New Thoughts On Abortion by slaveofone
This is a hot topic in evangelical Christian faith and politics. Personally, I don’t believe abortion can be successfully legislated and prohibited any more than alcohol or drugs. As a Libertarian, I hold to the golden rule that governmental/legislative interference causes more problems than it solves and that the best solution is almost always the one which doesn’t include an oppressive, controlling Uncle Sam, but requires instead a free, contract-abiding, self-government. However, because I am a follower of Yeshua and an adopted member of Israel, I also believe human life is sacred. This sacredness is demonstrated in Genesis 9:6 when it proclaims that whatever value there is in one’s own human life is the same as the value of another’s by making equivalent the status of one who takes a human life with the human life that has been taken. We have in this statute a respect of human life so profound that it dissolves all prejudice, all partiality, all segregation, all racism, and all sexism. Herein, the life of a female is neither lesser nor greater than the life of a male. Herein, the life of a vigorous and healthy child is neither lesser nor greater than that of an invalid. Herein, the life of a poor laborer is as worthy and dignified as the life of a king. Because human life exists in the image of YHWH.
When it comes to abortion then, the question is when is the foetus, child, or whatever you want to call it, considered human life? My perspective has been that just as science has not determined the point at which life enters the seed of a plant, so it may never determine at which point life enters a seed of humanity. I have, therefore, seen in the process from fertilization to formation and to birth not many possible points for the beginning of human life, but a continuum of two former human lives in a unity of one.
Although I have begun my inquiry with a supposed admiration for the ancient Hebrew perspective, it has begun to occur to me that my Modern mind conceives of human life altogether differently. Genesis 2:7 speaks of a human becoming living (or having life in it) through the imposition of breath. This concept of life being conditional upon breath is actually fundamental to the definition of the words translated living being
throughout Genesis. The Hebrew word nefesh,
although traditionally translated soul, refers biologically to the neck or throat in order to give concrete expression to the idea of the passage of breath into and out of a person. Thus without a neck or breath to go through it, there is no nefesh, no living being, no human life.
The Pharisees, who wanted to build a fence around the Torah
(Mishnah Aboth 1:1), established a host of conservative principles meant to restrict someone from coming close to destroying human life. I have no idea how old the concept is, but the Pharisees and fathers of Rabbinicism accepted a terminus a quo for human life at the 41st day after conception. When the rights of the first-born are discussed in the Oral Law, we find it said that nothing which might come from the womb of a woman during the first 40 days of pregnancy can be considered life (Mishnah Bekoroth 8:1). The Rabbis elaborated on this idea in their commentary on the Oral Law, saying:
if she is found pregnant, the semen, until the fortieth day, is only a mere fluid.
Babylonian Gemara, Yebamoth 69b
However, in the case of a woman whose life or well-being was endangered by an unborn child, because the child was not technically a living human being until breath, the Pharisees allowed an abortion up until emergence of the head. An arm or even a foot could come out momentarily, but until the head through which breath enters had left the woman’s body, the baby had no claim to human life.
If a woman was in hard travail, the child must be cut up while it is in the womb and brought out member by member, since the life of the mother has priority over the life of the child; but if the greater part [the head] of it has already been born, it [the baby] may not be touched, since the claim of one life cannot override the claim of another life.
Mishnah, Oholoth, 7:6
Such authoritative religious knowledge from those whose scriptures we adore should have some impact on how we approach the issue.
There is a verse that gave me pause. Amos 1:3. The traditional text states that YHWH will bring judgment upon Syria because she threshed Gilead with threshing tools of iron.
The LXX adds something here.
…they were sawing pregnant women of those in Galaad asunder with iron saws.
New English Translation of the Septuagint, pre-publication version (italics added)
The Dead Sea Scrolls as represented by 5QAmos and 4QXIIg support the additional words pregnant women
against the Masoretic Texts. So it seems that the sin of Syria that incurred the wrath of YHWH was more specific than general murder. It was the threshing of pregnant women. However, from historical context, I think that it is not abortion itself that is being condemned—it is the use of cruel and violent means against the innocent (and chosen people of YHWH) by political enemies whose aim is not simple abortion of babies, but complete genocide. The very idea of one using iron threshing tools on a pregnant woman cannot reasonably be equated with the will to abort a child any more than speaking of shoving screwdrivers in an ear can be equated with trying to pick at earwax.