How can a Christian be in favor of abortion?

1stcenturylady

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Or known someone who was denied one, die, leaving behind small children to be motherless ALL their lives . And see the hypocrisy of so called christians up in arms about this subject ,but could care less about children in general ?

What percentage of 60,000,000 abortions in America are in your category, and what percentage is just due to plain birth control of unwanted pregnancies? This isn't the 1950's you know. The sin of fornication is rampant, even seeming more normal in most eyes than keeping our virginity. And men hate to wear condoms, but selfishly want the most pleasure they can get.
 
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Silmarien

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There actually is a consensus outside of modern Protestantism.
What I noted in this story was that no pope could be found to teach that abortion was allowable, nor that contraception was allowable. Only someone who became pope, who wrote something before he became pope. Not quite the same thing. There are other cases of heretics who became pope and then about faced on their heresy.

Christian tradition does have a consensus against abortion. It's only in the past 50 or so years that some Protestant denominations gave up their heritage.

With some interesting exceptions, I'd say that there's a consensus against abortion, yes. But there's not a consensus that abortion is murder, since the medieval assumption was that ensoulment did not take place at conception. Heck, you've even got people like Tertullian who apparently argued that contraception was worse than murder, so I think you have to be very careful screaming "murder" and then pointing to either tradition or the Bible. I have no problem saying that abortion is sinful--I'm bemused that anyone would argue that it's not, but you need to do a lot better than that to convince me that what's going on in a drug-induced abortion is actually murder.

I really see no greater contradiction in a Christian being against the criminalization of abortion than in a Christian not wanting adultery to be punishable by law. You would need to demonstrate that a blanket ban on abortion is a reasonable legal restriction to place on all women across a pluralistic society, many of whom do not share the same theological convictions. We don't live in a theocracy.
 
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JackRT

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I suppose you think it does not say anything about the trinity also?
ex21:
22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.

23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,

24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,

25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

In the passage you quoted the life of the mother is clearly regarded as more valuable than that of the aborted fetus.
 
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Tropical Wilds

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What percentage of 60,000,000 abortions in America are in your category, and what percentage is just due to plain birth control of unwanted pregnancies?

There are only 64 million women between 10 and 39 in the US. Unless 95% of women get an abortion a year, it would seem your numbers are a bit off.
 
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Fidelibus

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What does lex talionis have to do with abortion?

I'll let the apologists over at Catholicanswers.com explain it to ya.

"As the early Christian writer Tertullian pointed out, the law of Moses ordered strict penalties for causing an abortion. We read, "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely [Hebrew: "so that her child comes out"], but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Ex. 21:22–24).

This applies the lex talionis or "law of retribution" to abortion. The lex talionis establishes the just punishment for an injury (eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, compared to the much greater retributions that had been common before, such as life for eye, life for tooth, lives of the offender’s family for one life).

The lex talionis would already have been applied to a woman who was injured in a fight. The distinguishing point in this passage is that a pregnant woman is hurt "so that her child comes out"; the child is the focus of the lex talionis in this passage. Aborted babies must have justice, too.

This is because they, like older children, have souls, even though marred by original sin. David tells us, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:5, NIV). Since sinfulness is a spiritual rather than a physical condition, David must have had a spiritual nature from the time of conception.

The same is shown in James 2:26, which tells us that "the body without the spirit is dead": The soul is the life-principle of the human body. Since from the time of conception the child’s body is alive (as shown by the fact it is growing), the child’s body must already have its spirit."

So Rubiks, after seeing the passages from Ps.51:5 and James 2:26 and the explanation that followed, are you still confident in what you said on post # 42.


The Bible is not does not consider a fetus to be a full human being.


I'll also add a few quotes from the Early Church Fathers. (ECF)



The Didache:
"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child" (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).


The Letter of Barnabas:
"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born" (Letter of Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).


The Apocalypse of Peter:
"And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and there sat women. . . . And over against them many children who were born to them out of due time sat crying. And there came forth from them rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes. And these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion" (The Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D. 137]).


Tertullian:
"In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed" (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).


Have a Blessed Day.
 
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1stcenturylady

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There are only 64 million women between 10 and 39 in the US. Unless 95% of women get an abortion a year, it would seem your numbers are a bit off.

ROFL
Since, 1973 (Roe vs. Wade), silly! :doh:Not per year!!!
 
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dhh712

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I want to know how a Christian can interpret the Bible in a way that permits abortions. I'm not going to post any arguments against it here; I just want to know how abortion is compatible with Christianity, as some Christians clearly think it is.

It's not. That's abundantly clear. Anyone who tries to come up with a way to rationalize it is trying to do the impossible. It's just plain wrong to kill an innocent person. God reveals to us in the Bible that life begins at conception. Unless the abortion is to save the mother's life then it is at all times wrong; no way around that biblically. I mean, you can dress up a pig, put perfume on it, silk stockings, a bow on it head. But in the end a pig's a dirty, smelly animal. And abortion is the killing of an innocent child. Plain and simple. It is wrong to murder a person who has done nothing to us (like as in when it is not a sin to kill either in self-defense or in carrying out an act of public justice).
 
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ToServe

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God does give an equal opportunity of life for every human that has come into this world and would it not be a Christian value to afford an equal opportunity of life to every living intelligent human being that has the potential of entering this world?

When governments afford equal employment opportunities and equal human rights, then what 'time' precursor gives the right for humans who have been afforded the opportunity of life to play God and to deny other potentials of also coming into this world and to experiencing life?

Just because the mother is here before the potential full fletched human to be in the future, does not give her authority to terminate because of 'time' factors favouring the mother. A dependent child has equal human rights to an independent adult and so why would 'time' be a precursor in denying human rights from the equation for a yet to come into this world lifeform. It is therefore against human rights to execute life to be under a cloak and without any repercussions, because of the 'time' factors favouring those assassins who want to assassinate life to be if 'time' had been allowed to play out.
 
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JackRT

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There is one thing that a great many people don’t understand about being pro-choice. You do not have to morally agree with abortion to be pro-choice. That is why it is not called pro-abortion. It is an undertstanding that you can’t make that choice for someone else. In fact most pro-choice people are not pro-abortion.

It is obvious that both the female egg and the male sperm have a form of life but no one would call either a person. When they unite to form a zygote it certainly is alive. There is a potential person there and a great many people would claim that it actually is a person. Let us grant for a moment that the zygote is a person and let us call that person Mary. I choose a female name since all embryos are female until about the sixth or seventh week.

Now, we all know that a zygote develops into an embryo through the process of cell division. Every now and again the first cell division does not produce a two celled embryo but rather a second zygote --- identical twins. Did Mary suddenly become two persons? Was Mary two persons to begin with? Was Mary even a person to begin with? Let us set those questions aside for the moment and grant that the second zygote is also a person whom we shall call Margaret. It is entirely possible that one or both of these zygotes could divide again to result in triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets etc. The same question applies as to whether one person can became two, three or more persons. When does a person become a person?

These questions might be difficult enough but now it becomes even more complex. Sometimes two eggs are fertilized to form non-identical twins. Once again, let us call them Mary and Margaret. Rarely the two zygotes merge together again to form a two celled embryo. This is called a chimera. Who is this new embryo? Is it Mary or is it Margaret? This new embryo, this chimera, let us call it Mary, develops to term and is born. There is now no question at all that Mary is indeed a person. But here is the odd thing, some of the organs of Mary carry her genes but other organs carry the genes of her twin sister Margaret. So Margaret continues to exist within Mary or perhaps it is Mary within Margaret. Do we have two persons within a single body?

These very serious questions of person-hood arise only if we assume that the soul is infused at conception and that the brand new zygote is fully a person. Is there a more reasonable understanding? I believe there is. Personally I believe that the developing fetus becomes a person only when it is able to survive outside the womb. Sentience occurs at about the same point in the pregnancy very late in the second trimester. For this reason I am against abortion beyond the twentieth week except in very rare extreme circumstances.. Otherwise I believe that abortion should be legal, it should be safe, it should be available and it should be the woman’s informed choice but most important of all --- it should be rare. In conclusion, we should always keep in mind that there is no more powerful abortifacient in the world than poverty.

"The law does not provide that the act of abortion pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation..."--St Augustine

"The intellective soul i.e., true person is created by God at the completion of man's coming into being." -- St Thomas Aquinas

"Many modern philosophers and theologians return to St. Thomas' view."-- Fr Joseph F. Donceel, S.J.

"To admit that the human fetus receives the intellectual soul from the moment of its conception, when matter is in no way ready for it, sounds to me like a philosophical absurdity. It is as absurd as to call a fertilized ovum a baby." --Jacques Maritain
 
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Athanasius377

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Is this the same god that ordered the smashing of infants heads? Or is that from the NT?

Its from the Old Testament and the reference is Psalm 137:7-9. Context is key as here as there is no order.
7 Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”

8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
 
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marineimaging

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The right to decide is the key in some of the answers you will get. The fact that life begins at conception is justified by the absolute fact that you can't have human life without the coming together of the two parts of a man and a woman. And from that union results a baby. Not a rock or a plant, nor a mineral nor a species of animal. It has always been a human, always will be a human, and it will never be something else.
But the question of how is it that institutions can claim to be Christian and justify abortion, because they twist the word of God to justify that which they want. In addition they associate or equate the quality of life with the amount of money the mother has at her disposal. If the child (a) does not equal the savings of the mother (b) and the father is a zero in their books (c) then a+b must equal greater than the poverty line plus a wardrobe and car times childcare out of the home (d) to insure that the mother nor child ever has a moment of financial discomfort. If any of the components are less than by any factor, or the father is a greater value than described, then the abortion is simply granted because it is the womans right according to law and anything less is a miscarriage of justice.
How-Protected-is-a-Baby-in-the-Womb.jpg
 
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mark kennedy

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I want to know how a Christian can interpret the Bible in a way that permits abortions. I'm not going to post any arguments against it here; I just want to know how abortion is compatible with Christianity, as some Christians clearly think it is.
I've never been in favor of abortion, there was a time when babies could be drowned at birth and they called that abortion. A Roman father that had a little girl could take her into a field and leave her there, the church noted and condemned such an act as murder. We have had this fight before and for some reason the church tends to lose more then it wins, that doesn't mean the fight is not worth having. Abortion on demand has become the rule of the land, the Supreme Court starting with birth control started it's long march to Roe v. Wade, now we are pretty much stuck with it. At 11 weeks everything that defines us as human is functioning even though it's the size of an aspirin. Abortion in the first trimester, while grotesque, is the closest I can come to a compromise and I swear it's like swallowing a poison pill. When I finally became accustomed to the mild nausea associated with that, they started pushing this partial birth abortion bill that snapped the neck of the fetus in the womb, sometimes well into the pregnancy.

It's a slippery slope, Catholics get this and are simply opposed to abortion period. They have been 100% consistent on this and I respect that in ways I can't possibly express. I'm just not convinced that compromise on this issue is possible. The abortion issue makes me want to be Catholic some days, I feel that strongly about it. But this is an issue screaming for compromise with both sides morally indignant. Frankly I find the subject matter distasteful, I would love it if we didn't have to talk about it. But there is a vital rule of law here that must respect rights and the lives of the innocent at the same time. So we have to talk about it, pardon me, I'm not feeling well at the moment.
 
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ToServe

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On the basis of hindsight owing to concrete evidence the argument of Zygotes being a person or not a person at a certain stage within the pregnancy is a non-sequitur argument, because most certainly if 'time' is allowed to play out, the result is a person and that my friends is what presents an argument against the right to terminate a person because of 'time' factors being the precursor to the decision to terminate.

This would be the same, but yet opposite to the question of euthanization. The abortion of a Zygote is a premature act to euthanize a future person to be if time factors are allowed to play out without interference. The question of euthanization in an elderly is again a time factor that will eventually lead to death, but the opposite which leads to life makes it by right the same act of murder within today's society.

The non-sequitur arguments presented by abortionists are a cope out and border on hypocrisy.
 
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ToServe

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Abortion is Euthanasia that prematurely stops life, without the free will choice of the victim of abortion (killing).

Euthanasia by definition is to prematurely hasten death that is to hasten the process of dying because of suffering of the patient whose free will choice is to die quickly and not to prolong suffering.

The euthanization of an unborn is to the same effect hastening death to a process of life without pro-choice of the person to be and this compromises the whole arguments of pro abortion lobbyists because they support pro death before life is allowed time to become in the joy process of experiencing what they have experienced.

Euphanizing a suffering patient on their death bed is to this day considered a crime.
How much more of a crime is it to euphanize an unborn on their life bed.
 
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Fidelibus

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I think the only legitimate argument against abortion (other than life of the mother) would be that, up to a certain point, the fetus is not a human being.

Interesting. Four quick questions.

1. What or when is this "certain point" you speak of?

2. Are the unborn members of our species?

3. What is a fetus?

4. Could you define what that word (fetus) means, or what it refers to?

Thank You
 
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