The Bible Does Not Condemn Abortion

[ancianita]

"The Bible says a LOT about what is forbidden. The authors of the Bible definitely knew about abortion. If the authors of the Bible wanted to forbid abortion they would have forbidden abortion. It is unreasonable to think the authors of the Bible thought that abortion was a grievous and unforgivable sin but simply forgot to include it for thousands of years...."

[Gaugamela]

1. Why anyone believes that some carnival barker of a preacher has a direct line

to God is beyond me. A direct line to their bank account is more accurate. In any case, as I’ve held for years, the core belief of the Christian-right isn’t Christianity, it’s patriarchy and social control. Qui bono?

[ancianita]

2. How does that relate to this video? Is there some preacher named that I missed?

What the video does say is that it wasn't until the 19th Century that abortion was spoken of as a "sin," and not by all Christian churches and not all at once.

Another source...

1537 — "Abortion" seems to have come into the English language; for some time it appears to have been the general term for any pregnancy that didn't come to term — human intervention or no.

1538 reference cited in the Oxford English Dictionary. "An vtimely byrthe, nigh to the conception, which may be called aborsion," is a

1547 "Abhorsion is when a woman is delyvered of her chylde before her tyme”


In later centuries, abortion came to be understood as an induced miscarriage.

But for a long time, some references at least suggested a casual, morally neutral view.

"I purchas'd and gave her such Drugs as could cause Abortion, but in vain, and she grew big," wrote the novelist Penelope Aubin — a woman, take note — in the 1726 novel "The Life and Adventures of the Lady Lucy.”

"The Women by the use of certain herbs procure frequent abortions," wrote William Robertson in his 1778 "The History of America.”


After 1825, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the age of Victorians and the Comstocks, that we begin to hear about "criminal abortion" (London Examiner, 1825) and "the sin of abortion" (Salt Lake Tribune, 1900).

It was in this period, too, that abortion came to refer not to a miscarriage or a drug-induced termination of pregnancy but to a specific medical procedure involving surgical intervention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion


Men only came between women and their God in the early 1800's, when males of Connecticut and Massachusetts passed laws that outlawed it. Men judged women, invented this sin, then under some "headship" rubric, came up with doctrines around "soul," "murder," etc., -- all of which helps define what is, these days, called "biblical patriarchy" by some male Christians.

To get why patriarchy is not biblical -- but only reflects cultures that existed before Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Bible writers were even born -- that's a whole 'nother discussion.

[Gaugamela]

3. Sorry, I didn't realize what forum you posted this in. I assumed that it was general discussion

and my response was in essence that scripture is beside the point in discussions about abortion, and that the anti-abortion stance was dragged in by the horns in the early 1970s by the Southern Baptists and evangelicals to help create a conservative coalition. I didn't spell all that out because my mind often leaps across what seems to me self-evident connections. Anyway, that's what got me going about patriarchy. In my opinion, the Christian right in this country is clinging desperately to a white male oligarchy that descended from the southern slave owners and which wants to preserve their privilege. That same patriarchy extends to the legal system that keeps giving Trump undue breaks.

I agree, patriarchy is a thorny and pervasive issue, but one that clearly lies behind the anti-democratic, racist and sexist elitism of the extreme right.

[BobTheSubgenius]

4. In fact, there is a Bible passage that explicitly values prenatal life less than an autonomous person.

I cannot remember the cite, but it is part of a list of crime&punishment.

If you kill the wife of a man, you shall owe him two donkeys and a bowl of humus or something.

[ancianita]

5. That's a matter of interpretation. If you can cite it, all the better. But one passage does not a Law make.

Nor a commandment. Stoning was for a hundred other crimes (see the Levites' -- priestly class -- rules in Leviticus) not a single one was ever for any woman's abortion.

[LT Barclay]

6. This is the one that comes to my mind.

Exodus 21:22

So there are scriptures about murder = stoning
Accidently killing required running to a sanctuary city to await trial

So if accidently causing miscarriage only carries a fine, it is hard to equate it to a killing or equate abortion with murder.

My personal feeling is because they never experienced the breath of life.

[BobTheSubgenius]

7. The cite is Exodus 21:22-25.

However, I cannot find a website that offers the complete text any more. It used to be easy to find a KJV online, complete and unabridged, but it is a profit center now, apparently. The best I could do was this synopsis:

The Covenant Code legislates the case of a pregnant woman who becomes involved in a brawl between 2 men and has a miscarriage. A distinction is then made between the penalty that is to be exacted for the loss of the fetus and injury to the woman. For the fetus, a fine is paid as determined by the husband and the judges. However, if the woman is injured or dies, "lex talionis" is applied -- life for life, eye for eye, etc.

Granted, this does not cover every scenario or nuance, but, unless this passage is contradicted elsewhere in the Bible, it seems pretty definitive.

[ancianita]

8. But not stoning. Stoning is definitive about sine against God. Because there is no law for injury against woman/fetus,

only for the husband's injury, not God's.

For the fetus, a fine is paid as determined by the husband

= the fetus has no standing, only the husband has rights of recompense for his lost property

if the woman is injured or dies, "lex talionis" is applied -- life for life, eye for eye,

= who would inflict that punishment that's equal to the injury



From my studies, the Bible isn't about contradicting verses; it's about the West's 4,000 year evolving of morality and God consciousness. The New Testament, according to its writers, constitutes a superseding (not contradicting) covenant and knowledge of God, the historical Jesus as God taking human form, as God's "son," and of Love, Law and Justice. There are over 65 quotable verses about "Life," but not one is about when life begins. And so the Hebrew concept of God "breathing" Life and Soul is not superseded and still stands.

For instance, in Genesis, God breathed life into his fully created Adam and Eve. Gen 2: 7
As for today...

as a scholar of Jewish Studies, I appreciate how rabbinic sources grapple with the complexity of the issue and offer multiple perspectives.

What Jewish texts say

Traditional Jewish practice is based on careful reading of biblical and rabbinic teachings. The process yields “halakha,” generally translated as “Jewish law” but deriving from the Hebrew root for walking a path.

Even though many Jews do not feel bound by halakha, the value it attaches to ongoing study and reasoned argument fundamentally shapes Jewish thought.

The majority of foundational Jewish texts assert that a fetus does not attain the status of personhood until birth.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/theres-more-than-one-jewish-view-to-answer-the-question-of-when-life-begins/

And as the video explains by proofs,

"The Bible says a LOT about what is forbidden.
The authors of the Bible definitely knew about abortion.
If the authors of the Bible wanted to forbid abortion they would have forbidden abortion.

It is unreasonable to think the authors of the Bible thought that abortion was a grievous and unforgivable sin but simply forgot to include "abortion" for thousands of years...."

[hvn_nbr_2]

9. Website: www.biblegateway.com

I use www.biblegateway.com quite a bit. I don't pay anything and I'm pretty sure I didn't sign up for spam to get it free. I've been using it for 15 years. They have a gazillion different translations, including KJV, New KJV. They have a lot of other resources too but I never really looked at those much.

[BobTheSubgenius]

10. Thank you!