Posted on 01/22/2003 5:58:42 AM PST by meandog
The Bible never mentions abortion, but it does offer support for choice.
By Marjorie Brahms Signer
The 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, has created a huge amount of misinformation about the nature of being pro-choice. Starting with President Bush’s new proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day, the purpose seems to be to portray those who are pro-choice as godless and heartless. But being pro-choice is firmly grounded in the Bible.
Who is pro-choice and religious? Denominations with official and long-standing pro-choice positions include the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and Reform and Conservative Judaism. These organizations have a diversity of views about abortion and recognize it as a morally complex decision that must be made by the person most affected--the woman.
Among religious groups, the pro-choice position is nuanced, recognizing that most people believe abortion--as well as bearing children—are matters for individual conscience, not government or religious mandate. Pro-choice denominations don’t seek to impose their views on others or to make them law. They recognize that in our pluralistic society, politicians must not be allowed to impose laws about childbearing based on any particular belief about when life begins. The notion that life begins at the moment of conception is a belief held by some, but not all, religious groups.
In fact, the Bible never mentions abortion and does not deal with the question of when life begins. Genesis 2:7 (God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being”) refers to the specific, unique event of the creation of Adam out of the earth. It says nothing about the process of conception, pregnancy, and birth.
The Book of Exodus clearly indicates that the fetus does not have the same legal status as a person (Chapter 21:22-23). That verse indicates that if a man pushes a pregnant woman and she then miscarries, he is required only to pay a fine. If the fetus were considered a full person, he would be punished more severely as though he had taken a life.
Religions have many different--and changing--tenets about abortion. Some oppose abortion in all cases because they believe human life begins when an egg and sperm meet. They hold this belief even though medical science defines pregnancy as beginning with the implantation of the fertilized egg. Others believe abortion must be allowed in cases of rape and incest. Some believe abortion is required in certain circumstances, such as when a woman’s life is in danger.
Many religions believe the decision must be the woman’s because she is the person most affected.
Christians and Jews agree that all life is sacred--the life of a woman as well as the potential life of a fetus. Many Protestant Christians emphasize the New Testament’s teaching of the priesthood of all believers, meaning that everyone has direct access to God and therefore the ability to do God’s will.
The Bible tells us that God acts within human beings to set us free and enable us to assume responsibility for ourselves. If we make wrong choices, God forgives us. Humans, by the grace of God, have developed medicine, surgery, and psychiatry to prolong and enhance life. These same medical approaches can be chosen to prolong or enhance the life of a woman for whom a specific pregnancy would be dangerous.
(Excerpt) Read more at beliefnet.com ...
How stupid and heartless can one be? Who is affected more, a person who walks away and goes on with their life, or one who dies in horrible agony by being torn limb from limb or having their skin burned off by a saline solution? Some "choice", that.
What tripe.
The punishment in Exodus for killing the unborn child IS ABOUT THE SAME as killing an adult.
(1) Exodus 21:12 says that killing a man on purpose requires the death penalty.
(2) BUT Exodus 21:13 says that killing a man by accident does not merit death, but the killer has to move to another community.
(3) Exodus 21:22 discusses the ACCIDENTAL killing of an unborn child during a fight between two men. Rather than moving, it requires a fine.
In fact, one could argue that in a nomadic society of shepherds, moving is a minor inconvenience while a potentially substantial money fine determined by judges would be a harsher punishment.
See Protestantism.
1. Sola Scriptura ("Bible Alone")The belief in the Bible as the sole source of faith is unhistorical, illogical, fatal to the virtue of faith, and destructive of unity.
[John 17:23 "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."]
It is unhistorical. No one denies the fact that Christ and the Apostles founded the Church by preaching and exacting faith in their doctrines. No book told as yet of the Divinity of Christ, the redeeming value of His Passion, or of His coming to judge the world; these and all similar revelations had to be believed on the word of the Apostles, who were, as their powers showed, messengers from God. And those who received their word did so solely on authority. As immediate, implicit submission of the mind was in the lifetime of the Apostles the only necessary token of faith, there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgment. This is quite clear from the words of Scripture: "Therefore, we also give thanks to God without ceasing: because, that when you had received of us the word of the hearing of God, you received it not as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of God" (I Thessalonians 2:13). The word of hearing is received through a human teacher and is believed on the authority of God, who is its first author (cf. Romans 10:17). But, if in the time of the Apostles, faith consisted in submitting to authorized teaching, it does so now; for the essence of things never changes and the foundation of the Church and of our salvation is immovable.
Again, it is illogical to base faith upon the private interpretation of a book. For faith consists in submitting; private interpretation consists in judging. In faith by hearing the last word rests with the teacher; in private judgment it rests with the reader, who submits the dead text of Scripture to a kind of post-mortem examination and delivers a verdict without appeal: he believes in himself rather than in any higher authority. But such trust in one's own light is not faith. Private judgment is fatal to the theological virtue of faith. John Henry Newman says "I think I may assume that this virtue, which was exercised by the first Christians, is not known at all amongst Protestants now; or at least if there are instances of it, it is exercised toward those, I mean their teachers and divines, who expressly disclaim that they are objects of it, and exhort their people to judge for themselves" ("Discourses to Mixed Congregations", Faith and Private Judgment). And in proof he advances the instability of Protestant so-called faith: "They are as children tossed to and fro and carried along by every gale of doctrine. If they had faith they would not change. They look upon the simple faith of Catholics as if unworthy the dignity of human nature, as slavish and foolish". Yet upon that simple, unquestioning faith the Church was built up and is held together to this day.
Where absolute reliance on God's word, proclaimed by his accredited ambassadors, is wanting, i.e. where there is not the virtue of faith, there can be no unity of Church. It stands to reason, and Protestant history confirms it. The "unhappy divisions", not only between sect and sect but within the same sect, have become a byword. They are due to the pride of private intellect, and they can only be healed by humble submission to a Divine authority.
When does a fetus have blood, for where there is blood flowing, there is life.
Except for those 30,000,000+ that have been murdered.
Looking back, I think it was a prophesy of what happens in an abortion clinic.
May God save our nation!
g
This is completely misquoted (it always is by the pro-aborts), and is certainly NOT the Biblical position.
The verse indicates that if an accidental miscarriage occurs, then a fine is paid IF (AND ONLY IF) no harm comes to the child -- i.e., that the "miscarriage" results in the safe birth of a live child.
However, if "mischief" follows (that's a King James version oddity word: read that as "harm"), then there is a penalty commensurate with the harm done to the child -- eye for eye, life for life. In other words, the whole context of these verses is specifically intended to discuss Mosaic Law for harm done to a fetus -- it does not involve the woman here (that's covered in other related verses earlier in the book). The pro-aborts point to this passage and mistakenly apply the verses to the pregnant woman.
In other words, the very passage they point out to argue that God thinks little of the fetus proves exactly the opposite: a growing baby had full legal status in ancient Israeli law!
No. God has pretty well made clear in the scriptures what's right and wrong. And he still works through man's conscience as well.
Yes. Everyman has the responsibility to develop the discernment between right and wrong, between what is God's will and what is not. Anyone can go and declare something to be right (and many do) that is against God's will, but that doesn't make it right.
That doesn't make a "squishy" theology. That just puts the responsibility where it's always been. On the individual. The priest or preacher said "x is ok", absolves nobody of guilt.
Their judgement will be harsh...
Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, [that] I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
1:41 And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:
1:42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
1:43 And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
1:44 For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.
I've always found this one of the most crushing arguments agains Biblical support of abortion. If pro-choice Christians truly believe the Biblical account of Christ's conception and birth, then they have to believe that Mary would have been within her rights to have aborted the Holy Child, as He was no more than a part of her body.
Luke's account that Elizabeth's baby (John the Baptist) "leaped in her womb at the sound of Mary's greeting" (Luke 1:44) doesn't help the pro-choice argument, either.
I wonder why the writer of this article didn't include verses 23-25 as well?
22 "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 court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
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