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Well said Tie.
I find myself agreeing with the Cartoonist here. Which is probably not surprising seeing as though I am pro-choice. I must add however that, the point here is not whether or not abortion is right, it’s whether or not it’s legitimate to use the bible to explore this (rather too important a) topic.
And due to the extremely polysemic nature of the text (bible) the text becomes esentially redundant (neutrosemic, as they call it).
That’s my 5c anyway.
I think it’s pretty clear from the biblical passages that the “mischief” referred to is mischief done to the woman, not the foetus. I mean really, in Biblical times, how likely is it that *any* premature baby would have survived, much less miscarried ones induced by violence? The “mischief” that follows is almost certainly related to the subsequent death of the mother, and so naturally would carry the biblical death penalty.
Here’s a thought; life doesn’t start, it continues. Like energy cannot be created, only converted man and woman create sperm and eggs. These are single celled life forms, which combine to become multi-celled life forms, which develop into increasingly complex multi-celled life forms until they can be recognised as human.
We know all fauna need oxygen, in whatever form that may come. In the absence of gas they must get it some other way; most likely through water. The human body is mostly water (can’t remember the percentage) so at no stage is the breath of life actually lost.
With this is mind, shouldn’t the anti-abortion morons get up in arms about the millions of sperm that are lost during both attempts at and the act of conception? Be it by evolution or grand design that effectively amounts to the spark of life being lost by not fulfilling it’s purpose.
Thoughts?
Apologies; bad punctuation above may have made it seem like I was saying only born-again religious types create sperm/eggs. 2nd line should read “Like energy cannot be created, only converted, man and woman….”
In response to Dave B. – The reason I include rape as an exceptions is because a woman who became pregnant through rape didn’t have a choice in the matter. She didn’t choose to have the sexual intercourse which led to her pregnancy. So, she should have some choice in this matter.
However, I would NEVER recommend an abortion for a rape survivor. I have found through personal experience that losing the baby doesn’t help.
I became pregnant by my rapist when I was only 14. I never once considered aborting my child. She was the one thing that was helping me get through the pain of my rape. I had a purpose to keep living and not give in to my suicidal desires. Unfortunately, my rapist found out and didn’t want there to be any evidence of what he’d done to me. I ended up so badly beaten that I lost my baby and my uterus is so permanently damaged that I will probably never be capable of having children.
However, not all rape survivors may react as I did. Hence why I believe she should have the choice in the matter – with NO pressure from anyone. I remember being pressured by Planned Parenthood after my rape to abort my child. Thankfully, I was strong enough to stand by my convictions. Unfortunately, not all rape survivors might be that strong when faced with people telling you how this “sac of cells” is going to “ruin your life.” SHE should have the choice in this with no scare tactics from people on EITHER side of the debate.
My thoughts on all of this an atheist can be anti-abortion and that, like anything in life, its not black and white. There are several shades of grey. As someone earlier said – speeding is wrong, but sometimes there are good reasons to do so (ie, taking a very sick loved one to the hospital). Its the same with everything that can be considered “wrong” – including abortion.
The question of whether abortion should be legal or not for me boils down to what society is willing to do to women to prevent them from harming their fetuses. How exactly does society intend to force a woman to behave in such a way that no harm will come to the fetus? Should a woman be locked up to prevent her from getting access to substances that could harm the fetus? Should she be strapped to her bed to prevent her from jumping up and down or punching herself in the stomach? Should drinkers and smokers be placed in protective custody (protective of the fetus, that is) when it becomes known that they are pregnant? Does it plan to conduct a criminal investigation in each case of miscarriage?
If society is not willing to do these things, how does it intend to enforce a ban on abortion and endangerment of the fetus?
@ # r00db00y slim :
Sperm and eggs are not single celled life forms. That is a bad analogy. To be ALIVE, an organism must exhibit the following characteristics (on wiki) :
1. Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature.
2. Organization: Being composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
3. Metabolism: Consumption of energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
4. Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
5. Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism’s heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
6. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.
7. Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.
Also, under this definition, fetuses could be construed as not being life because the don’t carry out reproduction or homeostasis.
Humans can not breathe through water. It wouldn’t matter if our bodies were 99.9% water. Also, all fauna don’t need oxygen (or at least not all the time. Check out the MMDR where mammals go for extended periods without oxygn or anaerobic organisms.)
I would have to say that I am pro-choice. No one should be allowed to tell me that I have to remain pregnant if I get pregnant and no one should be allowed to tell me that I have to have the baby.
What some have failed to notice is that this strip is about religion, and abortion is just an instrument to point out how silly some religious people are. It doesn’t help when someone like wordsword points towards other verses, it just proves the point.
[...] Wat als…. Wat als Jezus en Mozes vrienden waren voor meer ; Jesus and Mo Archive women blauwe pijljes links bovenaan voor een andere strip __________________ ON MY WAY BACK [...]
[...] http://www.jesusandmo.net/2007/10/22/women/ This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Humour, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]
If you do not like abortion, don’t have one.
THE GOVERNMENT does belong being involved in a woman’s decision about her own body, in the privacy of her doctor’s office.
Remember coat hanger abortions?
Aside from the debate about what the ancient Hebrew ( a language long dead by the time of Christianity, much less now) may have meant to those who spoke it in terms of miscarriage or premature birth, the next verses in Exodus very clearly show that the Hebrew god didn’t care a bit about fully grown and self-aware people forced into a lifetime of bondage (not the good kind).
Elhoim was very obviously a vicious git who is so unwholesome that anybody adopting a morality based on his “teachings” is very likely psychotic.
Whatever you say, whatever you do, whatever you think.
ABORTION IS THE WOMENS OWN CHOISE
I don’t think a guy named Jeebus with a holy bible, God, Abraham, or some men with türban/white capes should decide wether a woman should abort, not abort, or just go die. The women should themselves take this choice, and without people running around messing “ITS WRONG LOL! LYK IN DA BIBLE!”.
The Bible/Koran/Whatever doesn’t litterally say that ABORT IS WRONG, but it can be seen that way. It’s the same as the anti-gay movements. It doesn’t stand anywhere that it is wrong, but still people say “OMG! LOL IT CAN BE READ LIKE THIS LOL, THINK NOW! GOD CREATED……” It can, it says with other words, it fucks you up.
Bravo on the cartoon!
Scholars agree that the verse in Exodus is NOT speaking about a fetus being expelled by violence and surviving. Like that was even a possibility back then. It’s death is taken for granted, and the penalty of eye for eye only concerns what happens to the woman suffering the miscarriage. The fine is simply the payment for losing the future offspring.
Here’s some major scholarly opinion on the subject:
Abortion as such is not discussed in the Bible, so any explanation of why it is not legislated or commented on is speculative.
A key text for examining ancient Israelite attitudes [toward the fetus] is Exodus 21:22-25: “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” Several observations can be made about this passage.
The Hebrew text at v. 22 literally reads “and there is no harm,” implying that contrary to current sensibilities, the miscarriage itself was not considered serious injury. The monetary judgment given to the woman’s husband indicates that the woman’s experience of the miscarriage is not of significance, and that the damage is considered one to property rather than to human life. This latter observation is further supported by the contrast with the penalties for harm to the woman herself.
Drorah O’Donnell Setel, “Abortion,” The Oxford Guide to Ideas & Issues of the Bible, ed. by Bruce Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (Oxford University Press, 2001)
____________________________
There is no biblical proof-text against abortion. Deuteronomy 30:19 (“choose life”) has nothing to do with abortion; it has to do with being party to God’s covenant with Israel. Psalm 139:13-18 is less relevant to the issue than most people think; a careful reading of that psalm reveals that the “mother” in whose “womb” the psalmist was known by God is Mother Earth (notice the parallelism between “my mother’s womb” and “the depths of the earth” in the inclusio of vv. 13-15). Exodus 21 is very difficult, but it certainly does not speak directly to abortion; at most, it relates to an accidentally induced miscarriage, though it may refer to a premature birth. That interpretive decision is crucial, and I’m not sure how to resolve it. As far as I can tell, the only biblical passage that I know of that directly mentions a practice like we would think of as abortion curses a man who did not practice it on the fetal Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:16-18). Now, having said that, I hasten to repeat that my general default position is anti-abortion (I am willing to listen to arguments on specific cases, though I’ve never had any input into a specific case), and I think a biblical case can be made for an anti-abortion position. But it must be a cumulative theological case, not a list of proof-texts–for there are no such proof-texts.
Dr. R. Christopher Heard [Old Testament professor at Pepperdine University, lifelong member of Churches of Christ], “Is the Bible Anti-Abortion?” at his blog, Higgaion, Friday, November 18, 2005 http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/2005/11/is-bible-anti-abortion.html
________________
BIBLE VERSES THAT MENTION MISCARRIAGES (“UNTIMELY BIRTHS”) AND SUGGEST THAT IN SOME CASES “NOT BEING BORN” MIGHT HAVE BEEN BEST
Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad. And let that man be as the cities which the LORD overthrew, and repented not: and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noontide; Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me. Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?
- Jeremiah 20:14-18
[This is the only Biblical passage that directly and indisputably mentions a practice that we would today think of as “abortion,” but notice, Jeremiah is cursing a man for NOT aborting the fetal Jeremiah.--E.T.B.]
Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
- Job 3:16-19
If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he. For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other.
- Ecclesiastes 6:3-5
And here’s some further food for thought for anyone who has read and studied the Bible concerning the topic of abortion and how much Yahweh “cares for” the fetus:
HOW PRO-LIFE IS THE BIBLE?
According to the Bible, God Himself is ready, willing and able to abort fetuses:
Their fruit shalt Thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men.
- Psalm 21:10
The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they are born… let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
- Psalm 58:3,8
As for Israel, their glory shall fly away like a bird, and from the womb, and from the conception…Give them, O Lord: what will Thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts…they shall bear no fruit…
- Hosea 9:11-16
Notice that the prophet Hosea is pleading with his God to punish the Israelites by murdering their unborn babies. The Bible never really provides a logical rationale as to why fetuses, babies, and children must be punished for the sins of their parents and others. Some would suggest that for God to kill unborn babies for their parent’s sins is somewhat misdirected retribution.
Gene Kasmar, WHY…The Brooklyn Center High School Bible Challenge. Part 1: The Evidence
Every living thing on the earth was drowned [by the Hebrew LORD--which included pregnant women and babies]…Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
- Genesis 7:23
Thus saith the LORD…Slay both man and woman, infant and suckling.
- 1 Samuel 15:3
Joshua destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD commanded.
- Joshua 10:40
The LORD delivered them before us; and we destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones.
- Deuteronomy 2:33-34
Kill every male among the little ones.
- Numbers 31:17
The wind of the LORD shall come up from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry, and…Samaria shall become desolate…they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.
- Hosea 13:15-16
With thee will I [the LORD] break in pieces the young man and the maid.
- Jeremiah 51:22
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
- Psalm 137:9
According to the Bible, God gave orders to kill children and to rip open the bodies of pregnant women. The pestilences were sent by God. The frightful famine, during which the dying child with pallid lips sucked the withered bosom of his dead mother, was sent by God. God drowned an entire world with the exception of eight persons. Imagine how such acts would have stained the reputation of the devil!
Robert G. Ingersoll
According to the God of the Bible it was more important to stone a woman to death if she should “entice you to follow after other gods,” than it was to rescue the life of any fetus she might have been carrying.
It was more important to stone a woman to death the day after her wedding night “if she was discovered not to have been a virgin,” than it was to wait and see if she might have conceived new life that night.
It was more important to stone a woman to death for “adultery,” than to wait and see if she might be pregnant.
It was more important to stone a woman to death for “failing to cry out while being raped within earshot of the city,” than it was to spare the life she might have conceived during that ordeal, during which the rapist may have held a knife to her throat, or strangled her into silence and submission.
And what about the test of “bitter water” mentioned in chapter five of the book of Numbers? The test consisted of mixing dust from the floor of the Hebrew tabernacle with “holy water” to make a concoction that a woman drank to test whether or not she had committed adultery. If she had, it says, “her belly will swell and her thigh will rot.” Scholars have pointed out that “thigh” is a euphemism for sexual organs. So if the woman had committed adultery and had conceived as a result, then the “bitter water” would induce an abortion (“her thigh would rot”). (I wonder if this means that Bible-believing women who are accused of having affairs ought to swallow some dirt from the floor of their church mixed with “holy water?” Or better yet, swallow an abortion pill like RU-486 in front of the whole congregation?)
And what about children who “curse their parents?” The Bible says, “Kill them!” (Ex. 21:17; Lev. 20:9; Mat. 15:4; Mark 7:10) The Bible does not say how old the child has to be, but it does emphatically state they must “surely be put to death” should they “curse their parents.”
Ah, the good old days, when God fearing people had higher priorities than “saving fetal lives.” They were too busy stoning whomever enticed them to worship other gods, stoning adulteresses, stoning women who weren’t virgins on their wedding night, stoning women who “failed to cry out” during rape, and stoning sassy children. In other words they were too busy with all of those higher priorities to worry about “the fate of fetuses.”
Edward T. Babinski, editor of LEAVING THE FOLD: TESTIMONIES OF FORMER FUNDAMENTALISTS
[...] EDIT: Man, the internet is the gift that keeps on giving. [...]
“Bible” should be capitalized–it’s a name. But I do agree with the statement made in this cartoon. I think it is ridiculous how people try to connect everything to religion, despite the whole “Separation of Church and State” thing, which I am beginning to think is a Myth. (yeah, “myth” should not be capitalized, but emphasis required it)