Pah
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The begining of the article by Farrell Till
Abortion has become an issue so emotionally charged in American politics that many people will vote only for candidates who oppose it. In "Does a Person Exist at the Moment of Conception?"[linked in the article and discussed at http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/showthread.php?p=151331#post151331 ] I showed that scientific evidence does not support the pro-life claim that a "person" exists from the very earliest stages of pregnancy. Most opponents of abortion will say that their opposition to it is more biblically than scientifically based, but they apparently don't know that the Bible really says nothing directly about abortion. What it says indirectly about the subject, however, indicates that those who wrote the Bible had an entirely different view of embryos than do modern opponents of abortion. One such indication can be seen in a passage in Exodus.
Exodus 21:22 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. 23 If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Old Testament law mandated the death penalty for anyone who killed another person, even if the death was unintentional (Deut. 4:41-43; Deut. 19:10). As these passages show, Hebrew law provided for "cities of refuge," where those who had unintentionally killed other persons could flee and be safe from the "avengers of blood," who were entitled under their laws to exact an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, etc. Such laws indicate that the ancient Hebrews considered the killing of another person to be a serious offense that warranted death, but the passage quoted above from Exodus 21 provided only for a monetary fine when someone injured a pregnant woman and caused her to miscarry. Evidently, then, biblical authors, who fundamentalist Christians believe wrote by divine inspiration, did not consider the killing of an embryo to be as serious as the killing of an actual person.