Imaging a MAGA who thinks Covid is a hoax, masks don’t work, vaccines contain microchips, and horse dewormer is an effective treatment against a virus (a virus that he believes is no worse than the flu). That person wouldn’t recognize reality if it came up and said hello.
Christians who oppose abortion for religious reasons are much the same; their beliefs are as Biblically unsound as the MAGA’s beliefs are medically unsound.
Let’s begin with the Catholic Church, certain no friend of abortion. Yet, in his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae of 25 March 1995, Pope Paul II declared:
The texts of Sacred Scripture never address the question of deliberate abortion and so do not directly and specifically condemn it.
Hm.
But what about the Biblical verse from Jeremiah 1:5 that plasters so many billboards along side U.S. roads: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart”? Firstly, God is talking to a specific individual, as the FULL verse makes clear: ““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.” Secondly, even the truncated verse merely affirms God’s foreknowledge but does not condemn abortion.
In any event, Jeremiah 1:5 is a tiny peg, too tiny to support anti-abortion dogma. But it’s the absolute best anti-abortion Christians can do. There simply isn’t anything in the Bible condemning abortion. Not that the Bible doesn’t mention “unborn babies”. But when it does, anti-abortion hysterics would rather ignore (and, in fact, “religiously” do ignore) the verses.
First, let’s recall that God killed every “unborn baby” on Earth, except any that were on Noah’s ark.
In Deuteronomy 20:16-17, God commands the slaying of “unborn babies” and infants. As well as little kittens and puppy dogs! “But of the cities of these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.”
In Hosea 9:16, God says “Ephraim is blighted, their root is withered, they yield no fruit. Even if they bear children, I will slay their cherished offspring.” And Hosea 13:16 has God saying, “The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.”
In Exodus 21:22-25, if a pregnant woman is injured and has a miscarriage, a fine must be paid to her husband, hardly an appropriate penalty for taking the life of an “unborn baby”.
And miscarriages have another name: spontaneous abortion. The word “abortion” in the mouths of anti-abortion Christians refers only to an induced abortion. No mention is ever made of the millions of spontaneous abortions God causes each year.
Of course, anti-abortion hysterics are free to support or oppose any political view they wish. But when they claim that the Bible supports their position, they violate the seventh commandment against lying.
Once upon a time, religious crazies burnt witches; that horror continued in medieval Europe for centuries. A few hundred years later, they decided God was just fine with slavery. Said Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America:
[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.
The past few decades the religious crazies have focused on abortion, even though Christianity traditionally says the soul enters the fetus a few months after conception and that human tissue lacking a human soul is not a genuine human being.
I recently saw a YouTube clip about John Wesley, the founder of Methodist. Wikipedia has this:
He married Susanna, the twenty-fifth child of Samuel Annesley, a dissenting minister, in 1689. Ultimately, she bore nineteen children, of which nine lived beyond infancy. Wikipedia
The ten children that did not live beyond infancy were taken by a God who, anti-abortion hysterics would have us believe, “hates” abortion.
Many anti-abortion hysterics are anti-contraception, too. Their ideal role for women, it seems, is to function as a baby factory, and not much else. (For how much else can someone do when they are constantly having babies and caring for the children they already have?) Where is the wisdom in this view? Where is the sanity?
If you don’t intend to be a “baby factory”, if you intend to have, perhaps, two or three children in your lifetime, then there’s no reason to have a child now if you’re not ready. The average woman has over twenty or thirty childbearing years. So it’s wise to have your children at the time that’s best for you. And best for them. Have your children when you’re ready. Have them when you’re sufficiently mature. Have them when you’re emotionally and financially able to care for them.
Have them when you’re married. There’s just no reason a pregnant sixteen- or seventeen-year-old woman should feel obliged to give birth; she’ll be much better able to nurture and care for her children later in life.
So have your children when you’re best able to care for them, not before. With the way the world is today there’s absolutely no reason to have a child now if you don’t want to. If you don’t have that child, the child will be better off, you’ll be better off, and the world will be better off.
- The Wisdom of Abortion, Kim Johnson
Someday, Christianity’s acceptance of anti-abortion dogma will land in the trash bin of history, along side its burning of witches and its acceptance of slavery.