A well written article as far as it goes. I could not help but think of the parable of the elephant though as I was reading it. Six blind men are analyzing an elephant. One is stroking the trunk, one is pulling on the ears, one is pulling on the tail, one is feeling the tusks, one is exploring the feet, and one is rubbing his hands over the skin. Each one comes up with a different description of the elephant.
You have done a very good job of describing an elephant trunk, but a broader perspective is needed in my opinion. First, what was the attitude of the society in the era that the Old Testament was written? If you look at the beliefs of ancient Jews (which remain to the present day), a fetus was not considered a person until it was born. And abortion was not absolutely prohibited at any time before birth. Since this was the attitude of the ancient society of the authors of the Torah at the time it was written, it is unreasonable to interpret sections of it as prohibiting abortion. The social attitudes of the time are a much better indicator of what the words actually were intended to mean.
Beyond this fact, you have analyzed the Bible as if it were somehow a legitimate absolute authority to which we must refer in the abortion debate. I agree that evangelicals in particular put an undo amount of emphasis on their very narrow interpretations of biblical standards, but that should not be the focus for establishing social standards for the country as a whole. We are not a theocracy. The evangelicals are entitled to their biblical standards in terms of conducting their own affairs, but they are not entitled to impose their particular beliefs on the rest of us who legitimately disagree with them. When you eliminate tortured interpretations of an ancient piece of literature written by uneducated, very flawed, human and ignorant men thousands of years ago, the prohibition against abortion becomes rather silly given current scientific and medical understanding of the subject.
The fundamentalists are welcome to practice what they believe. Where the line needs to be drawn is in their right to dictate to others the standards they should follow and how to live their lives. That is not acceptable.
Finally, as other commentators have noted, the sheer hypocrisy of most who are anti-abortion is beyond the pale. That same group believes strongly in capital punishment and takes no responsibility for raising the children that they will into an existence often marked by poverty and hopelessness. If they really cared about life, they would act on their beliefs and make sure that every child was properly nurtured and educated and given an opportunity to be a happy, healthy, productive member of society. Most fundamentalists want nothing to do with this obligation that they have created. Plus it would be too hard on their pocketbook.
We need to get beyond the simplistic focus of trying to dissect the “true” biblical standards in the abortion debate and take a broader perspective. Too often we give too much credence to the “validity” of the narrowminded fundamentalists’ attitude as if it were arguably dispositive of the controversy rather than putting it into proper perspective and viewing it as just one small, relatively irrelevant, ambiguous piece of a much larger issue affecting the health of women.
