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TranscriptRecently, a friend directed me to a series of blog posts written by a staffer for Young Life. Young Life is a parachurch Christian organization that works with high school students and middle school students. This staffer, while not writing officially for Young Life on his own blog, makes the case that the Old Testament, and the Bible in general, does not condemn abortion. Not directly, not indirectly. In fact, he tries to prove the point, using Scripture, that the unborn life from the Bible's perspective isn't even as valuable as the born life, and that life doesn't begin from a biblical perspective until birth. Let's analyze some of these claims.
“The Bible says the unborn isn’t as valuable”
One you may hear from other people and not just from this blog post, comes from Exodus 21:22-25. Here's how it's often quoted when it's being used: “When men fight and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other misfortune ensues, the one responsible shall be fined as the woman's husband may exact from him. The payment is to be based on a judge’s reckoning; but if other misfortune ensues, the penalty shall be life for life.”
This is what this this guy writes. He says that "Scripture implies that if an unborn child is terminated, the compensation is to be money, but if a woman is killed or severely injured, the penalty is to be equal for the crime." Therefore, on his view, on the Old Testament law, the unborn is not as valuable as the born - but here's the interesting point. If he simply consulted more than one translation, and more than the one he used, he would see that it's not nearly as clear-cut, because many translations translate this differently. In fact, the NIV says, "If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman, and she gives birth prematurely" - not if a miscarriage results, if she gives birth prematurely.
In fact, the word used here in this Exodus 21 passage is not the word for abortion and not the word for miscarriage. If the writer had wanted to use those words, they are available and they are used elsewhere in the Old Testament - but the word here means to come forth in Hebrew. We don't have to create a problem where one doesn't exist, right? Why do we have to choose the interpretation or the reading that creates a problem? Because if you choose the reading which is most natural, that fits in a biblical worldview and biblical landscape, that the unborn is valuable, and you read it to say - like the actual Hebrew would imply - that she gives birth prematurely or her child comes, then we don't have to have a problem here.
Nothing in this verse, nothing in this passage, says that the child is dead upon arrival. It doesn't say that, so we should not guess to create a problem here where one does not exist. I think this is an easy way to demonstrate that this passage does not say that the unborn is not as valuable as the born person.
“The Jews thought the unborn wasn’t as valuable”
He then goes on to quote from the Mishnah, which are Jewish legal documents. Here's what he quotes. He says, "If a woman is having difficulty in giving birth and her life is in danger, one may cut up the fetus within her womb and extract it limb by limb, because her life takes precedence over that of the fetus; but if the greater part was already born, she may not touch it, for one may not set aside one person's life for that of another." He says this is understood to mean that a woman whose life is endangered by a pregnancy is permitted to end the pregnancy, but if the child's already in the world, on that view, then she's not, because - his view here is that - the born child is more valuable than the unborn child.
Now, there are a few ways to address this. First, why are we quoting late Jewish lite…
