As a Pro-Choice Christian, I'm angered at how the evangelical right has twisted the bible's teachings in re Abortion. Tommorrow is the thirty-second anniversary of Roe V Wade and 'round these parts the local wingnuts will be giving Jesus a bad name yet again.
They hurl scripture like it's made of sticks and stones. As I know a good number of you will be facing off toe to toe with these faux Christians, I thought it might help if I gave you some "biblical ammunition" to throw back at them.
Lock and load:
I thought about starting this diary off with a bit of an introduction as to what the bible is, and how it influences Christian thought. I've trashed that idea. If you have read this far, you're obviously either a) already acquainted with it or b) only interested in the pro-choice arguments. So if you want to know more about what the bible is, e-mail
pastordan, or better yet pick one up.
So on to the arguments:
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1) Turning to the bible for guidance (as most Christians do), we look for our wise and all-knowing lord to instruct us as to what exactly he thinks of abortion. So a thourogh search of the entire bible yields us this wisdom in regards to abortion:
Nothing. Thats right, NOTHING AT ALL. The Bible is astoundingly silent on the issue of abortion. It's not like abortion was unkown or unpracticed by the ancient Hebrews or their neighbors. The Summerians, Hittites, and Assyrians all found it necessary to explicitly ban the practice of abortion in their legal code. They realized that future citizens might get confused over the morality of abortion, so they proscribed it. Even the ancient first version of the
Hippocratic oath felt the need to specifically ban abortion:
Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion. But I will preserve the purity of my life and my art.
So what are we left to think? Did God Omniscient just forget to mention that we shouldn't perform abortions? Did it slip his mind? No. The fact that there is no eleventh commandment stating "Thou shall not perform abortions", nor any mention of the practice whatsoever can only mean that God leaves the
choice up to us.
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2) Though there is no word on God's feelings towards elective abortion in the bible, we do have record of his feelings towards accidental miscarriages:
And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no [further] injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any [further] injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
On its face, we see that the punishment for the death of the fetus (slap me with a fine) is not equal in punishment to the death of the wife (life for a life). It can't get much clearer that a fetus
is not considered a full human life.
Now this is just one (New American Standard) of many translations of this passage. Some conflict comes up over it. What you need to know is that the hebrew word "yasa", here translated as miscarriage, can also mean to birth live. But it is also translated as miscarry in other passages, notably Numbers 12:12. So don't accpet any revisionism. The passage refers to the death of the fetus, not to a live "accidental" birth. Even in today's modern medical miracle making hospitals, only 60% of all premature births survive. Don't be mistaken, back then a premature birth was expectedly a miscarriage.
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3) Many wingnuts want you to believe that life begins at conception. But it doesn't say that in the bible. They'll quote passage after passage showing that god knows us in the womb, and that this must prove that we are full human beings from conception. However, Jeremiah 1:5
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, [and] I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
I added the emphasis to "before" to make a point: If God knows me before I am even conceived, then am I to be considered a person
before conception? Ridiculous. God knows who we are and what we will do long before we exist to do it. Just because he knows people before they are concieved, or even as their fetus develops, that doesn't mean that they are full human beings.
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4) So as there is no mention of life beginning at conception, what exactly does the bible say about the start of life? Lets look at the start of it all, the book of Genesis.
Genesis 2:7
And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
We see quite clearly that God first formed man out of dust, thus endowing us with a body prior to a soul/life. Then he breathed life into us. This imagery of life=breath is repeated throughout the bible, including notably Ezekiel 37:1-10. Even the Hebrew word for soul "neshamah" is a form of the root word for breath.
So if the breath of life is to be considered the defining metaphor for life in the bible, how does this apply to the fetus? We know that a fetus doesn't draw breath until it leaves its mother's womb. However, a fetus isn't even capeable of breathing until the third trimester. Moreover, breathing could be seen as a metaphor for all of the normal human metabolic processes (respiration, sleep, circulation, waste metabolites, organs, etc). A fetus, especially in the first two trimesters, is still developing these. It is not complete until viability is reached, at about the sixth month of pregnancy. So what we seem to have in the bible, is definition of life as breath, that leads us to the same rules we have for abortion now: Abortion is available electively in the first two trimesters, and only in case of danger to the mother in the third trimester.
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So that's what I've got. There are many more learned people than I out there talking about these same issues. I hope that this gives you a bit of traction tommorrow. Remember, never forget, and never go back!