Religion and Abortion

Finally someone who doesn't mince words.



That reminds me... I want to watch the new documentary about Andrea Yates on Hulu.

So she got more than she bargained for. But the fetus was still aborted because the pregnancy was deliberately terminated, which is what she was going to do anyway. But again, the point is that she won't just be angry with her attacker for stabbing her - she'll be livid that he killed her baby.


Click here to see the post in which the fingernails were first brought up. Note that it's your post. I'll quote the good part for your convenience:

"Here you sound as stupid as that other poster who thought it was ' a human' because it had human DNA. My fingernail has human DNA yet it is NOT a human."


I asked you why it's an abortion when God does it, but not when the stabby guy on the bus does it. Your response didn't even address the question. I would like you to try again if you don't mind. Please and thank you.



Indeed. That's what I've been saying this whole time. It's up to the mother to decide if it gets to continue living, and no mother in her right mind would kill a baby, much less her own.

Andrea Yates murdered her children, not kill them by an abortion. Those are two different circumstances which you can try to compare in a moral sense but not in a legal sense. Her children weren't inside her body and that would be the huge distinction.

Because when it's in the womb it's specifically inside the mother's body, and she has autonomy and control over her own body. General speaking, geographic location shouldn't matter when killing someone but then there are always exceptions to any general rule. There is no other circumstance besides abortion where killing a human life inside another human life occurs so abortion itself is unique and exceptional case compared to any other forms of killing. Therefore is shouldn't be looked at and treated the same.

Simply having conceived does not make one a mother. Especially if conception was not her goal.

Father Nathan Monk
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"There are many who claim that you can not support choice and be a believer. I would argue that the idea of being anti-choice is a new concept and that in fact the scriptures support choice. I also understand that this idea is not commonly taught in churches and that even for those who are Christians who support choice you might not be fully equipped with the theological and biblical tools to defend the position because few theologians want to just come out and blatantly support choice. So I wanted to give you those tools as best I’ve learned to use them to help you in these key discussions, especially for those folks living in red states that are up against laws being changed. There are two key biblical areas to look at when addressing the issue of abortion with those who say it’s contrary to scripture.

Spirit v. Life

Life and spirit are two different issues. There are many things that are alive but that the scripture don’t attribute spirit to. In the story of creation God built all life and said it was good. The Creator set forth the motion of growth in all plant and animal life. Every creature of the air, land, and sea. However, the Creative Spirit only gave the breath of life to one and that was humankind. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Gen 2:7)”

It was not the creation of man that caused him to be spirited but first breath. The breath of spirit being what creates actual life, not simply being organic matter, is what the Creator defines as being alive (Psalms 33:6, Job 34: 14-15, Ezekiel 37 9-10 and 13-14). Breath is what the scriptures consider life, or spirit, it is not until first breath that something is life.

Many people argue the issue of John the Baptist and Jesus and the fact that they kept in the womb. However, John the Baptist according to scripture is the reincarnation of Elijah (Matthew 11:7–14) and Jesus is the incarnation of God and so neither of these were new souls or life but old life coming into the world in new vessels. As a matter of fact the issue of them leaping in the womb is only mentioned because of its peculiar nature. It was clearly not the same kind of movement all fetuses make in the womb. Another issue brought forth is Exodus 21:22-24 and it clearly states that if a men who are fighting cause harm to a woman and she is pregnant, unless she dies the men are only to be fined for the miscarriage. Does this sound like the scriptures consider that equal to life? No, because life is spirit and spirit is breath.

Abortion in scripture

Even though it is prescribed under a particularly sexism understanding of ownership and jealousy their is a ritual for abortion directly in the Bible. If a man supposes his wife has cheated he may take her before the priest and should she be with child then the pregnancy will be terminated on site by way of a tonic given to the woman (Numbers 5:11-31).
The hey portion here is when it states clearly in verse 27, “When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry...”

Now, again this is a rule made thousands of years ago and is rooted in spousal ownership and is hardly an example of living relationships. It’s also removing choice from the woman and gives the spouse the right to miscarry her child which is obviously problematic and there in lies the danger of taking scripture literally. However, it does shed light on the fact that there are circumstances where even in the scripture a prescribed miscarriage or abortion is used as a remedy to an unwanted pregnancy.

For far too long the religious right has used the idea of not committing murder or “thou shalt not kill” to justify their stance on abortion. But you can only kill what has life and what is human life has spirit and it’s clear from the scriptures that life begins at breath and breath is life."

Heather Cox Richardson

September 2, 2021

While it is hard to remember today, the modern-day opposition to abortion had its roots not in a moral defense of life but rather in the need for President Richard Nixon to win votes before the 1972 election. Pushing the idea that abortion was a central issue of American life was about rejecting the equal protection of the laws embraced by the Democrats far more than it was ever about using the government to protect fetuses.

In 1971, even the evangelical Southern Baptist Convention agreed that abortion should be legal in some cases, and vowed to work for modernization. Their convention that year reiterated its “belief that society has a responsibility to affirm through the laws of the state a high view of the sanctity of human life, including fetal life, in order to protect those who cannot protect themselves” but also called on “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

By 1972, Gallup pollsters reported that 64% of Americans agreed that abortion was between a woman and her doctor. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans, who had always liked family planning, agreed, as did 59% of Democrats.

In keeping with that sentiment, in 1973, the Supreme Court, under Republican Chief Justice Warren Burger, in a decision written by Republican Harry Blackmun, decided Roe v. Wade, legalizing first-trimester abortion.

The common story is that Roe sparked a backlash. But legal scholars Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel found something interesting. In a 2011 article in the Yale Law Journal, they showed that opposition to the eventual Roe v. Wade decision began in 1972—the year before the decision—and that it was a deliberate attempt to polarize American politics.

In 1972, Nixon was up for reelection, and he and his people were paranoid that he would lose. His adviser Pat Buchanan was a Goldwater man who wanted to destroy the popular New Deal state that regulated the economy and protected social welfare and civil rights. To that end, he believed Democrats and traditional Republicans must be kept from power and Nixon must win reelection.

Catholics, who opposed abortion and believed that "the right of innocent human beings to life is sacred," tended to vote for Democratic candidates. Buchanan, who was a Catholic himself, urged Nixon to woo Catholic Democrats before the 1972 election over the issue of abortion. In 1970, Nixon had directed U.S. military hospitals to perform abortions regardless of state law; in 1971, using Catholic language, he reversed course to split the Democrats, citing his personal belief "in the sanctity of human life—including the life of the yet unborn.”

Although Nixon and Democratic nominee George McGovern had similar stances on abortion, Nixon and Buchanan defined McGovern as the candidate of "Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion," a radical framing designed to alienate traditionalists.

As Nixon split the U.S. in two to rally voters, his supporters used abortion to stand in for women's rights in general. Railing against the Equal Rights Amendment, in her first statement on abortion in 1972, activist Phyllis Schlafly did not talk about fetuses; she said: “Women’s lib is a total assault on the role of the American woman as wife and mother and on the family as the basic unit of society. Women’s libbers are trying to make wives and mothers unhappy with their career, make them feel that they are ‘second-class citizens’ and ‘abject slaves.’ Women’s libbers are promoting free sex instead of the ‘slavery’ of marriage. They are promoting Federal ‘day-care centers’ for babies instead of homes. They are promoting abortions instead of families.”
Traditional Republicans supported an activist government that regulated business and promoted social welfare, but radical right Movement Conservatives wanted to kill the active government. They attacked anyone who supported such a government as immoral. Abortion turned women's rights into murder.

Movement Conservatives preached traditional roles, and in 1974, the TV show Little House on the Prairie started its 9-year run, contributing, as historian Peggy O’Donnell has explored, to the image of white women as wives and mothers in the West protected by their menfolk. So-called prairie dresses became the rage in the 1970s.

This image was the female side of the cowboy individualism personified by Ronald Reagan. A man should control his own destiny and take care of his family unencumbered by government. Women should be wives and mothers in a nuclear family. In 1984, sociologist Kristin Luker discovered that "pro-life" activists believed that selfish "pro-choice" women were denigrating the roles of wife and mother. They wanted an active government to give them rights they didn't need or deserve.

By 1988, Rush Limbaugh, the voice of Movement Conservatism, who was virulently opposed to taxation and active government, demonized women's rights advocates as "Femi-nazis" for whom "the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur." The complicated issue of abortion had become a proxy for a way to denigrate the political opponents of the radicalizing Republican Party.

Such threats turned out Republican voters, especially the evangelical base. But support for safe and legal abortion has always been strong, as it remains today. Until yesterday, Republican politicians could pay lip service to opposing the Roe v. Wade decision to get anti-abortion voters to show up at the polls, without facing the political fallout of actually getting rid of the decision.

Now, though, Texas has effectively destroyed the right to legal abortion.

The fact that the Fox News Channel is not mentioning what should have been a landmark triumph of its viewers’ ideology suggests Republicans know that ending safe and legal abortion is deeply unpopular. Their base finally, after all these years, got what it wanted. But now the rest of the nation, which had been assured as recently as the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that Roe v. Wade was settled law that would not be overturned, gets a chance to weigh in.

Well look like Texas just opened up an illegal black market demand for abortions. Great job guys!

Absolute rubbish.