Oh, oh! This is also from the tread. And damn, this guy is good..
The Bible is Pro-Choice
by Joyce Arthur
First published in "Humanist in Canada, " No. 90 (Vol. 22, #3) Autumn, 1989. Revised and expanded August 2001.
Most anti-choicers claim obedience to the divinely inspired word of God, so let's review their performance by taking a look at what the Bible has to say about abortion. Extremely little, actually, but what it does say appears to be in direct contradiction to the anti-choice stance.
First, let's look at the Bible passages that anti-choicers generally cite to prop up their position. Incredibly, they rely mainly on just three that have nothing to do with abortion. Apparently, anti-choicers believe these vague passages say something significant about the status of the fetus, although it's impossible for any reasonable person to discern exactly what. The first such passage is found in Psalms 139:13-16:
"For Thou didst form my inward parts; thou didst weave me together in my mother's womb. I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works! Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."
All this passage states is that God is directly involved in the creation of a fetus and knows its future. This is useless for the anti-choice position, since God creates all living things, including trees and bugs. Plus, just because God is supposedly omniscient doesn't give fetuses any special statusit simply means God already knows whether they will live or die. It is dishonest to conclude from this verse that a fetus is a human being deserving of more protection than women. The passage is poetic prose that anti-choicers have twisted and trivialized by giving it a literal, objective meaning where there is none.
The second passage used by anti-choicers is similar:
"Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you'..." (Jeremiah 1:4-5)
Unfortunately, anti-choicers usually stop right there, and forget the rest of Verse 5, which negates their preferred meaning:
"...'and I appointed you a prophet to the nations.'"
This passage is specific to one, very special personJeremiah the prophet, whom God has called to provide miraculous powers and authority to the world. Since we are not all destined to be divine prophets, this verse cannot be construed as applying to any fetus except the unborn Jeremiah. Again, anti-choicers are being dishonest by pulling this verse totally out of its context.
The third passage quoted by anti-choicers tells the story of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Mary the mother of Jesus, while both were pregnant:
"In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit." (Luke 1:39-41)
This passage simply records a fetus kicking in the womb. We can only wonder in befuddlement why anti-choicers think this would help them. Besides, John the Baptist is yet another divine fetal prophet ordained by God. Since very few of us are chosen by God before birth to herald the arrival of the Messiah on earth, we cannot claim that this passage venerates all fetuses.
Let's turn now to the several Biblical passages that actually mention abortion or miscarriage. Ironically, in spite of God giving divine status to the prophet Jeremiah while he was in the womb, Jeremiah emphatically rejects this for himself. Later in his book, he wishes he had been aborted! The following passage is a lamentation by Jeremiah:
"Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, 'A son is born to you', making him very glad. Let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew without pity; let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon, because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb for ever great." (Jeremiah 20:14-17)
In verse 18, he concludes with the anguished cry:
"Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?"
Three other Biblical passages question the value of an unhappy, painful, or "wicked" life. They aver that it is better to suffer an "untimely birth" (i.e, be miscarried) than live a miserable existence, or worse, live as an evil unbeliever:
"If a man begets a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but he does not enjoy life's good things, and also has no burial, I say that an untimely birth is better off than he. For it comes into vanity and goes into darkness, and in darkness its name is covered; moreover it has not seen the sun or known anything; yet it finds rest rather than he." (Ecclesiastes 6:3-5)
"Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth, as infants that never see the light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master." (Job 3:16-19)
"The wicked go astray from the womb, they err from their birth, speaking lies. They have venom like the venom of a serpent. ... Let them vanish like water that runs away, like grass let them be trodden down and wither. Let them be like the snail which dissolves into slime, like the untimely birth that never sees the sun." (Psalms 58:3-8)
Far from bolstering the arguments of anti-choicers, these verses prove the Bible is pro-choice. The contention that quality of life is a more worthwhile pursuit than simply life for the sake of life is a basic pro-choice stance.
One of the few biblical passages that approaches the status of the fetus is Exodus 21:22-25, which reads:
"When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined according 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."
This passage allows only for the punishment of a man who injures a woman causing her to miscarry. However, a careful scrutiny of these verses uncovers a startling revelation. A miscarriage is punishable only by a fine, yet if there is any further harm, such as the death of the woman, the penalty is life for life! The implication of this passage is clearthe life of the unborn child is not accorded anywhere near the same status as the life of the woman. To put it another way, the man who causes a woman to miscarry is guilty not of murder, but a misdemeanor.
