Thread by @fuzzychimpcom

I've been wanting to provide a specific answer to this idea that the Bible says nothing about abortion, but wanted to do it when I had some time.

Let me be clear, this answer is for Christians. If you don't believe in Christ, the points might not be meaningful to you.

https://twitter.com/JamesPMorrison/status/1233141782814195712

Also, a lot of pro-life advocacy today is based on science and a shared belief, regardless of faith, that human life should be protected.

We could argue about the origin of that shared belief, but most people accept it.

This is not THAT advocacy. This is based on Christianity.

First, the Bible doesn't mention abortion. The Bible also doesn't mention mass shootings. It is, however, explicitly clear that killing innocents is wrong.

There are a couple things I'm not going to discuss here. One, is detailed law from Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

These have been twisted to make the claim that the Bible is either ambivalent on abortion or even supports the practice. You can google to find good Christian responses to these claims.

The second are verses about being "knit together" in the mother's womb, and the like.

These are powerful verses for the pro-life Christian because they demonstrate God's love for us at the earliest stages of our humanity, but I'm guessing you've seen these if you've bothered to read this far. 😉

I'm going to offer a little different spin.

What is the Bible to Christians? It is the message of God's plan of redemption for us, from the very beginning, through Jesus Christ.

God did this because he loves us.

At the very beginning, in Genesis, God creates men and women as a special creation, separate from the animals.

We are uniquely valued by God, above all else. He formed Adam from the dust of the ground, lifeless, and then breathed life into him. He made them in his own image.

We are special to him. Human life has value because he values us.

God valued us so greatly, in fact, that he was not willing to make us mere pets, but beings who can act according to our own wills, hopefully in accordance with his own, perfect, will.

You know, Christian, how that worked out.

Adam failed, and so have we.

Fast forward through millennia of God teaching us that we can never earn salvation by our own merit, and that brings us to his perfect plan for our salvation: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Does the Bible report that the Messiah descended from Heaven to save us?

No. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. This is fundamental, core Christian doctrine. There is no Christianity without this teaching. Jesus did not inherit man's sin nature because no man was his father. Without that, he could not serve as the perfect sacrifice for man's sin.

How does this all relate to the question of abortion? From the moment of conception, Jesus was himself. Nothing was added to him to become our savior. He was not simply a part of Mary's body.

Jesus was a zygote. Jesus was an embryo. Jesus was a fetus. Jesus was a baby.

Mary was "blessed among women" from the moment she was told she would carry Jesus, not from the moment he was born.

Elizabeth's child, John the Baptist, leapt for joy in Elizabeth's womb at the presence of the developing Jesus in Mary's womb.

How can a Christian possibly square the idea that, at any time during this process, Jesus could have been killed because he was not valuable until the act of birth occurred? You can't.

Just like us, Jesus was a unique, valuable individual from his very beginning.

He was never less than Jesus simply because his body was still developing.

So, while the Bible does not mention abortion specifically, the entire point of the Bible for a Christian - God's plan of salvation because of his love for us, argues against abortion.

The manner in which Christ chose to enter the world makes absurd the idea that a Christian understanding of the Bible could place a lower value than the full value of God's love on the preborn.

The Bible says nothing about abortion while saying everything about it. /end