Thread by @conservmillen

Read your piece, and I wish you would have consulted with a Christian pro-lifer before writing it, because there are some glaring misunderstandings. Here to help:

1) "The Bible never directly discusses abortion:" Abortion is murder. The biblical command against murder is clear.

https://twitter.com/NickKristof/status/1321590346787282944

2) "[Exodus 21:22] suggests that the Bible treats a fetal life as less than a human life:" No, it doesn't. The passage says that unintentionally causing a woman requires a fine. That's because it's manslaughter, which God views/punishes differently than murder (Ex. 21:13)

Furthermore, you distinguishing "human life" from "fetal life" is unscientific nonsense. Whether or not you believe fetuses have inherent value, they are human beings. That's a biological fact.

3) "[W]hy the obsessive focus on abortion today when Christian thought for most of the last two millenniums was not deeply concerned with the topic?" Citation, please? Do you have evidence Christians were unconcerned with infanticide? Or could it be this wasn't a huge issue? Also

Why did Christians like Wilberforce suddenly care about slavery when slavery had been uncontroversially accepted for thousands of years? Why did Christians suddenly care about free speech and religious liberty when tyranny had been the norm for so long? Grace. Wisdom. Progress.

4) "[Up] to half of zygotes never implant...& we don’t mourn those zygotes or establish national commissions to improve zygote survival." ??? Do you know how much money research goes into "zygote survival?" The only reason these losses aren't mourned is because they're undetected

5) "If the aim is to reduce abortions:" Who said that's the only aim? That is certainly a goal, but another big goal is to legally recognize that humans inside the womb are entitled to basic legal human rights. With your logic, nothing wrong should be illegal, just "reduced."

6) "If you’re troubled by abortions, shouldn’t you thank President Barack Obama for reducing them:" There's no evidence at all Obama is responsible for reducing abortions. Correlation doesn't prove causation. There is no data showing Obamacare reduced abortion

There is a greater chance (tho, again, can't be proven) that the record number of abortion restrictions put in place by Republican state legislatures had an effect on the abortion during Obama's tenure than anything Obama did. Rs dominated state legislatures in those 8 years.

7) Your points about saving the life of the mother or aborting babies with defects: a) there are no laws preventing women from having abortions to save their own life

b) these account for less than 1% of abortions. Let's not pretend like the pro-choice side is interested in limiting abortions to these scenarios, so these points are moot.

Your "questions" about abortion were all rhetorical, of course. Any time you'd like real answers to actual questions, I'm happy to be a resource. 👍

*causing a woman to miscarry