"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The post I responded to was saying that Christians can’t support punishing, much less executing, a “mother” who aborts her innocent child, because Christians are into repentance not vengeance.
My question is why someone who intentionally kills a born person should be severely punished as vengeance, perhaps even executed, while a “mother” who intentionally kills her unborn innocent child is treated as almost a second victim.
If abortion is murder, then a woman who intentionally has an abortion is guilty of premeditated murder. Those who make excuses otherwise sound remarkably like those who make excuses for murderers of older people. Bad childhood, mental health, stressful life, etc.
There are only two ways out of this contradiction. Either the unborn child is not quite a person, which is why his killing can be considererd to be not quite murder, or all who participate in the abortion should be treated as equally culpable.
But if you accept human life as sacred, doesn’t that automatically preclude the death penalty? If all human life is sacrosanct and that sacrosanctness stems from that life having been infused with the ‘Divine Essence’, doesn’t that mean that only God could ever choose to rescind it? If only God can rescind his Divine Essence, then any killing of a human person for any reason would be a violation of that persons sacredness.
One could go to the Bible and find that God has directed that in the case of Murder we are allowed to take a human life:
Exodus 21:12, He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.
But that same chapter of Exodus also contains:
Exodus 21:22, If men stirve, and hurt a woman with child so that her fruit depart from her and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
This seems to be indicating that the taking of a life, deemed sacred, is to be punished with death, but that the killing of an unborn child should be punished in a financial manner. It reads as though God is declaring there to be a difference between a living person and an unborn child.
Am I wrong to read this into the Bible?