Abortion in the
Bible: what does the Bible say about abortion?
Does the Bible say
that abortion is murder? Is the Biblical God really pro life?
Most of those who oppose abortion - pro lifers, as they like to be
called - are Christians who base their opposition on the Bible.
Listening to pro lifers, one would think that the Bible is full of
statements condemning abortion. This is not the case.
Often, they will
quote [a] Jeremiah 1:4 - 5
The word of the LORD came to
me, saying,"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."
This passage tells us about
Jeremiah’s special status as a prophet and God's plans for his future.
Note the part “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…”
the operative word here is before, God tells us that
he planned and knew about Jeremiah before Jeremiah was even
conceived! Another pro life favorite is Isaiah 44:2:
“This is what the LORD says—
he who made you, who formed you in the womb,and who will help you: Do
not be afraid, O Jacob, my servant,Jeshurun, whom I have chosen”.
What we can gather here is that
God was responsible for the creation of Jacob, just like he was
for the creation of every other living thing, many other creatures,
such as cows, sheep and horses are also formed in a womb, yet we do not
regard
their lives as sacrosanct. Another passage often used
is Psalm 139: 13 to 16
“For 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.”
Again, this passage tells us
about God creating everything and having knowledge of the future of all
people. God would also know that many fertilized eggs will fail to
implant, some fetuses will naturally miscarry and that some fetuses
will be born with serious defects such as Tay Sachs syndrome and
anencephaly – most of the brain missing. So, if God is
responsible for the creation of
every single fetus why would he afflict some with such terrible
defects? And then there is Psalm 51:5
“Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
It
don't know why they think that the above passage would support an
anti-abortion position. This passage suggests that even procreative sex
within marriage is a sin, babies are sinful at the time of birth and if
the fetus is
sinful, it cannot be innocent as pro lifers always keep telling us.
The fact is, the word abortion
does not even appear in the Bible. The closest one would come to
abortion is in Numbers 5: 12 to 31.
Then the LORD said to Moses,
"Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'If a man's wife goes astray
and is unfaithful to him by sleeping with another man, and this
is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there
is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), and
if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife
and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she
is not impure- then he is to take his wife to the
priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of
barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour oil on it or put incense
on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder offering
to draw attention to guilt.
The priest shall bring her
and have her stand before the LORD. Then he shall take some holy
water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into
the water. After the priest has had the woman stand before the
LORD, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder
offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the
bitter water that brings a curse. Then the priest shall put the
woman under oath and say to her, "If no other man has slept with you
and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your
husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you.
But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have
defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband"-
here the priest is to put the woman under this curse of the oath-"may
the LORD cause your people to curse and denounce you when he causes
your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell. May this
water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells
and your thigh wastes away." Then the woman is to say, "Amen. So be
it."
The priest is to write these
curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He
shall have the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and
this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering. The priest is to
take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the
LORD and bring it to the altar. The priest is then
to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial offering and
burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the
water. If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her
husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse,
it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell
and her thigh waste away, and she will become accursed among her
people. If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is
free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to
have children.
This, then, is the law of
jealousy when a woman goes astray and defiles herself while married to
her husband, or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because
he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the LORD
and is to apply this entire law to her. The husband will be innocent of
any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.
The footnotes in the NIV tell us
that the part your abdomen swells and your thigh wasted away means
that the woman, if she is guilty, she will punished by barrenness
and a miscarrying womb. It appears that God has no problem with
induced abortion, at least in some cases, and the “bitter water”
would have been the Biblical equivalent of the RU486. The aim
here was to ensure that any children born were the biological offspring
of the husband, the Jews were a patriarchal society and lineage and
property was passed down from father to son, so they had to take
measures to
ensure that men could be certain that the children that their
wife/wives bore were theirs, so they drafted draconian laws
against pre-marital and extra-marital sex for women.
In Genesis 38:24, “…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!"
Because Tamar was pregnant and a widow without a husband,
she was accused of being a prostitute and her father in law Judah
ordered that she be burned alive - she is spared when Judah discovers
that he is the father of Tamar’s fetuses. Pro lifers never tire of
telling us that even in cases of rape a woman should not be permitted
to have an abortion because the fetus is innocent (see Psalm
51:5) and should not be punished for its father’s
crimes. If fetuses are so valuable to God, why wasn't Tamar’s
execution postponed until after the birth? The author of Genesis
does not condemn the would be actions of Judah, and
the laws
in the Bible are regarded by many Jews and Christians alike as the
word of god, if a woman commits adultery she is to be executed, there
is not exception for women who are pregnant.
Then they shall bring out the
damsel to the door of her
father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones
that
she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in
her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
Deuteromony 22: 21
Here we have a young woman about
to be stoned to death because she was not a virgin on her wedding
night. In the days before condoms and modern contraception a non virgin
bride would have likely being pregnant. By stoning her to death the
fetus would die as well , even if what the girl did was a heinous crime
deserving the death penalty without a trial, isn't it unfair to kill
the fetus as well? After all the fetus is innocent of any crime is it
not? So, in Biblical times (and in Muslim countries
today) many a young women would have been brutally killed
without any thought of the fetus they may have been carrying. Yet, in
the year 2006 pro lifers are opposed to women having access to
hormonal contraceptives and IUDs just in case they prevent
a "child" from being implanted.
In Leviticus
27: 1 to 8 God tells Moses how to calculate the value of persons being
offered to God:
“The LORD said to Moses,
"Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'If anyone makes a special
vow to dedicate persons to the LORD by giving equivalent values,
set the value of a male between the ages of twenty and sixty at fifty
shekels of silver, according to the sanctuary shekel; and if it
is a female, set her value at thirty shekels. If it is a
person between the ages of five and twenty, set the value of a male
at twenty shekels and of a female at ten shekels. If it is a
person between one month and five years, set the value of a male at
five shekels of silver and that of a female at three shekels] of
silver. If it is a person sixty years old or more, set the value of a
male at fifteen shekels and of a female at ten shekels.”
In the above passage, babies
under one month of age did not have any monetary value at all. Some pro
lifers
have argued that in those times there was a high infant mortality so
they had to wait for the baby to reach one month of age when
it would be more likely to survive. Even though
the value of females was always less than the males, they were still
regarded more valuable than babies under one month. Pro lifers are
going against the Bible with their belief that the most valuable are
fetuses, then babies, and last, women who
have no value at all, except as a life-support system for the fetus. If babies are the
most valuable to God then it should not matter whether or not they are
likely to die before the first month and they should certainly have a
higher value than the woman in accordance with the pro life dogma. It
seems that God got it dead wrong in this case!
The Jews were very meticulous in
the keeping of the laws. Exodus and Leviticus have
extensive lists of laws and
regulations ranging from sacrifices to the Lord, diet…childbirth,
children’s relationship with parents, women’s uncleanness,
offerings to the Lord after childbirth, nakedness, clothing, sexual
relations, adultery, rape, marriage, slavery…Isn’t it odd that they
forgot to add laws banning abortion since it is regarded by Christians
as a grave sin? Why would they omit something as serious as abortion? [b]
A pro life argument for
the above is that abortion was so unthinkable for Jewish women
that it was not necessary to enact a law forbidding it. This is not the
case. As the Jews lived side by side with many different cultures and
religions they would often be “led astray” into worshipping
other gods and by adopting foreign customs. The women in these other
cultures would have practiced abortion and probably Jewish women would
have too. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from around 1784 BC to 1300 BC
contain numerous recipes for contraceptives and abortifacients. While
their effectiveness is a matter of debate, their existence indicates
that women throughout the ages have sought ways to control their
fertility. Conversely, the Assyrians would punish a woman who had
an abortion by having her impaled. Yet, we do not see condemnation in
the Bible
for adopting the “abomination” of abortion, the Lord was more concerned
about his flock worshiping graven images and gathering sticks on the
Sabbath, fetuses were not a priority. If the Jews had regarded abortion
as a grave sin they would have made a specific law forbidding it, such
law does not exist.
If we
take a look at the ten commandments, the first four on the list
are about the worship of God. The fifth is about respecting ones
parents and the sixth – often invoked by anti abortionists –
is “ Thou shalt not kill”. The command against murder
applied to already-born Jews – with the exception of those who broke
God’s laws such as gathering sticks on the Sabbath, worshipping graven
images and non virgin brides. The following Bible verses do not
indicate value for fetuses, or anyone else. It is clear that
killing anyone opposing the Lord was permitted and that
included innocent fetuses and children.
"Now therefore
kill
every male among the little ones." Numbers 31:17
"Slay both man and woman, infant and
suckling." 1 Samuel 15:3
"Dash their children, and rip up their
women with child." 2 Kings
8:12
"Their children also shall be dashed to
pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled and their wives
ravished." Isaiah 13:16
"They shall have no pity on the fruit of
the womb; their eyes shall
not spare children." Isaiah 13:18
"Slay utterly old and young, both maids
and little children."
Ezekiel 9:6
"Their infants shall be dashed in
pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up." Hosea 13:16
Even if the enemy
tribe was guilty of heinous crimes, surely the innocent fetuses and
children could be spared!
The following
passage is often quoted by pro choicers:
"When men strive
together and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage
and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined according
to as the woman's husband shall lay upon him, and he shall pay as the
judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for
life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn
for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." Exodus 21: 22-25
If the woman died,
the punishment was death. For the death of the fetus it was a mere
fine, although the embryo/fetus was important due to its
potential , it was not regarded as a person. Pro lifers will argue that
the part so that there is a miscarriage and yet no harm
follows means that if the
miscarried fetus survived it was only a fine but if the fetus was
dead it was life for a life. They conveniently ignore the fact
that before modern times, premature infants did not survive. In Leviticus 27:
1-
8
there is no monetary value for babies under one month due
to the high infant mortality in those times. If full term babies had
such
high mortality as to not be accounted before the age of one month, it's
clear
that miscarriages almost always would have resulted in the death of the
fetus.
Therefore, it's obvious that "eye for an eye" is for the death of
the
woman, and a fine for the loss of the fetus.
In fact parents are even permitted to put to death
disobedient
children:
"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious
son
who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them
when
they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him
and
bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say
to
the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not
obey
us. He is a profligate and a drunkard." Then all the men of his
town
shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All
Israel
will hear of it and be afraid." Deuteronomy 21:18-21
If God does not have a problem with disobedient children being
put to death. I don't see how he would be angered by the killing of
fetuses.
References:
[a]
Online source of Bible passages: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search
[b]
In Judaism, it is permitted kill a fetus in order to save a woman whose
life is in danger, however, once the head emerges from the birth canal,
it is forbidden to kill it: http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_72.html#72b_15
Jewish beliefs on abortion: http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_abor.htm
Voula Papas
June 2006
