Is Abortion Murder?

Once again you are addint to the word of God. It says "Dust from the floor". You are assuming it is more, and you are assuming WRONG, because the Bible says DUST FROM THE FLOOR.

You are assuming this woman is pregnant, which the Bible doesn't say. Once again adding to the word of God.

Can God change dust to make a drink bitter? Well. . he turned water into wine. Once again. . no baby, no herb, you are flawed in your thinking.

 

Alex please read the list at the bottom of the last page, it contains verses that I believe supports that life/soul is directly connected to the act of breathing through the nostrils.

When God formed Adam, he had everything completed, a fully formed man. It most likely can be understood that he may have been alive but until God breath the breath of life/soul into his nostrils he was still considered not living, no spirit, no soul not yet "come to life."

[ August 25, 2002, 01:07 AM: Message edited by: post-it ]

 

There is a small but influential circle of prochoice advocates who claim to base their beliefs on the Bible. They maintain that "nowhere does the Bible prohibit abortion." [1] Yet the Bible clearly prohibits the killing of innocent people (Exodus 20:13). All that is necessary to prove a biblical prohibition of abortion is to demonstrate that the Bible considers the unborn to be human beings.

Personhood in the Bible

A number of ancient societies opposed abortion, [2] but the ancient Hebrew society had the clearest reasons for doing so because of its foundations in the scriptures. The Bible teaches that men and women are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). As the climax of God's creation mankind has an intrinsic worth far greater than that of the animal kingdom placed under His care. Throughout the Scriptures, personhood is never measured by age, stage of development, or mental, physical, or social skills. Personhood is endowed by God at the moment of creation - before which there was not a human being and after which there is. That moment of creation can be nothing other than the moment of conception.

The Hebrew word used in the Old Testament to refer to the unborn (Exodus 21:22-25) is yeled, a word that "generally indicates young children, but may refer to teens or even young adults." [3] The Hebrews did not have or need a separate word for unborn children. They were just like any other children, only younger. In the Bible there are references to born children and unborn children, but there is no such thing as a potential, incipient, or "almost" child.

Job graphically described the way God created him before he was born (Job 10:8-12). The person in the womb was not something that might become Job, but someone who was Job, just a younger version of the same man. To Isaiah, God says, "This is what the Lord says - he who made you, who formed you in the womb" (Isaiah 44:2). What each person is, not merely what he might become, was present in his mother's womb.

Psalm 139:13-16 paints a graphic picture of the intimate involvement of God with a preborn person. God created David's "inmost being," not at birth, but before birth. David says to his Creator, "You knit me together in my mother's womb." Each person, regardless of his parentage of handicap, has not been manufactured on a cosmic assembly line, but has been personally knitted together by God in the womb. All the days of his life have been planned out by God before any have come to be (Psalm 139:16).

As a member of the human race that has rejected God, each person sinned "in Adam," and is therefore a sinner from his very beginning (Romans 5:12-19). David says, "Surely I was sinful at birth." Then he goes back even further, back before birth to the actual beginning of his life, saying he was "sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5). Each person has a sinful nature from the point of conception. Who but an actual person can have a sinful nature? Rocks and trees and animals and human organs do not have moral natures, good or bad. Morality can be ascribed only to a person. That there is a sin nature at the point of conception demonstrates that there is a person present who is capable of having such a nature.

Jacob was given prominence over his twin Esau "though not yet born" (Romans 9:11). When Rebekah was pregnant with Jacob and Esau, Scriptures says, "The babies jostled each other within her" (Genesis 25:22). The unborn are regarded as "babies" in the full sense of the term. God tells Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you" (Jeremiah 1:5). He could not know Jeremiah in his mother's womb unless Jeremiah, the person, was present in his mother's womb. The Creator is involved in an intimate knowing relationship not only with born people, but with unborn people.

In Luke 1:41,44 there are references to the unborn John the Baptist, who was at the end of his second trimester in the womb. The word, translated baby, in these verses is the Greek word brephos. It is the same word used for the already born baby Jesus (Luke 2:12, 16) and for the babies brought to Jesus to receive His blessing (Luke 18:15-17). It is also the same word used in Acts 7:19 for the newborn babies killed by Pharaoh. To the writers of the New Testament, like the Old, whether born or unborn, a baby is simply a baby. It appears that the preborn John the Baptist responded to the presence of the preborn Jesus in His mother Mary when Jesus was probably no more than ten days beyond His conception (Luke 1:41).

The angel Gabriel told Mary that she would be "with child and give birth to a son" (Luke 1:31). In the first century, and in every century, to be pregnant is to be with child, not with that which might become a child. The Scriptures teach the psychosomatic unity of the whole person, body, soul, and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Wherever there is a genetically distinct living human being, there is a living soul and spirit.


The Status of the Unborn

One scholar states: "Looking at Old Testament law from a proper cultural and historical context, it is evident that the life of the unborn is put on the same par as the person outside the womb." [4]

When understood as a reference to miscarriage, Exodus 21:22-25 is sometimes used as evidence that the unborn is subhuman. But a proper understanding of the passage shows reference is not to a miscarriage, but to a premature birth, and that the "injury" referred to, which is to be compensated for like all other injuries, applies to the child as well as to his mother. This means that, "far from justifying permissive abortion, in fact grants the unborn child a status in the eyes of the law equal to the mother's." [5]

Meredith Cline observes, "The most significant thing about abortion legislation in Biblical law is that there is none. It was so unthinkable that an Israelite woman should desire an abortion that there was no need to mention this offense in the criminal code." [6] All that was necessary to prohibit an abortion was the command, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13). Every Israelite knew that the preborn child was indeed a child. Therefore, miscarriage was always viewed as the loss of a child and abortion as the killing of a child.

Numbers 5:11-31 is an unusual passage of Scripture used to make a central argument in A Prochoice Bible Study, published by Episcopalians for Religious Freedom. [7] They cite the New English Bible's peculiar translation, which makes it sound as if God brings a miscarriage on a woman if she is unfaithful to her husband. Other translations refer to a wasting of the thigh and swelling of her abdomen, but do not take it to mean pregnancy, which would presumably simply be called that directly if it were in mind.

The woman could have been pregnant by her husband, assuming they had been having sex, which Hebrews couples normally did. It appears that God was expected to do some kind of miracle related to the bitter water, creating a dramatic physical reaction if adultery had been committed. The text gives no indication of either pregnancy of abortion. Indeed, in the majority of cases of suspected adultery, there would be no pregnancy and therefore no child at risk.

The Prochoice Bible Study that cites the NEB's unique translation suggests if God indeed causes miscarriage, it would therefore be an endorsements of people causing abortions. This is a huge stretch, since neither the wife, husband, nor priest made the decision to induce an abortion, nor would they have the right to do so. The passage does not seem to refer to a miscarriage at all; but even if it did, there is a certainly nothing to suggest any endorsement of human beings initiating an abortion.


Child Sacrifice

Child sacrifice is condemned throughout Scripture. Only the most degraded societies tolerated such evil, and the worst of these defended and celebrated it as if it were a virtue. Ancient dumping grounds have been found filled with the bones of hundreds of dismembered infants. This is strikingly similar to discoveries of thousands of dead babies discarded by modern abortion clinics. One scholar of the ancient Near East refers to infant sacrifice as "the Canaanite counterpart to abortion." [8] Unlike the pagan sacrifices, however, with abortion, child killing need no longer be postponed till birth.

Scripture condemns the shedding of innocent blood (Deuteronomy 19:10; Proverbs 6:17; Isaiah 1:15; Jeremiah 22:17). While the killing of all innocent human beings is detestable, the Bible regards the killing of children as particularly heinous (Leviticus 18:21; 20:1-5; Deuteronomy 12:31). The prophets of Israel were outraged at the sacrifice of children by some of the Jews. They warned that it would result in the devastating judgment of God on their society (Jeremiah 7:30-34; Ezekiel 16:20-21, 36-38; 20:31; compare 2 Kings 21:2-6 and Jeremiah 15:3-4).


Abortion and Church History

Christians throughout church history have affirmed with a united the humanity of preborn child. [9] The second-century Epistle of Barnabas speaks of "killers of the child, who abort the mold of God." It treats the unborn child as any other human "neighbor" by saying, "You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not slay a child by abortion. You shall not kill that which has already been generated" (Epistle of Barnabas 19:5).

The Didache, a second-century catechism for young converts, states, "Do not murder a child by or abortion of kill a newborn infant" (Didache 2.2). Clement of Alexandria maintained that "those who use abortifacient medicines to hide their fornication cause not only the outright murder of the fetus, but of the whole human race as well" (Paedogus 2:10.96.1).

Defending Christians before Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 177, Athenagoras argued, "What reason would we have to commit murder when we say that women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give account of it to God? ...The fetus in the womb is a living being and therefore the object of God's care" (A Plea for the Christians, 35.6).

Tertullian said, "It does not matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. In both instances, destruction is murder" (Apology, 9.4). Basil the Great affirmed, "Those who give abortifacients for the destruction of a child conceived in the womb are murderers themselves, along with those receiving the poisons" (Canons, 188.2). Jerome called abortion "the murder of an unborn child" (Letter to Eustochium, 22.13). Augustine warned against the terrible crime of "the murder of an unborn child" (On Marriage, 1.17.15). Origen, Cyprian, and Chrysotom were among the many other prominent theologians and church leaders who condemned abortion as the killing of children. New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger comments, "It is really remarkable how uniform and how pronounced was the early Christian opposition to abortion." [10]

Throughout the centuries, Roman Catholic leaders have consistently upheld the sanctity of human life. Likewise, Protestant reformer John Calvin followed both the Scriptures and the historical position of the church when he affirmed:

The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a most monstrous crime to rob it of the life, which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light. [11]

Modern theologians with a strong biblical orientation agree that abortion is the killing of a child. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lost his life standing up against the murder of the innocent in Germany, argued that abortion is "nothing but murder." [12] Karl Barth stated,

"The unborn child is from the very first a child... it is a man and not a thing, not a mere part of the mother's body... Those who live by mercy will always be disposed to practice mercy, especially to a human being which is so dependent on the mercy of others as the unborn child." [13]

In the last few decades it has become popular for certain theologians and ministers to be proabortion. The Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, for instance, has adopted the motto, "Prayerfully Prochoice," and prochoice advocates point to it as proof that conscientious Christians can be prochoice. Yet the arguments set forth by such advocates are shallow, inconsistent, and violate the most basic principles of biblical interpretation. Their arguments are clearly read into the biblical texts rather than derived from them. [14]

The "Christians" prochoice position is nothing more than an accommodation to modern secular beliefs, and it flies in the face of the Bible and the historical position of the church. If the church is to be the church, it must challenge and guide the morality of society, not mirror it.


Conclusion: The Bible and the Children

Even if church history were unclear on the matter, the Bible is very clear. Every child in the womb has been created by God, and He has laid out a plan for that child's life. Furthermore, Christ loves that child and proved it by becoming like him - He spent nine months in His mother's womb. Finally, Christ died for that child, showing how precious He considers him to be.

Christ's disciples failed to understand how valuable children were to Him, and they rebuked those who tried to bring them near Him (Luke 18:15-17). But Jesus called the children to Him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." He did not consider attention to children a distraction from His kingdom business, but an integral part of it.

The biblical view of children is that they are a blessing and a gift from the Lord (Psalm 127:3-5). Society is treating children more and more as liabilities. We must learn to see them as God does - "He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing" (Deuteronomy 10:18). Furthermore, we must act toward them as God commands us to act:


Defend the cause of the weak and the fatherless;
Maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.
Rescue the weak and needy;
Deliver them from the hand of the wicked (Psalm 82:3-4).

As we intervene on behalf of His littlest children, let's realize it is Christ Himself from whom we intervene (Matthew 25:40).

 

post-it:

I agree that we all have what you would call real issues with the meaning of many scriptures but, for the most part, a little "in between thinking", could bring us all a little closer. That is why we have so many denominations, disagreements like this one. I still think I am right that a baby is a human from conception and to abort with any reason, is to committ murder, EVEN if there is no man made law saying this, YET.

I can respect your view or anyone else's because of the FREE WILL God gave us . That, in itself, does not make a person right. Sometimes human logic is with God.

I do pray that you change at some point in time as it is evident that you have held your opinion about this for a long time already. But it is also evident that you are looking for support or you would have never started this thread. I think it was you????

God Bless..........Alex

 

I offer no appologies.
I'll say it again. CRAAAAP!! Pro Abortion views STINK! No what I said wasn't nice! Neither is spiritual warfare. I imagine Jesus wasn't feeling very "nice" when he started flipping over tables in the temple with a whip! I can imagine his righteous anger when it comes to abortion is just as fiery!

By the way killing little babies doesn't sound nice either, thats why people call babies, fetuses and infanticide/murder, abortion.

[ August 25, 2002, 01:53 AM: Message edited by: cdouglas76 ]

 

A perfect description of when life begins and when life ends.

 

You have referred to Adam on several occasions. But whatever inference you are trying to draw could never have anything to do with abortion. Adam was the first man and was not born at all. He was nothing but dead elements until God gave him life. His system was not at work... an unborn baby's is.

 

The biggest problem with this equation is that the unborn will do for something the mother had done... while possibly the mother would die for something ... the mother had done.

These girls and women are NOT innocent. In over 95% of all abortions, the choice is for a reason other than rape, incest, or the physical life of the mother.

The sex drive is strong but not uncontrollable. If women don't want children, they should not have sex.

 

So then, they deserve to die. Right? After all they shouldn't have made a mistake.

 

post-it,
I brought this up in another thread, and you never addressed it there, either. What about the seventeenth chapter of Leviticus, particularly v.11: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood...". The human blood supply shows up observably about two weeks after conception.
A different criterion here than breathing.

Karen

 

For those who would argue for/infavor of abortion..... there is no longer need of any reply. I simply say "The LORD rebuke thee."

 

For those who would argue for/infavor of the murder of women from illegal abortions over a non-life issue in the Bible.... there is no longer need of any reply. I simply say "the LORD refuke thee."

 

Sorry Karen, I overlooked that prior post.

Actually, you will find that this only adds to the prochoice argument. If you look in Gen when God created the animals you will find that every animal that is alive has the breath of God as it is written, just as man does. This is the life that is breathed into the nostrils of both man and animal.

When you add this passage into the mix because we know that the blood picks up the breath and takes it to all parts of the body. So life (breath) is found in the Blood. But if a mothers breath and blood are not exchanged with an unborn, we don't have a living human being or even something that could be considered an animal yet. Even if it where exchanged it still doesn't mean the the Breath of Life has taken place since the Bible says that it is done through the nostrils.

 

For those who would argue for/infavor of the murder of women from illegal abortions over a non-life issue in the Bible.... there is no longer need of any reply. I simply say "the LORD refuke thee."</font>[/QUOTE]I don't know how well the Lord refukes people, post-it, but you are putting at least 1.5 million dead babies a year up against less than 100 deaths of women per year before abortion was legalized! I'm not sure how you are with numbers, but that seems a bit lopsided to me...

Now, maybe a couple of these women were pregnant because of rape. Pregnancies RARELY result from rape due to the stress. That leaves 98 of the women, if there were indeed 100 deaths (which there weren't, by the way -- it was fewer), as a result of women not saying 'no.' They ended up with pregnancies as a consequence of their own actions.

What did 1.5 million dead babies a year ever do that they should have to pay for that with their lives?

Again, go to an abortion clinic and witness a five month abortion. I really do guarantee that everything you have said about this procedure before six months will be taken back -- after you have finished vomiting from what you have just seen.

 

And again, and forever, post-it, the breath of life as it is termed in Genesis is NOT a physical thing. It is NOT breathing. It is a translation of the word 'nephesh' which means "soul". It is a reference to unique personality and the ability to respond with learning to external stimuli as processed through the central nervous system. If you are going to connect it to anything physical, it would have to be the central nervous system, which in place and functioning within a few weeks of conception.

For you to keep insisting on breath through the nostrils is deliberate ignorance and exactly what Paul referred to as the suppression of the truth in Romans 1.

 

Are you saying that Adam could have already been breathing before this breath of life was breathed into his nostrils?

 

The word "fetus" is Latin for baby. That is an aborted BABY. He was living. He was killed. Tht is murder.

I can't believe the twisting I am seeing here. First of all, it is the Bible that condemns sex outside of marriage. Or do you not believe that part of the Bible as well as other parts you have chosen to ignore?

And there are more deaths now with the mothers during legal abortions now than there ever were from illegal abortions! So let me ask YOU: DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT THOSE DEAD WOMEN WHO WENT IN FOR ABORTIONS THAT THEY WERE TOLD WERE 'PERFECTLY SAFE' AND THEN NEVER CAME OUT AGAIN? Or those that died from infections later? Or those that were 'accidently' sterilized due to abortion procedures? Or those who are scarred emotionally for life by the knowledge that they killed their own child? Don't you care about them?

And now you are not only trying to replace the Bible with your opinion, you are trying to replace God who is the author of life, in determining when it is OK to kill someone.

You most likely are right with this comment. But then I would then be just as wrong as you since I would be arguing from emotion rather than from scripture. I never said I want any woman to abort, in fact just the opposite, I think we should educate, assist, guide mothers in the direction of giving births. I know that it won't and isn't going to be the right choice for some mothers and that is fine since it isn't murder and in fact the Bible doesn't see the fetus/unborn baby (pre-6 months)as a viable life form.</font>[/QUOTE]The reason you would be sick, post-it, and change your mind, is that you would be seeing a perfect little human body torn apart, which was just a few moments ago together, growing, moving, and responding to outside stimuli. Biologically we call that living. You would see that that had been a person who was alive, and if that 5 month old baby was somehow born whole and alive despite the abortion procedure, you would have seen it TRY to breathe and gasp a few times before dying. The lungs were there, but they were not mature enough to handle the transfer of oxygen. But the baby will have tried to breathe.

Is your argument then that only successful breaths mean life?

You would change your mind because you would have come face to face, inescapably, with the truth. I doubt even you could look at a five month old baby and say it is not a real baby; a real person. And if that child were born alive, I cannot believe even you would have a heart so hard that you would be able to look at it and say "Throw it away." It would die, but what your reaction would be I honestly pray to God would not be as callous as you have shown it to be here.

[ August 25, 2002, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: Helen ]

 

Are you saying that Adam could have already been breathing before this breath of life was breathed into his nostrils?</font>[/QUOTE]Man was created fully man from the start. The actions were together. When Adam recounts the process of his creation in Genesis 2:7, he says 'and', not 'and then.' The two actions were simultaneous.

 

Perhaps this could be an appropriate conclusion to a now (at least for the last 10 pages) pointless thread????????

MT 7:6 "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces."

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NU 6:24-26
"The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace."