I posted the Scripture reference because it was a very long passage.
When Moses delivered the Israelites out from under Pharaoh's bondage, God commanded Moses to basically deliver the "laws of the land". It was after the exodus that the Jews were given very specific rules as to how they would live, eat, speak, handle marriages, pregnancy and birth, style their hair, etc.
In the passage in Numbers 5, God instructs Moses as to how the tabernacle priests would handle husbands who wanted to know if their wives had been unfaithful. Back in those times they didn't have private investigators, polygraph tests, DNA testing, etc. Typically (unless there were witnesses) the only time a woman was caught in a sexual indiscretion would be if she became pregnant as the result of it.
The prescribed manner that God gave Moses was that if a husband had cause to suspect his wife had been adulterous, he was to take her to the tabernacle where she would be given a bitter mixture of barley, dust from the floor and it would be given as an offering of jealousy to the wife in question. She would drink the "cursed" liquid as the priest would say:
Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, "If no other man has slept with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband"- 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse of the oath-"may the LORD cause your people to curse and denounce you when he causes your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell. [
d] 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells and your thigh wastes away. [
e] "
" 'Then the woman is to say, "Amen. So be it."
It goes on to say what will occur if the woman has been unfaithful to her husband:
If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, [
f] and she will become accursed among her people.
In those days, fertility issues brought great shame upon a woman among her people. Women who were barren or had suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth were believed to be cursed because of sin in her life. It is believed that this passage illustrates that the curse for a woman who had been sexually involved with and impregnated by a man other than her husband she would take this "cursed" water (believed to have abortive properties) and she would miscarry and would be rendered barren.
It appears that this passage would describe abortion in the tabernacle as a means of punishing a woman who was guilty of adultery. Outside of that, the Bible makes no reference of abortion. In fact, the popular passage about if two men struggle and strike a woman with child and she miscarries how they are to be punished cannot be used to promote the pro-life stance.
Many people who use the Bible to further the pro-life movement use that passage to say that killing a child in the womb was so severe, it warranted death. This is not true. Let's look at the passage:
"And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life." (Exodus 21:22-23)
Notice that there is no penalty of death if a man strikes a woman and causes her to miscarry? There is, however, a sentence of capital punishment if the pregnant woman is killed as the result of this accident.
