she knew more about the extraordinary being she was carrying. Verny became a pariah to his peers. “In the beginning,” Verny stated, “I wanted to do a modest job of extending the boundaries of psychiatry. But I wasn’t prepared for the anger, criticism and hostility of my colleagues.” So many of his colleagues were taking a bow to political correctness. But the direct consequence of suppressing information about the life of the unborn was that fewer women would know about the zoe life of their unborn, and more unborn children would perish due to that absence of information.

While science is always opening the door to new discoveries, some of these discoveries do not meet with cultural approval. Science itself is not at fault, but some scientists are. Being a scientist and being human are inseparable. We praise science but sometimes forget that scientists are cultural beings and as susceptible as anyone else to the influence of the Zeitgeist. We are, so to speak, enveloped within a cultural mist and, like embryos, are affected by that mist. In a Christian sense, we are all waiting to be born, to emerge from the cocoon of culture and enjoy the freedom to be ourselves.

Science, in exploring the life of the unborn child, confirms what people throughout the ages have known through intuition; namely, that this developing entity is far more than an insensate being limited to a bios quality of life. The fact that a zoe life can be attributed to the unborn is an affirmation of its dignity and status as a human being. It has the innate capacity to share its life with another—notably, its mother. This may be a disturbing fact to some, but it is a truth, and it is only through truth that we can best serve the needs of justice.

There is a bitter irony in the fact that the unborn child is capable of sharing its life with its mother, whereas informed scientists can refuse to share their knowledge of the unborn child with mothers. It is not uncommon in the present culture for the notion of sharing to be misunderstood as “imposing.” A teacher does not want to impose ideas on students. He wants to share what he knows. Gnosiophobia is the technical term for “fear of knowledge.” Ignorance, however, is not a blissful refuge. Knowledge may clash with a person’s preference. Abortion is often chosen simply because it is preferred. There are times when it takes courage to accept the truth.

Actress Michelle Williams delivered a fiery speech (January 6, 2020) about reproductive rights on the occasion of receiving a Golden Globe award, saying, “I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose, when to have my children, and with whom.” It was an antiseptic way of referring to her abortion. She “employed a choice.” It is the timing that is propitious, not the child. But she abandoned a shared life with her child so that she could possess an object which has no capacity for sharing. We cannot enjoy a shared life with an object. One can hug a trophy, but it remains unresponsive. How little society appreciates the unborn child who reminds us, by its very nature, that life is to be shared. Zoe is the life that liberates us from being incarcerated in bios. The unborn is witness to this as it enriches the zoe dimension in the pregnant woman.

Dr. Tom Verny deserves high praise for bringing to light additional and pertinent information about the nature of the unborn. He also deserves plaudits for putting up with the animosity of some of his colleagues. It is now up to others—obstetricians and pregnant women—to be willing to profit from his discoveries.

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Original Bio:

Dr. Donald DeMarco is Prof. Emeritus/St. Jerome’s University and Adjunct Professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest books, How to Navigate through Life, Apostles of the Culture of Life, Reflections on the Covid-19 Pandemic: Searching for Understanding, and The War on Civility are available on amazon.com