Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

The A Word


The moral logic is impeccable. If you truly believe that a fetus has the same moral status as a baby, and that, as Republican politicians have said, Planned Parenthood is akin to Auschwitz, abortion is a holocaust, and abortion providers are murderers, then you have a moral imperative to stop them, by any means necessary.

Funny thing. Nobody, including the Pope, believed that until the late 19th Century. Abortion (and for that matter infanticide) were commonplace in the Biblical world, and that was just fine with the Bible. Here is the Skeptic's Annotated Bible on abortion. A couple of good 'uns:

God sometimes approves of killing fetuses.
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. -- Numbers 31:15-17
(Some of the non-virgin women must have been pregnant. They would have been killed along with their unborn fetuses.)
Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. -- Hosea 9:14
Yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb. -- Hosea 9:16
Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. -- Hosea 13:16
God sometimes kills newborn babies to punish their parents.
Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. -- 2 Samuel 12:14
God sometimes causes abortions by cursing unfaithful wives.
The priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell. And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen. ...
And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed. -- Numbers 5:21-21, 27-28
The reason the Catholic Church, and later protestant sects, suddenly got all life begins at conception in the 19th Century was because of the women's movement. They were afraid of independent women and sexual liberation. It's about sex and gender, not babies. Never forget that.

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