Tag: God

“Choosing to ban abortion in cases where rape caused pregnancy would be difficult to argue as biblically supported, as the Book of Numbers prescribes a potion that should cause sterility and perhaps even abortion as the enforced consequence of infidelity. As a result, it is hard to argue that the Bible always speaks out against abortion.”

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“All in all, the Bible does not speak as clearly about abortion as some politicians might wish. Where it does speak about pregnancy and abortion, the God-given character of human life is an important point of departure. On the one hand, there are passages that state how God has plans for some special human beings, his prophets, already during their stay in their mother’s womb. This implies that already at that stage God had selected them as the persons they would become. On the other hand, some passages indicate that human life was only thought to begin either at the moment the fetus was fully developed or even up to a month after the baby’s birth. It is therefore difficult to refer to anything like “the Bible’s teaching on abortion.” The Bible contains a diverse collection of views on the origin of human life. Any attempt to base a political strategy on the Bible should always indicate, for honesty’s sake, that such a “biblical view” is based on a conscious choice of passages and interpretations by each individual speaker.”