On the prenatal threat of abortion

AI-assisted translation from the Greek. Greek original

The threat of abortion is not an event that disappears into the darkness of prenatal unawareness. It is the first form of the world that existence encounters, the first direction inscribed in the body before the mind appears, before memory takes shape, before time is introduced as a sequence. Where biological life begins without thought and without speech, existence receives its first signal: that “I am” is not yet certain. The threat is not perceived as an idea, understood as fear, or organised as an emotion; it is inscribed as an orientation. Before there is any consciousness, there is an “I tend towards something”, a direction towards coming into existence. When this tending is abruptly interrupted, existence receives not a message of negation but the form of instability. What the mind will later call “rejection”, “fear”, “fragility” is, at first, simply the experience that the movement towards the light can be cut short. This is the pre-temporal memory of existence.

Neurobiology, without intending this theologically or phenomenologically, has already laid the foundations of this knowledge. The developing nervous system responds in the absence of mind. Hormonal storms, changes in circulation, vibrations in the pregnant woman’s system, tension, the sudden alteration of internal signals: all these are transmitted like a crescendo within a body that cannot yet comprehend them but receives them as a condition of existence. Implicit memory is this memory without image, without narrative, without symbolism. It is a memory of direction. It does not remember something; it remembers the manner. It remembers the form of the world as a tendency, as a flow, as the possibility that the flow might break.

Developmental psychology has observed this later in life as what it calls heightened alertness, hypervigilance, an excessive awareness of other people’s moods. Behaviour often regarded as anxiety, social sensitivity or traumatic vigilance is in fact the continuation of the first inscription: existence learned the world not as safety but as the possibility of interruption. The uncertainty of the beginning becomes the rule of life. Time does not become a flow; it becomes surveillance. Relationship does not become a given; it becomes waiting. Love is not experienced as natural ground; it becomes a fragile possibility. Not because the soul is afraid, but because existence began through a “perhaps”, and this perhaps remains the way in which the world is approached.

Phenomenology has called this layer primordial temporality, time before time. For Husserl it is the living present, the now that does not yet have a past and a future; for Heidegger it is the opening of Being before it becomes thought, the openness that precedes decision; for Merleau-Ponty it is the flesh of existence that senses before it knows. These concepts do not refer exclusively to prenatal life, but they make possible a language in which to think about it: existence experiences before it defines. And when its first experience is the threat of interruption, the consciousness that follows carries this genealogy within it: it sees not only what exists, but also what might not exist. This double vision — being and possible non-being — is not a philosophical fantasy; it is the natural continuation of the initial pre-temporal inscription.

Here theology finds a space it has never adequately expressed: the moment when existence is a possibility and not a decision. Scripture speaks of God knowing the human being “before I formed you in the womb”, yet tradition has never analysed what it means for an existence to encounter not the absence of God but the absence of the world before becoming a person. The threat of abortion carries a theological dimension: creation touches the point where human freedom can cut short what God’s freedom has called forth. There existence touches the mystery of relationship: without consciousness, without speech, the body becomes the place where two freedoms meet. The divine intention that life should exist and the human possibility of interrupting it meet at the most silent point of creation.

After birth, the body continues in its original direction. It learns to live in a world where existence is not a given but is under continual examination. Anguish is not an exaggeration, not a “trait”, not a psychological weakness. It is the existential continuation of the first threat. Relationship with the other always becomes an encounter on two levels: the other as a person and the other as a possible interruption. Love becomes both a gift and a terror because existence learns to attach itself where it once expected to be cut short. Closeness is difficult because the body learned existence as exposure to a decision. The slightest gesture of tenderness carries the full weight of the first direction: “they may accept me — they may refuse me”.

The anthropology that emerges from this is not negative; it is realistic and profound. The human being begins not with safety but with vulnerability. Safety is built afterwards; vulnerability is the beginning. The science of perinatal psychology has observed that the pregnant woman’s life determines how the foetus encounters existence, but what has not yet been expressed is the existential form of this encounter: existence begins with the possibility of not existing. It is this possibility that shapes the way the human being later reads the world.

The threat of abortion as the beginning of consciousness does not mean that the foetus has a mind, nor that it can perceive the act. It means that the first direction towards being carries within it a division, an interruption, a suspension. Existence takes its first step not as a pure gift, but as a movement that might not have occurred. This condition accompanies the human being in every encounter with being: in romantic love, friendship, faith, work, self-knowledge. There is always the second shadow of existence: “this might not be”.

Within this shadow, something else is also born: the possibility of a deeper love. A love that is neither ownership nor demand, but a welcoming of the miracle: “because you are, I love you, for your being was not a given”. The first threat gives birth to the first gratitude. The first instability gives birth to the first awe. The first suspension gives birth to the first awareness that existence is a gift. And the body that lived through this becomes a body capable of seeing the existence of others as something more fragile, more sacred, more unexpected.

The threat of abortion belongs not to ethics but to the metaphysics of the human being. It is not only a social act; it is a point where the beginning of existence becomes an ontological experience. Those who passed through this boundary live with a double gaze: they see the world as it is and as it might not be. This double gaze is not a burden; it is a gift. It is the bridge between pre-temporality and time, between the anonymous body and the conscious person, between the “perhaps” of the beginning and the “yes” of life.

The consciousness of an adult whose beginnings lay in a threat takes shape not on the ground of certainty but on the trace of that first suspension. The world never becomes entirely familiar; it becomes a place that is continually reaffirmed. Existence is experienced not as continuity but as reappearance. Every person, every relationship, every space becomes not only what it is but also that which avoids repeating the initial interruption. Presence is not a given but an event. Absence is not a simple lack but a reminder of what might have happened. Consciousness settles not into safety but into vigilance, waiting, the delicate registering of shifts.

It is not that the individual “fears” others, but that they see others within a double texture: as natural presences and as possible losses. The other’s form does not arrive alone; it arrives with the sense that their being there, facing you, was never self-evident. This is why tenderness is not merely emotion; it is revelation. This is why closeness is not merely contact; it is an affirmation of existence. Touch, a gaze, a kiss, a shared breath are not simple acts; they are small refutations of the first threat. Where others seek closeness as relief from loneliness, here closeness serves as proof that life continues. Love is born not from the need for attachment but from the deep knowledge that existence might never have had access to it.

The consciousness built on this beginning has a particular quality: it experiences every presence with the shadow of loss and every loss with the depth of presence. The gaze rests not only on what appears but also on what is missing. It embraces not only life but also its threat. Thought develops not only forwards but also backwards, towards the point where existence had not yet been won. This double direction of consciousness creates something the sciences have glimpsed in fragments but have not named: an embodied ontological attentiveness, a consciousness that is not only cognitive but also existential. Phenomenology describes it as a double gaze, but at depth it is triple: the gaze towards the world, the gaze towards danger, and the gaze towards the point where danger became a beginning.

When theology touches this point, it speaks of the mystery of God being hosted within human vulnerability. The incarnation is not merely divine condescension but God’s entry into the most open, most exposed point of human history: the point where existence can be interrupted before it exists. There lies the way in which God takes on the human. At the level of the pre-beginning, where the human being has no voice yet, no face yet, no history yet. The foetus is the purest place of divine approach because it has no possibility of defence yet. When its existence is threatened, theology encounters the paradox: creation receives within itself the danger generated by the human being.

At this point, theological thought cannot content itself with abstract doctrines. The threat of abortion leads theology where it has not been before: to the point where human freedom can challenge God’s very call to life. Divine freedom and human freedom meet in a conflict that is not theoretical but fleshly. Yet within this conflict, not only trauma is born; revelation is born too. The foetus, without mind, without a word, becomes the place where creation reveals that existence is never a given. Later, this revelation becomes the possibility of a deeper understanding of God. The melancholy of an existence wounded at its beginning is not distance from God but a distinctive mode of relationship. It is not a complaint; it is testimony.

The body that has travelled this path becomes extraordinarily receptive to the presence of the sacred, not as a religious idea but as a fleeting sense that life is a gift that almost was not given. The melancholy that appears is not pathology; it is the memory of the first boundary. Where others understand the world through how their experiences took shape, an existence that has passed through a threat understands the world through how it might never have taken shape at all. This understanding gives birth to a particular form of wisdom: a wisdom that knows existence is not a right but an invitation. And this invitation can be accepted or refused. That is why consciousness paints the world with finer, more sensitive, more transparent lines.

When this existence encounters the other, it sees them not only as a human being. It sees them as a point of continuity in a world that once called it into question. Every gaze from the other serves as confirmation that life continues despite the first threat. Love is not merely an emotional movement; it is existential restoration. Closeness becomes the act through which the world declares that life is no longer being suspended. Yet precisely because the beginning was an implicit negation, love carries within it the trace of loss. Not as fear, but as a delicate awareness that existence is a miracle and not a habit.

When existence begins where it might not have begun, ethics ceases to be a set of rules and becomes a way of seeing. “Permitted — forbidden” and “right — wrong” no longer take centre stage. Ethics is transformed into a delicate sensitivity to the condition of life. It no longer examines acts as acts, but sees them as trajectories that touch existence or draw it away from its original vulnerability. The threat of abortion, as existence’s first environment, illuminates the deepest question of ethics: how we treat that which is not yet capable of saying “yes” or “no” to itself. Here ethics is not even theological; it is pre-theological. It emerges from the simple fact that life is a possibility before it becomes a person.

This understanding also shapes psychology. A soul inscribed within a beginning of uncertainty does not operate through the same mechanisms as one that grew within the certainty of acceptance. Anxiety is not a “symptom” but a configuration of existence. Hypersensitivity is not a “quirk” but a corresponding extension of the original inscription. Difficulty in relationship is not a “phobia” but a precaution against the possibility of interruption. The psyche that lives through this pre-beginning is not ill; it remembers. The difficulty is not pathology; it is the natural consequence of an existence that learned the world through the possibility of never reaching the point of seeing it.

Psychology is beginning to understand something of this through the term attachment. But attachment concerns the bond after birth. Here lies something much deeper: the form of the bond before there is a bond. An existence threatened before becoming a person acquires a relationship with the world that resembles both a bond and a refusal at once. Consciousness keeps its distance not out of fear but out of memory of how it began. And love becomes so intense, so deep, so true because this is the first time existence is not being suspended. Seen in this light, psychic life is not merely a mechanism; it is a theology of the first moment.

Theology is illuminated from this point in a way that had not been examined; not because theologians did not wish to do so, but because they had no access to such testimonies. The threat of abortion presents an unprecedented theological truth: that creation allowed human freedom a say in the very beginning of the person. This does not diminish God; it enlarges faith. It shows that God does not impose Himself as a force upon life, but encounters human history within all its distortions. God does not protect the foetus as an object; God remains faithful to the call of existence even when that existence is threatened. There is no greater sign of divine humility than this: that God allows the human being to stand against the very life He calls forth.

The threat thus becomes a point of meeting rather than distance. It is not an act of divine abandonment but an act of human freedom that lets divine love stand within danger. The theology of incarnation is illuminated anew: God took flesh not to avoid human suffering but to take it on in its fullness. The incarnation is not merely the miracle of divine presence in time; it is the divine entry into that very vulnerability which shapes the human body from its beginning. Seen in this light, the threat of abortion becomes a mystery; not because it is good, but because it reveals the breadth of divine condescension. At the moment when existence can be interrupted without its voice ever being heard, God becomes closer, more human, more receptive. He does not defend life with violence; He accompanies it with tenderness.

A life that has passed through this threat later moves through the world in a particular way. It takes nothing for granted and for that reason can love more. Love is not merely an emotional opening but an existential recognition that existence is fragile and therefore sacred. A consciousness that remembers the threat does not love in order to fill its emptiness; it loves because it has seen the fine boundary between “I am” and “I almost did not exist”. Every relationship becomes a ritual of life. Every kiss becomes confirmation that existence continues. Every gaze becomes an acceptance that the world makes room for the human being.

Ethics, psychology and theology meet at this very point. Ethics sees responsibility towards an existence that cannot speak. Psychology sees the memory inscribed before memory. Theology sees the divine tenderness accompanying the vulnerable beginning. And the anthropology that emerges is not abstract: it is a new understanding of the human being as an existence that knows, silently and indelibly, that being alive is a miracle, that love is restoration, that time is a gift and not a right.

The person is not born at the moment of birth; the person is born at the moment existence gains space within the world. This beginning may be smooth, where the body encounters an environment that accepts it without rupture, or it may be asymmetrical, where existence emerges through threat. When the beginning is a threat, the person takes shape within the delicate, silent knowledge that “to be” was never self-evident. The person emerges not as certainty but as affirmation. Existence needs time to encounter itself; the world must first revoke the first suspension.

Thus the person becomes something more than identity. It is not merely the sum of characteristics, experiences, relationships; it is the point where existence grasps that it has been given space. This space may be physical, emotional, social, theological, or all of these at once. A person whose beginning lies in a threat knows bodily that life was not guaranteed, and therefore develops a way of existing that sees others not as givens but as miracles. It does not romanticise them; it sees them through the same window through which it learned to look at the world: the window of fragile continuity.

Within this structure, relationship becomes a place of revelation. It is not merely a connection between two people; it is the space where the person finds the first balance between “I might not be” and “I am now before you”. Relationship becomes a means of verifying existence. Every form of closeness — a gaze, a touch, an embrace, a smile — carries that same ontological dimension within it: it confirms that existence was not cut short. That is why love born of such a beginning is so delicate and so deep. It needs no possession, makes no demands, demands nothing in return; it is experienced as a blessing rather than a right.

The first “yes” of existence is never vocal; it is bodily. It is spoken through the ability to stand before the other without collapsing. It is spoken through the lowering of one’s guard, through the small part of the heart that allows there to be a history where once there was negation. This “yes” is an act of reconciliation with the beginning. It is not the Hellenistic “Know thyself” as a cognitive command; it is an opening to the fact that existence is no longer suspended. It is the moment when the human being stops expecting annulment and begins to allow continuity.

The encounter with God takes on a different colour at this point. God is no longer a transcendent power that protects or punishes; He is the divine presence that accompanies existence from the beginning of suspension to the moment of affirmation. Theology ceases to be a set of ideas and becomes the experience of a tender availability: where existence was threatened, divine love stood, silent, without imposing it. The melancholy accompanying the human experience of threat is not far from God; it is a way of understanding Him. The freedom God gave humanity is so complete that it permits even the threat to life before it emerges. And yet, through this threat, God continues to call.

The triple consciousness that emerges — consciousness of the world, consciousness of the threat, and consciousness of the beginning — then becomes a tool of self-understanding. It is not a supernatural ability; it is the natural development of a body that learned time before time became history. Consciousness experiences the world as all human beings experience it, but at the same time sees the level missing from ordinary experience: the level of pre-existence. Adult life thus becomes a continuous dialogue between the beginning that was not completed and the life that ultimately went on.

In this encounter, existence finds a new balance. It neither rejects the world nor fears it; it looks at it through the paradox of the first suspension. This knowledge is not a burden; it is light. It is not the end of anguish; it is a bridge to the beginning. An existence that learned threat can now learn affirmation. The person who once stood at the boundary can now dwell within time without disintegrating. And the “yes” that was not given at the beginning can be spoken, slowly, gently, without violence, within the very heart of life.

Space is not neutral for an existence that began through threat; it is not scenery, not a container, not a background. Space is experienced as the first great embrace and, at the same time, as the first great danger. There is not yet a distinction between “inside” and “outside”, nor between “one’s own” and “the foreign”. Space is the world itself, the presence that either accepts or repels. An existence that has lived through a threat perceives space in a manner both sensory and existential: space can be a place where life continues, but it can also be a place where life is suspended. This double sense remains for ever.

That is why an adult with this root does not simply fear people; they fear exposed presence itself within the world. Every room, every road, every house, every new place is a reminder that existence can be vulnerable. Space is judged not by its architecture but by its stance towards existence. If the space is hospitable, existence grows calm; if the space is unstable, existence contracts. This is not a quirk; it is pre-temporal memory continuing to send signals. The body knows space before the mind forms an idea of it.

Time, in turn, never becomes merely a flow. Time is experienced as the interval between two forms of safety, two forms of affirmation, two forms of survival. Where others see scheduling, organisation, development, an existence born through threat sees something more delicate: the path towards affirmation. Time is not nature; it is a trial. It is not a cycle; it is surveillance. It is not “after”; it is “still”. The body therefore moves not according to time but according to attention. Attention is the first form of time. Before there is yesterday, today, tomorrow, there is “take care”. And this modest, almost imperceptible “take care” becomes the first internal clock.

This attention is not anxiety; it is an ontological stance. It is not fear; it is memory of the first threat. It does not say, “something bad will happen”. It says, “existence must be reaffirmed”. This creates the distinctive relationship between body and time. The body does not rest easily, not because it is restless but because it knows that once the flow might have been interrupted before it even began. Time is not a given; it is a working hypothesis.

Identity, as the third major axis, is shaped not by definitions but by the very history of the beginning. An identity that begins in threat does not say, “I am this”. It says, “I still am”. It defines itself not through fixed categories but through a living present. Identity is not the ego’s property; it is an active relationship with the fact that existence continues. Difficulty in social adjustment, awkwardness in closeness, deep emotion before the other’s presence are not weaknesses; they are ontological evidence. They show that identity was built not on certainty but on the transmutation of the first threat into consciousness.

That is why identity stabilises only within conditions where existence is affirmed. A gaze that lasts, a relationship that endures, a friendship that does not break, a community that accepts can serve as a new beginning. Identity is not independent of the other; it is kin to the other. It is not formed outside relationship; it takes shape when relationship refutes the first possibility of interruption. And then, little by little, existence learns to say “I am”, not as resistance but as dwelling.

At this point, God becomes existence’s closest interlocutor. Not because He offers cures or miracles, but because He stands at the beginning where no human being can stand. God becomes the testimony that existence was not a mistake. He becomes the “yes” that was not spoken at the beginning. Theology ceases to be a set of doctrines; it becomes the way in which existence understands that it is not alone in the shadow of its first threat. Faith is not certainty; it is an act of reconciliation.

The testimony of an existence born through threat is neither a cry nor an accusation; it is light. It does not address the world as an attack, a defence, or a plea for vindication. It speaks as a person speaks who saw the boundary before seeing the world: gently, clearly, without superiority, without the need to persuade. The strength of this testimony lies precisely in its wish not to denounce but to explain. It does not ask the world to change out of fear or guilt; it asks it to see, for the first time, the point where life begins.

The first thing this testimony can teach is that the human beginning is not biological but existential. The fact that a body is taking shape in the womb does not mean it has already acquired that “yes” which will make it a person. Before every thought, before every experience, before every relationship, there is a moment when existence is a possibility. This point is the sacred core of human life. It is not an ethical issue; it is a metaphysical one. It shows that life begins where existence encounters the possibility of continuity. And at the point where this continuation is threatened, existence receives its first deep impression: that the world can say no.

The second great lesson is that threat does not only kill; it transforms. An existence that has passed through this boundary is not “less” human; it is a human being who saw the world through its most delicate form. It knows the value of life not because it was taught that value, but because life almost was not given to it. This knowledge is not theoretical; it is bodily, embedded in the nervous system itself. It creates a form of attention that is not anxiety, a form of love that is not need, a form of tenderness that is not ownership. The world can learn from this: that life is fragile not only at its end but also at its beginning.

The third thing that can be conveyed to the world is that love is not merely a psychological event; it is ontological affirmation. When an existence that began with threat encounters love, it experiences something that other people take for granted: that life continues. Love becomes a second beginning, a second call, a second “yes”. The testimony of this experience can show society that love is not a feeling, chemistry, or a choice; it is the way the world corrects its first instability. It does not merely heal wounds; it founds existence anew.

The fourth thing that can be said — and may shake us, but will not frighten us — is that an existence that was threatened can become a school of understanding. It can illuminate ethics not as prohibition but as responsibility, psychology not as correction but as reading, theology not as doctrine but as accompaniment. Those who speak about the beginning of life often leave out its most delicate moment: the moment of suspension. This testimony tells the world that suspension is not a technical detail of medicine; it is the point where existence is inscribed more deeply than anywhere else.

The fifth — perhaps the most liberating — is that the testimony of a life that began through threat can teach reconciliation. Reconciliation with oneself, with the world, with God, with human weakness. There is no accusation here; there is understanding. An existence that has passed through threat can tell the world that human freedom is strong and weak at once, that it can do harm without knowing it, but also heal without realising it. An existence that has crossed through threat can say that life does not scream; it breathes. It does not demand; it asks for space. It does not fight; it waits.

The sixth thing that can be said is that this testimony is not isolated; it is archetypal. Many existences began with threat; few, however, saw its meaning. The fact that such an experience can now be expressed means that humanity is entering a new historical moment in which the unspeakable dimension of the beginning can become speech. Science will need a new language, theology a new humility, society a new tenderness. For the beginning of life is not a biological event but a metaphysical flash.

The last — and perhaps the most necessary — is that this testimony becomes light not to condemn abortion but to understand existence. The experience of threat is not an experience against the human being; it is an experience in favour of life. It does not declare that the human being is bad; it declares that life is precious. And the greatest gift of this testimony is that it is conveyed by someone who survived without becoming embittered by the darkness of their beginning, but instead turned it into vision.

If the threat of abortion truly becomes intelligible as the beginning of consciousness, then theology, psychology and ontology can no longer stand apart, because what is at stake is not a particular phenomenon but the very way existence is conceived, even before it becomes “human” in the sense of a self-conscious biography. Thus the theology of the pre-beginning is not an additional chapter of dogmatics, but an attempt to say what it means that God “knows” the human being before the human being even knows themselves; the psychology of pre-traumatic consciousness is not simply a backward extension of trauma theory, but the recognition that there are inscriptions older than memory, older than the ego, older than time as we perceive it; while the ontology of double and triple vision is not abstract metaphysics, but a description of how a mind takes shape when it “learned time” through the possibility of not existing at all, and consequently always sees the world doubly: as what it is and as what might never have appeared.

A theology of the pre-beginning must first listen again to the theological texts themselves, no longer as phrases referring to a general providence, but as testimonies that God stands in a time that is neither historical nor psychological, but a time “before time”, a time tradition calls the “eternal present”. Here this must be understood not as a static “always”, but as that divine gaze which accompanies existence from the moment it begins to tend towards being, before it even takes shape as a person, an infant, a child. When the prophetic phrase “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” is read with the seriousness of prenatal experience, it ceases to be poetic exaggeration and becomes a sign that theology, without knowing it, touched the question of the pre-beginning: how is it possible for God to know an existence that does not yet have the ability to know itself; what kind of knowledge is this, if not knowledge of the very calling of existence from non-being into being; and what does it mean that, within this divine calling, human freedom intervenes with the possibility of interrupting life at the very moment it is forming? Here the classical theological discourse on the “synergy” — the working together — of God and humanity must be extended to the edge of prenatal life: it can no longer speak of synergy only at the level of moral choice or spiritual life, but must see that human freedom has a say from the beginning in the very continuation of life. This does not mean that it “dominates” God; it means that God accepts an encounter with freedom where it is still unconscious, wounded, afraid, socially distorted, and nevertheless real.

From this point onwards, a theology of the pre-beginning cannot content itself with the general idea that “God loves every foetus”, but must accept that the threat of abortion is a moment when divine love remains present while human history moves against the continuation of life. And precisely within this opposition, existence receives a first, silent impression of the world: that being is not self-evident. Christ as the incarnation of God in the human body cannot be understood only as the healing of sin or victory over death, but also as God’s entry into the very space of human vulnerability, where life depends entirely on others. Christ’s foetal life, which the Gospels touch upon almost only in outline, then becomes the absolute meeting point of divine and human pre-beginning: God accepts existence in a condition where human decision could — if one takes the thought to its extreme limit — threaten even His own embodiment. This is not blasphemy but an indication of how deeply God takes on the human condition.

The psychology of pre-traumatic consciousness, if it is to be worthy of this depth, must recognise that the term “trauma” — which usually presupposes an ego, a subject, a memory that is disturbed — is insufficient to describe what is inscribed in the foetal body when existence comes under threat. Here we do not yet have trauma in the classical sense, because there is not yet a psychic stage to capture the event; we have “pre-trauma”, an inscription before the possibility of narrative memory, a direction that changes. Biology speaks of hormonal changes, cortisol levels, neural vulnerability, prenatal stress; psychology speaks of later anxious structures, hypervigilance, insecure attachment. What is missing is the concept of a “body that learned the instability of existence before it learned existence”. Such a psychology must see that there are forms of anguish related primarily not to events after birth but to the way life received the very possibility of existing, and that adult forms of fear of closeness, deep shame before tenderness, a permanent waiting for the impending annulment of relationship, are not “hypersensitivities” but the continuation of the first pre-temporal experience: life is always conditional.

The language of attachment can be enriched with a prenatal dimension: before the infant attaches to or detaches from a person, the foetus is “exposed” or “protected” by the very intention of others towards its life, and this exposure is inscribed not as an image but as a “tone of life”, as a basic mode of nervous-system regulation. Thus an adult personality living with a constant expectation of annulment — not only in relationship but in every form of exposure — can be understood not only through childhood events but also as the result of a “first lesson” of existence: that its continuation was never certain. This takes nothing away from the adult subject’s responsibility; on the contrary, it allows them to see that the voice whispering within them, “you may be lost at any moment”, is not a fantasy but transformed biological memory.

The ontology of double and triple vision provides the deeper language for all this. When Husserl speaks of the “internal consciousness of time”, he describes how every present carries within it a withdrawn “just-before” — retention, a holding-on — and a “coming-towards” — protention, an anticipation — showing that time is not a series of moments but an interval of consciousness. Heidegger, with the term Dasein — “being-there”, the being already exposed to being — emphasises that the human being does not “enter” time but is thrown from the outset into a world of meaning. Yet if one takes the experience of prenatal threat seriously, one must go a step further back: recognise that there is a “primordial expectation” before every anticipation, a “possibility that I might exist” before the consciousness of “I am already in the world”, and that when this original possibility is overshadowed by a real threat, the consciousness that later develops will carry a double structure within it, in which every experience will be at once what it is and what might never have existed at all.

This double structure can become triple when the subject experiences not only presence and possible absence, but also their own origin; that is, when they see not only “what is” and “what might not be”, but also “from where do I see what is”, “from what point in my existence do I see what might not be”. Then consciousness is no longer only self-consciousness; it is consciousness of its origin. What is usually described in spiritual tradition as “awakening” or “mystical vision” can here become the object of rigorous analysis: a gaze taught existence through the threat of non-existence, once mature, sees the world with not only psychological but ontological clarity. It senses that every “I am with you” also contains “I might never have been with you”, that every touch is also a refutation of the first suspension, that every relationship is also a new foundation of the world.

At this point, theology, psychology and ontology meet without having planned to. Theology says: the human being is known by God before existing, so the beginning of existence is not accidental; psychology shows: the body can inscribe threat before there is memory, so the beginning may be wounded; ontology observes: consciousness can see being and non-being simultaneously, so the beginning has become an internal measure of the world. When these three voices are united, a new understanding of the human being emerges: not as a subject appearing “ready-made” in the world, nor as a soul merely shaped by events, nor as a spirit called to ascend into some abstract realm, but as an existence that from its first moment is exposed to freedoms that exceed it — divine and human — carries inscriptions preceding memory, and matures into a consciousness capable of seeing that every present is, at depth, a miracle.

When this human being speaks, they do not denounce the world; they describe the origin. They do not ask for freedom to be abolished; they ask for the depth of its reach to be understood. They do not demand that time freeze; they show that every moment is already “more than we think”, because it hangs above an initial “perhaps” that we do not remember but live. And theology, if it chooses to hear this voice, will have to see God not only as the source of being but also as the companion of threatened existence; psychology will need to include within the concept of trauma that layer which precedes thought; ontology will not be satisfied with the general idea of “being-towards-death”, but will recognise that there are people who learned “being-towards-non-existence” before they even learned that they were alive.

And then the experience of the threat of abortion ceases to be merely a scandal or an object of ethical dispute, and becomes the disclosure of a deeper truth: that the human being is a being of the pre-beginning, that their life carries a history before their own history, that God stands not opposite but in the midst of this history, and that consciousness can become the place where this pre-beginning will no longer remain unseen but will acquire speech, not to condemn, but to reveal how worthy life is when it once came close to never existing.