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Abortion in the Bible

Hey, it looks like a nice day. Sunshine is in the forecast. I'm in good spirits, so let's piss people off by talking about abortion and the Bible. 

I'm an atheist now, but grew up in a Christian family and a Christian church, and I can still speak Bible.

Some of my freaky Christian friends and family are very much against abortion, because the Bible tells them it's wrong, it's evil, it's murder, it's a sin, and everyone involved is going to Hell. (Except the fetus. The fetus gets a glorious afterlife in Heaven, but the doctor and the infested woman and whoever drove her to the clinic, they'll burn in Hell eternally, along with everyone who works at the clinic, donates to the clinic, sweeps up at the clinic, etc.

Where in the Bible does God tell these sanctimonious fools that abortion is wrong, evil, murder, or a sin? The correct answer is, nowhere.

Sometimes, the fools answer with Jeremiah 1:5. That's the closest the Bible comes to an argument against abortion. It reads: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

Taken at face value and in context, God is saying that he always had great plans — for Jeremiah, the one and only person he's talking to in that verse.

Even putting all my ordinary skepticism aside, I don't think that verse means God has similarly great and detailed plans for you and for me and for every zygote, every fetus, every sacred sperm and holy egg, and every human ever born or never born.

And you'll perhaps notice, even Jeremiah 1:5, the most-cited Bible verse against abortion ... isn't against abortion, or even about abortion. It mentions a pregnancy, but not abortion.

There's very little mention of abortion anywhere in the Bible, which tends to blow Christians' minds.

The Bible, and especially the Old Testament, is full of God's crystal-clear no-misunderstanding rules against worshiping any other God, and against stealing, against murder, against blasphemy, against tattoos, against mixed-fabrics, against eating shellfish, and of course against homosexuality, and also against women having any rights, and against myriad other things. God has a thousand rules, many of them mean or nonsensical, and he doesn't mince words about his rules — so it's odd that there's nothing in the Bible that unambiguously condemns abortion.

There are even a few references making it clear that, to God, ending a woman's pregnancy is no big deal.

In Exodus 21:22-25, the Bible says that if a pregnant woman is injured and miscarries, the compensation should be financial. This is in the Old Testament, where the punishment for murder is always invariably death — so this means that the fetus is not a person. To God, killing a fetus is more like breaking a vase.

In Numbers 5:11-31, there's a disgusting purity test to determine whether a woman is guilty of adultery. The test is supposed to abort the fetus if she's guilty of extramarital sex, so very obviously, God's saying that a fetus has no inherent right to life.

In Hosea 9:10-16, God punishes the Israelites by having pregnant women deliver stillborn babies, and having fetuses die in the womb. God Almighty performs these abortions.

In Deuteronomy 28:18 and :53, God goes on at some length about the assorted punishments for disobedience, which include "cursed shall be the fruit of your womb" and "you will eat the fruit of your womb." Eating fetuses? Yum. No recipe is included, but plainly, the Christian God doesn't give a good God damn about the fate of a fetus.

And with that, I sincerely hope I've infuriated a few clueless Christians, most of whom have never read their good book. Please, open the book and have a read; you'll be agnostic by this afternoon and atheist by the weekend.

Have a blessed day, everyone, and remember, if you don't want a baby, abort, abort, abort it.

10/30/2019  
Republished: 4/25/2023  

6 comments:

  1. Not really related, but I wanted to stick this here. If god has a plan for everyone, what's the plan for kids with cancer?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo

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    Replies
    1. Stephen Fry is a brain, and that's one of my favorite clips, which of course could never air on American television. I love watching the host squirm, wishing he hadn't asked that question.

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    2. We're all brains Stephen Fry chooses to use his for thinking.

      If you've not seen his five-part tour of America, take the five hours or whatever and enjoy it. He doesn't capture everything of course, but he notices things that are background noise for the locals (us). He made the trip in a London taxi, just in case we missed the stranger in a strange land theme.

      John

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    3. If you haven't seen Fry on QI, you're missing out. Hilarious and smart trivia show that shames turgid drivel like Jeopardy, etc. Alan Davies is also funny as hell on it.

      https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3reml8

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    4. I couldn't agree more with Claude about QI. Fry was erudite, clever and funny on the show. He hosted it from 2003 to 2016, and many of the shows are on YouTube. There's not a clunker in the bunch. I don't think Jeopardy is drivel, but QI would be what's on TV if everyone in the world were bright and insightful. He even occasionally references that overhyped foreigner Shakespeare.

      John

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    5. Me and Stephen Fry don't go back very far. I've read some articles he wrote, saw V FOR VENDETTA and GOSFORD PARK and, of course, he's River Song's ex-husband on DOCTOR WHO, but I'm unfamiliar with STEPHEN FRY IN AMERICA or QI and I'll put an end to that.

      Delete

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