source: YouTube
This turned out to be yet another lesson as to never blindly believe what you're told. If we do believe what the fundamentalist Christian conservatives say about abortion, we're falling for yet another one of their lies. According to these theocrats, abortion is a mortal sin, akin to murder. Women seeking abortion and medical professionals providing abortions are murderers. According to their Holy Book, that is. A book that was written thousands of years ago, in two parts, one old and one "new," and by an unknown number of authors who lived in a time when the highest intellectuals didn't have the knowledge of a modern high school student. However, the claim that abortion is a mortal sin according to the Bible is just another example of a Big Lie.
Wasn't it Adolf Hitler who used the term "Big Lie" to discredit the Jews? And wasn't it Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist for the Nazi party, who said "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it"? And didn't the GOP perpetuate the Big Lie about the "stolen" 2020 elections? Isn't Donald Trump the dishonest "strong man" who still denies he lost those elections, and isn't his most hardened support-base found among the fundamentalist Evangelical conservative movement? I could go on asking questions with obvious affirmative answers, but the obvious conclusion for all of us should be this: never believe a word that comes out of their mouths, not even when they make claims about their most holy of holy books.
So I did a couple of quick searches on the interwebs, like "bible abortion" and "what does the bible say about abortion." And here's what I found: the Bible says nothing about abortion. The word doesn't occur in it, not even once. That's not surprising however; I doubt the word even existed in the times the Bible was written. It does say something about miscarriages and miscarriages that are caused by someone else than the pregnant woman herself. Exodus 21:22-25 says the following:
22 “If people are fighting and 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.
source: BibleGateway
Seeing as there was no way to keep the prematurely born alive in those times, "gives birth prematurely" can be taken to mean "has a miscarriage." So what does this mean? Just look at the punishment that's demanded: only a fine if there's nu further harm to the woman, and up to the death penalty if there is further harm to the woman than "just" losing the child. This is a clear indication that the unborn child is not recognized as a fully realized human being, that there's more worth assigned to the actual living individual that is the woman. Or, to translate this into the general disdain for women and superiority of men that's clearly encoded into this holy text; the woman is a more valuable property of her husband than the unborn child. This passage is often used by pro-live advocates while it clearly leans more to the pro-choice side of politics and culture. In the most clear terms this verse states that if the woman is killed, execution is the punishment, but when a pregnancy is terminated there's only a fine; this shows that the authors of the Bible did not consider a fetus to be a human being.
The Bible thumpers also point to the "sanctity of live," often backed by the sixth commandment. However, that commandment is mistranslated as "thou shalt not kill," when the most accurate translation is "thou shalt not murder." Even when one doesn't understand ancient Hebrew it should be obvious that "murder" and not "kill" is the correct translation; God makes many, many exceptions where killing is perfectly allowed, commanded even to the level of actual genocide. Referring to the sanctity of live and the prohibition on taking a live is laughable in the context of the Christian, Hebrew and Muslim holy books. It's not there. God himself wipes out all live on Earth when he finds out he doesn't like what he's created.
I've looked for it, but there's simply no explicit condemnation or endorsement of abortion in the Bible. One could look for and find many references to "womb" and even some occasions when there's mention of a fetus in a womb, like Psalm 139 in a message from David to God. And surely those references will be used by pro-live advocates to make their case, just like I tried to make a case for the pro-choice side of the isle. Ultimately though, that's just trying to read a predetermined conclusion into the words of the Bible, in both cases. But one fact remains, and that is that there's no direct condemnation or endorsement of abortion. None.
But... The Bible is a very specific book when it comes to prescribing rules about the most insignificant and significant things. There are rules about not mixing fabrics, very specific lists of animals and birds that should never be part of any meal. Want to kill a burglar? That's okay, but only at night; no killing burglars during the day. There's all kinds of rules about having and especially not having sex. Special significance is assigned to certain dates and even days of the week. God takes care of shit too;
Deuteronomy 23:12-14 New International Version (NIV): 12 Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. 13 As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. 14 For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.
source: BibleGateway - Deuteronomy 23:12-14
Yes, God is allergic to the sight (and smell I would guess) of human excrement and found that important enough to include in his version of "240,000,000,000 Rules for Live"... So why then, I ask you, would he not include even one single explicit rule regarding the termination of pregnancy? Given the overwhelming amount of minutiose rules, regulations and prohibitions found in God's Holy Text, I would say it's reasonable to believe that he would have included some about abortion if he considers it a mortal sin. But he didn't, and he doesn't. Abortion, even if the word doesn't appear in the Bible, did exist in those times and there were several methods to accomplish it: fasting, bloodletting, carrying heavy loads or vigorous jumping. We know this, for example, from the writings of Soranus of Ephesus, a Greek physician from the 1st/2nd century AD:
But in order that the embryo be separated, the woman should have <more violent exercise, walking about energetically and being shaken by means of [traveling in a carriage pulled by] draught animals; she should also leap energetically and carry things which are heavy beyond her strength.
source: SORANUS of EPHESUS GYNECOLOGY
So let's not fool ourselves here. It's quite audacious and presumptuous to claim to know the mind of your God, but it's quite despicable to interpret and mangle his words to serve your own selfish political and cultural goal to keep intact the strict hierarchy of white Christian male dominance. I've included two videos today to illustrate just that goal; you won't enjoy them unless you're a fundamentalist Christian Bible thumper, but watch them anyway...
source: Wikipedia
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