This was what I also gleaned from all the preceding discussion. The Bible just doesn’t address specifically whether abortion is wrong.
Eh, Adam’s life started when God breathed into his nostrils.
I’m not sure that means that my life started when I first drew breath into my nostrils.
Among other differences, Adam was a full-grown adult who was never in his mother’s womb because he didn’t have a mother. So it seems borderline absurd to draw a parallel to babies in utero… a situation Adam was never in.
But that’s a moral argument.
Legally I don’t think any of that should matter.
Yeah, that seems much closer to abortion than Joe’s citations.
That I understand.
IIRC something like 20% of fertilized eggs end up miscarrying, usual within the first month, and usually because chromosomal abnormalities mean they aren’t viable. So actually that’s sort of consistent with the Catholic take, since those could be before the hard to draw line is drawn.
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as an aside, I find it weird that the argument for/against allowing it from a constitutional basis can be noted as possibly not being based in modernity (women weren’t likely considered at all at the writing, and medical practice was not modern) but that we can appeal in some way further back to religious traditions that are (at a min) 1300 years ago as possibly allowing/disallowing. \tan
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It’s more like half of all fertized eggs:
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001488.htm
Not in that article, about half of first trimester miscarriages are the result of blighted ovum, which never produced any embryonic tissue. That’s my issue with saying life begins at conception. I guess some would say it does except when it doesn’t?
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Talmud? It’s from parshas mishpatim
so the bible contradicts the bible thumpers
i’m lovin’ it
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Yeah I realized I made that mistake. Oops. I also knew you would comment.
we need to see this for what it is
conservatives just want to own the libs and enjoy seeing them meltdown. It’s not about fetuses
Eh, there’s some debate as to whether that should be translated “kill” or “commit murder”. The translations I’m familiar with that are newer than King James (NIV, NRSV, NASB) all say “commit murder”.
I mean the Old Testament is chock full of God telling these people to kill those people. But murder and killing are not synonymous. So I don’t think a reasonable reading of the Ten Commandments suggests that we can’t go to war under any circumstances or kill in self-defense as two examples of non-murder killings.
There are some who care about the fetuses, the ones who are womb-to-tomb prolife. I believe that’s a tiny minority tho.
That’s a funny typo
doesn’t the bible contradict itself like 10000 times?
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But not entirely silent:
Psalm 139 ESV (biblehub.com)
Reference verses 13-16.
Perhaps consider that there is a nuanced definition to word that is commonly translated to “kill” in English.
There is a distinct difference between ending life w/o due process (“murder”) and carrying out a sanctioned action (e.g., death penalty; military engagements) after due process has occurred.
Cain was punished for murdering his brother. The nation of Israel was rewarded for removing a culture that used child-sacrifice as a regular part of life.
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Response to that verse from the link I posted earlier
Lyrical and beautiful stuff. But, again, what is being said? This passage is surely about God’s power, but it doesn’t say anything that is at all specific or exclusive to the fetus. The Christian belief is that God knows all, knows us, knows who and what we are. Knows, remember, the woman who is desperate, poor, young, and alone—who can’t afford to have a child, who was raped or abused, who is terrified, who has no health care, who is crying out, after much thought and consideration, to terminate her pregnancy. Knows the goodness and purity in her heart and the harshness of those who condemn. Put simply, the ancient, biblical statement that God is all-powerful has no relevance to the rights of women over their own bodies.
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So, the commandment to not kill is super nuanced if we’re talking about a war to smite people who disagree with us, but super clear when it’s referring to a zygote?
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The actual words are ambiguous. My opinion is that when it was written, it was meant to describe a forced abortion of the misbegotten fetus, but that Orthodox Judaism has since retconned that to be a death penalty. Either way, it’s clear that the fetus is killed because it was conceived in adultery.
And it’s not just the Talmud that penalizes injury-causing-miscarriage as a property crime. Exodus does, too. In the same general section as “an eye for an eye”, it says that if you kill someone, you should be killed. And if you strike a slave such that he dies right away, you should be killed (but not if he lingers for a few days). And if two men fight and strike a woman such that she miscarries, a fine shall be levied by the courts.
That’s … really a lesser penalty than if a miscarriage is the death of a human being.
There is zero biblical argument for considering an abortion to be murder. A bad thing, yes. But murder? That’s a new idea that people are claiming with no justification.
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Yeah, that suggests either that God knew who you were going to be before you existed, or else that the soul existed before it got attached to a body. I can’t see how your get from there to “and the moment i started to form every embryo in a womb, the embryo was sacred to me”.
It’s especially weird knowing how many embryos routinely die. Maybe God knows which ones are going to survive.
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I mean, there are several places where God commands us to commit genocide on the Amalakites, a tribe that…does seem to have become extinct. Possibly because my ancestors murdered them. I’m dubious making moral choices based on what it says in the Bible.
Not to mention the whole slavery thing.
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