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Upon further prompting, I will take a closer look at specific Bible verses that pro-choice and pro-life Christians disagree about and show how they cannot be used to establish a pro-choice or neutral position.

I will be responding to arguments presented in this article from Salon.com.

The first highly contested verse is Jeremiah 1:5:  “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”  Furthermore, the Psalmist declares “From my mother’s womb you have been my God” (22:10) and  “you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (139:13-16).

Abortion-advocates argue that these are not general statements about all of humanity, but a specific, special predestination intended only for prophets or other special persons.  This argument shows biblical ignorance because Scripture does not discriminate on the basis of status.  For example, Job says of his slaves and maidservants, “Did not He who made me in the womb make them?  Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?” (31:15).  Unless the abortion-advocates would like to propose that those who God predestines as prophets are more human than everyone else or that it was only them whose lives began at conception, then they should stop making this argument.

The second main argument made in the Salon article is not one I have heard before, probably because even most pro-choice Christians realize it is a horrible argument.  It is the story of Judah and Tamar from Genesis 38.  The story goes as follows.  The Israelite patriarch Judah arranges a marriage between his son Er and a woman named Tamar.  The marriage didn’t last long since Er “was wicked in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him” (38:7).  Judah unsuccessfully tries to find Tamar another husband and finally orders his daughter-in-law to wait at her father’s house until Judah’s younger son Shelah is old enough to marry her.  Tamar grows tired of waiting and removes her widow’s clothes, disguises her face and waits along the roadside for Judah to pass by.  Thinking she is a prostitute, Judah pays to sleep with her.  Once Judah finds out that the prostitute was Tamar and that she is now pregnant, he demands that she be put to death:

“About three months later Judah was told, ‘Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant.’  Judah said, ‘Bring her out and have her burned to death!'” (38:24)

Though Tamar lives and is able to prove that it was Judah who paid her to sleep with him, the Salon article argues that “it’s clear that he (Judah) had every intention of having her executed on the spot, even though she was pregnant at the time.  No mention is made of waiting for her to give birth.”  I’m sorry I had to recount the whole story just to end it with this horrible argument.  The reasoning behind this argument is:

Since a Prophet from Scripture resolves to kill a woman and her unborn baby, then Scripture clearly doesn’t condemn abortion.

This reasoning is deeply flawed and assumes the same dangerous logic that I eluded to in my previous post: “Whatever the Bible doesn’t condemn, it condones”.  It we adopt this form of reasoning, we will be left with countless moral dilemmas (see “Why the Bible’s Alleged Silence on Abortion Cannot Be Used to Justify the Practice“).  How does it follow that because characters in the Bible commit or resolve to commit heinous acts that therefore scripture condones all those acts?  The writer of the Salon article even mentions this passage and others to prove that “the men who wrote the Bible didn’t conceive of an unborn fetus as equivalent to an adult human being”.  I didn’t think it was possible, but the reasoning behind this argument just got worse.  The Salon.com writer is suggesting that the writer(s) of Genesis is making a moral judgment on the status of the unborn in relation to the full humanity of adults simply because he recorded the events that occurred in the story of Judah and Tamar.  What if years from now, I wrote a history of my family and included in it a family member’s choice to obtain an abortion; who in their right mind would suggest that I clearly don’t “conceive of an unborn fetus as equivalent to an adult human being”?  This type of reasoning soars to the lofty heights of stupidity.  Clearly, the goal of the author(s) of Genesis is to recount the events that occurred. To attempt to judge the moral compass of the author(s) based off their historical re-telling is to confuse two unrelated things: the moral views of the author and the actual historical events that occurred.

The third argument from the Salon article and perhaps the most popular biblical defense of abortion is found in Exodus 21:22-25:

 “If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the courts allow.  But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”

Abortion-advocates argue that this Scripture proves the unborn are not fully human because the penalty for accidentally killing a fetus is less than that given were its mother accidentally killed.  The key to their interpretation of this verse is based off their understanding of the words “that she gives birth prematurely”.  There are some versions of the Bible that interpret this as “that she has a miscarriage” which is the very interpretation that abortion-advocates claim is the correct one.  It is only by claiming that the woman had a miscarriage that the abortion-advocate can claim that the penalty for killing a fetus is less than that given were its mother accidentally killed.  But there are good reasons to believe that the text does not indicate a miscarriage.

To resolve this issue, it is necessary to look at the Hebrew words used in the phrase “she gives birth prematurely” or “she has a miscarriage”.  Apologist Greg Koukl asks, “Is it correct to presume that the miscarriage of Exodus 21:22 produces a dead child, just like an abortion? This is the single most important question that needs to be answered here.  If it does, the English word “miscarriage” is the right choice.  If it does not, then the picture changes dramatically” (What Exodus 21:22 Says About Abortion).  The key phrase is w˚yase û ye ladêhâ in the Hebrew.  This phrase is made up of two words: The Hebrew noun, yeled and the Hebrew verb, yasa.  Together, the literal interpretation is “the child comes forth”.  Regarding these two words, Greg Koukl provides helpful insights:

The Hebrew noun translated “child” in this passage is yeled^[4] (yeladim in the plural), and means “child, son, boy, or youth.”^[5] It comes from the primary root word yalad,^[6] meaning “to bear, bring forth, or beget.” In the NASB yalad is translated “childbirth” 10 times, some form of “gave birth” over 50 times, and either “bore,” “born,” or “borne” 180 times.

The verb yasa^[7] is a primary, primitive root that means “to go or come out.” It is used over a thousand times in the Hebrew Scriptures and has been translated 165 different ways in the NASB–escape, exported, go forth, proceed, take out, to name a few. This gives us a rich source for exegetical comparison.  It’s translated with some form of “coming out” (e.g., “comes out,” “came out,” etc.) 103 times, and some form of “going” 445 times.

According to Koukl, yasa is used 1,061 times in the Hebrew Bible and is never translated as “miscarriage”.  Furthermore, the use of yasa always refers to the “coming forth” of some living thing, typically a child.  As you can see, we have no reasonable basis to assume that the correct interpretation of Exodus 21:22 is “she has a miscarriage”.  Therefore, the pro-choice understanding of this passage is completely undermined since the penalty for killing a fetus is not less than that given were its mother accidentally killed, since the fetus was never killed in the first place, merely delivered prematurely.

There is one other section of this passage that deserves mentioning.  The phrase “but there is no serious injury” is not clear in who it refers to.  Pro-choicers, of course, argue that the phrase only applies to the mother.  But Scott Klusendorf makes the point that there are “only a few translations, such as the Jerusalem Bible, that actually interpret the verse in this way.  When read in the original Hebrew, the passage seems to suggest that both the mother and the child are covered by the lex talionis — the law of retribution.  The Hebrew term ason (harm/injury) is clearly indefinite in its reference, and the expression lah (to her), which would restrict the word “injury” only to the mother, is missing.  Hence, the phrase, “no serious injury” seems to apply equally to both mother and child and if either is harmed, the penalty is ‘life for life, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,” etc… (35 Making Abortion Unthinkable: The Art of Pro-Life Persuasion).

Finally, even granting that the pro-abortion interpretation of this passage is correct (i.e. that the unborn’s death is treated differently than the mother’s), it does not logically follow that the unborn are not fully human.  It could be argued that both the slave and the unborn child had a lesser social status in Hebrew society, but it cannot be demonstrated from this that a lesser social status meant that one was less than fully human.  So even if the abortion-advocate’s interpretation of Exodus 21:22-25 is correct, it in no way proves that the unborn is not fully human.

There are of course other disputed verses, though none as popular as Exodus 21:22-25.  I hope this post helped clear some of the confusion and sloppy reasoning that is often at work in the exegesis of these passages by pro-choice Christians.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

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