Defusing Pro-Choice Bible Proof-Texts

The other day a friend sent me a clip from the TV show “The Young Pope”.  In it, the Pope discusses the morality of abortion with one of his cardinals.  I could critique the clip all day long, but I want to focus on the Scriptural discussion they have.

Sometimes you’ll run across a person who claims the Bible supports a “Pro-Choice” worldview.  Today I want to run through the three passages which are used to support that claim.

The Case of Quarreling Men:

 Here’s the first one.  You’ll hear the following:

“You know… the Bible has laws concerning the accidental killing of a fetus.  And it only assigns a monetary fine as punishment.  So much for the full humanity of the pre-born!”

The passage being referred to is a law found in Exodus 21.  It reads:

“When men fight together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children go forth, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. 

But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." - Exodus 21:22-25

Now, the problem occurs when readers and translators bring unnecessary assumptions to the text. Some translators render the passage as saying “the woman has a miscarriage” or “the baby born is stillborn”.  And then they assume the “no harm done” refers only to harm done to the woman.

However, a more literal translation (like the one above) would simply say “the child comes out/goes forth”.   It doesn’t say anything about the child being dead.  And that’s the point.  The text would also describe a woman going into early labor as a result of the injury.

Therefore, when the law says “if there is no harm done”, it would also be referring to “no harm done” to the child.  That is, the child is delivered healthy and alive.  In that case only a fine is applied to the assailant.  Otherwise the penalty will be potentially be “a life for a life”.

Thus, far from assigning a mere legal fee for killing a pre-born baby, this passage actually assigns the death penalty to killing the pre-born.

The Adultery Test:

You may also hear a person say:

“You know …. the Bible actually prescribes a ritual for aborting the fetus of an adulterous woman?  Bet you didn’t learn THAT in Sunday school!”

He/she would be referring to a procedure found in Numbers 5.  It’s lengthy:

"If any man's wife goes astray and breaks faith with him, if a man lies with her sexually, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she is undetected though she has defiled herself, and there is no witness against her, since she was not taken in the act, and if the spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife who has defiled herself, OR if the spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife, though she has NOT defiled herself, then the man shall bring his wife to the priest and bring the offering required of her, a tenth of an ephah of barley flour. He shall pour no oil on it and put no frankincense on it, for it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering of remembrance, bringing iniquity to remembrance.

“And the priest shall bring her near and set her before the Lord. And the priest shall take holy water in an earthenware vessel and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord and unbind the hair of the woman's head and place in her hands the grain offering of remembrance, which is the grain offering of jealousy. And in his hand the priest shall have the water of bitterness that brings the curse. 

Then the priest shall make her take an oath, saying, ‘If no man has lain with you, and if you have not turned aside to uncleanness while you were under your husband's authority, be free from this water of bitterness that brings the curse. But if you have gone astray, though you are under your husband's authority, and if you have defiled yourself, and some man other than your husband has lain with you, then’ (let the priest make the woman take the oath of the curse, and say to the woman) ‘the Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people, when the Lord makes your thigh rot and your belly swell. May this water that brings the curse pass into your bowels and make your belly swell and your thigh rot.’ And the woman shall say, ‘Amen, Amen.’

And when [the priest] has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and has broken faith with her husband, the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh rot, and the woman shall become a curse among her people. 

But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children.

This is the law in cases of jealousy, when a wife, though under her husband's authority, goes astray and defiles herself, or when the spirit of jealousy comes over a man and he is jealous of his wife." - Numbers 5:11-30

OK, here’s how the abortion rights supporter reads the passage; First, he/she assumes the passage describes a woman who is found to be pregnant by another man.  Then she is made to drink a concoction made by the temple priest.  If the woman is guilty, the concoction will induce a miscarriage.

Here’s the problem… the woman is never said to be pregnant.  Rather, it says the husband has unsubstantiated suspicions against his wife.  Based on what?  Who knows… maybe she’s sneaking out at night.  Maybe she’s been acting too friendly with the mailman.  But the text never says she’s pregnant.

Next, the concoction she’s made to drink is… dusty water.  Dusty water cannot, on its own, induce an abortion.  So if she suffers any harm as a result of this drink, it means God was the one doing it.  That’s the point – in the absence of proof, the matter is given to the all-knowing God.

But what does He do?  Some translations say the woman miscarries.  However, a more literal translation of the text says “her belly swells and her thigh rots/wastes away”.

Now, as we saw in the Exodus passage above, the Hebrews knew how to describe a woman giving birth prematurely.  But here you read a totally different description of what happens.  Why?  Because you’re not reading a description of a miscarriage.  You’re reading a description of God rending her reproductive organs and cursing her with infertility.

That’s why – if she is found innocent – the text conversely says she’ll be free and able to have children.

The Breath of Life:  

The final example is any time someone says:

“You know… the Bible says we’re not alive until we draw our first breath.”

This is drawn passages like Genesis 2:7, which describe God as giving man “the breath of life”.  Your abortion rights supporting acquaintance concludes from this idiom that the Bible is saying babies aren’t alive until they breath air with their lungs.

However, this phrase was obviously not meant to be a statement about biology.  The ancient Jews knew something could be alive without breathing through lungs because they knew about plants. Rather, the idiom of “the breath of life” was a Hebraic way of referring to intangible concept of the principle of life in the human body...  or what we Catholics would call, “the soul”.

Likewise, the Hebrews certainly knew babies in the womb were living human beings.  When you get a Biblical description of a child in-utero, it is unambiguously lively and personal:

“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.'" - Luke 1:41-44

Thus... we come to a conclusion you were probably all expecting.  If one wants to assert the right of a woman to kill the baby within her womb, the Bible is not your ally.