The Bible on Abortion

With a title like that, you'd think I was about to give you the Scriptures that tell you that abortion is a sin, right? Well, look for yourself what is being said on the topic and you'll find ... quite the opposite. Skeptics and "Christians" alike offer a variety of "biblical" reasons that abortion is ... get this ... biblical. So, in order to prepare those of you who haven't seen it, I'm going to offer you some of the (nonsensical) arguments that the Bible supports killing the unborn.

First up is probably the most popular.

"If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no 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." (Exo 21:22-23)

There is it, clear as day. Oh, you don't see it? Sorry, wrong translation. They will not use the NASB. Oh, no, it will have to be the King James, where it does not refer to a premature birth, but says "her fruit depart from her." There, now, much clearer, right? And I hope you see now the problem. We don't have a translation difference; we have a difference in English. The transliterated Hebrew is yâlad yâtsâ', where yâlad means "to bear young; to beget" and yâtsâ' means "to go or bring forth". However you would like to think that should be translated, the phrase is to "bring forth young" which is not "to lose your baby." And "her fruit depart from her" does not require "lose your baby" either, so perhaps I would recommend setting aside this "proof positive" verse.

Note, by the way, that if a self-professed Christian is going to use this text as proof that the Bible supports abortion, it is required to use the whole sentence. I stopped in my quote before the sentence actually ended. Perhaps "life for life" gives you a hint of what it says next? Yes, "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise." (Exo 21:24-25). So if anyone is opting to use verses 22-23 as prooftexts ought to be ready also to embrace an "eye for an eye" justice system. If they're going to hold that the Bible here defends abortion, they will also need to argue that the Bible supports the death penalty. If they are going to reject that justice system, they will also need to reject this abortion argument. (Rejecting this argument may mean, "You're right; that's not what it says" or "I reject the death penalty and whatever else the Bible says on this subject" which is a rejection of the Bible in general and simply means that telling me that the Bible supports something when they don't believe the Bible anyway is duplicitous at best.)

Okay, let's see ... what else do they offer? Well, there is Leviticus 27:2-6 that lists prices for men and women and children for what they pay if they promise something to God that is hard for them to pay, but under one month they pay nothing. "They have no value, see?" No, they pay nothing. One-month-olds don't pay vows. And the valuations were in terms of what they might have, not on their worth as a human being. (See Lev 27:8.) Similarly, Moses was commanded to number the sons of Levi, but not to count them if they were under a month old. "They're not persons, see?" Well, I suppose, if you decide (arbitrarily) that the counting was of persons. Since females weren't counted either, shall we conclude that females aren't persons either? Or is it possible that under the age of one month was not signficant for this count? I suppose the answer you give will be determined by your personal preference. But if God says that Man (human beings) are made in the image of God (Gen 9:6), then "It's not old enough to count" doesn't work.

This next one was new to me. Perhaps you remember the "cheating wife" test in Numbers 5:11-31. You remember. A husband suspects his wife of cheating on him but doesn't have proof. So he is supposed to take her to the priest with his accusation. She is supposed to, among other things, take this concoction of holy water and tabernacle dust (Num 5:17) called "water of bitterness" along with some of the ink used to write the curse (Num 5:23) with the express warning that if she drinks it and she cheated on him, God would "make your thigh waste away and your abdomen swell." (Num 5:22). If she hadn't, she would be immune and "she will then be free and conceive children." (Num 5:28). "This," they argue, "is a reference to herbal abortifacients" (as if "water and dust and ink" is some sort of herbal abortifacient ... that only works on adulterous women) and they point to "she will then be free and conceive children" as proof that she can keep the child while "your thigh waste away and your abdomen swell" is a reference to losing the baby. That, dear readers, constitutes biblical proof. How anyone gets "Her child was not aborted" from "She will be free and conceive children" (Doesn't "will conceive" require "not yet conceived"?), or how a swelling of the abdomen after taking this concoction suggests an abortion is beyond my comprehension. And it is not a good argument.

Popular among these "biblical arguments" are the various occasional references to God judging people by killing their children. I won't give references. There is no point. "God judging people" is not "abortion". End of story.

The other new one to me was the story of Tamar (Gen 38). Tamar married one of Judah's sons, but he died. Onan, her brother-in-law, was required to give his dead brother offspring, so he went in to her but "spilled his seed on the ground" and God struck him dead. So Judah postponed marrying off his youngest son to her. Later, Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute and tricked Judah into getting her pregnant. When her pregnancy was discovered, Judah ordered her burned to death. That's it. That's the argument. The author of this one says, "I see the Bible saying that killing an unborn child is necessary when it’s not a child conceived in a way the mother’s society wants." Never mind that God never made such a rule. Forget the fact that lots of biblical characters did lots of things contrary to God's commands. (Think David and Bathsheba. By this reasoning we would conclude, "I see the Bible saying that sleeping with your neighbor's wife and killing him to hide it is biblical." Come on, people!) This makes no sense.

I'm sorry. None of this works for me as anything approaching a biblical justification for abortion. Stacking up obscure references to strange things that can't really be construed as "abortion" doesn't make sense to me. "All you have," they tell me, "is that 'Thou shalt not kill' command" and then they tell me it refers to murder, not merely killing. Sorry, that's not my starting point. My pro-life position stems from the passage in Genesis that says, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man." (Gen 9:6). Further, as early as the Didache (written in the 1st century) we find, "Do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant." As early as that the Church had a position on the topic. And more than one biblical reference suggests life starts from the womb. Isaiah said that God called him and named him from the womb (Isa 49:1). Paul was set apart from the womb (Gal 1:15). Jacob was chosen over Esau before either was born (Rom 9:11). Luke 1:36 says that Elizabeth "conceived a son." When we can determine that humans in the womb are not humans and are not "in the image of God", then I might reconsider. Until then, I have to stand on the claim that the Bible opposes killing innocent humans, and the earliest stage of human life is conception, so from that point on, terminating that life is contrary to Scripture.