For some rationalization aficionados, if they can't double-click on a black and white commandment to reveal more selfishly advantageous gray details, then they err on the side of personal convenience.
I love discussions/writings that dig deep whether for the purpose of upending assumptions or for revealing additional support leading from already concrete foundations.
So, I enjoyed the post.
But, I've gotta say that I find it difficult to believe any reasonable Christian, even when limited to strictly biblical text, could NOT be convinced that abortion is sin.
God names and speaks of knowing, communicating with and making future plans for unborn children - old testament and new. And, quite clearly, He is speaking of humans beings not non-viable tissue masses.
My favorite has to be in Luke. That is where the prophesied and promised (to his parents) John the Baptist was still what liberals would call a "choice", yet he excitedly acknowledges the presence of the recently conceived Jesus Christ while the newly pregnant Mary visits the six months showing Elisabeth.
Where would we be today if either of these fine women had succumbed to an evil thought and terminated what God so clearly considered identifiable individuals? Particularly, since one was actually His Son, I think God might not have approved the "choice".
The Father also actually "hated" Esau while he was yet in the womb, but He still did not drive Esau's mother to Planned (de)Parenthood so that she could concentrate on her career.
Very true, no reasonable person could ever read the Bible and conclude that abortion was permissible.
And this is what completely obliterates any so-called "Christian" pro-abortion argument. How can a fetus be anything less than a human being when the Son of God became one for our sake?
Add, if you like, Helvidius, the other humiliations of nature, the womb for nine months growing larger, the sickness, the delivery, the blood, the swaddling-clothes. Picture to yourself the infant in the enveloping membranes. Introduce into your picture the hard manger, the wailing of the infant, the circumcision on the eighth day, the time of purification, so that he may be proved to be unclean. We do not blush, we are not put to silence. The greater the humiliations He endured for me, the more I owe Him. And when you have given every detail, you will be able to produce nothing more shameful than the cross, which we confess, in which we believe, and by which we triumph over our enemies.
-St. Jerome (Against Helvidius)