Is the Bible Anti-Abortion?

As I detailed in Garry Wills on Abortion Rights, the recent book Head and Heart: American Christianities by liberal Catholic historian Garry Wills argues, in one important section, against the "pro-life" stance of today's Evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics and Jews. After asserting that there is no authoritative text in the Bible in which God specifically forbids abortions, Wills makes a case that an abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy does not amount to the murder of a human person.

Absent definite scriptural guidance, we must fall back on philosophical reasoning about "natural law," Wills says. Given what we now know about fetal development, we can be certain a fetus possesses no high, cognitive brain function until neural synapses form in the brain, at a point twenty-five to thirty-two weeks into pregnancy. Before that juncture — which coincides with the onset of the ability of the fetus to survive outside the womb — the fetus is manifestly not "capable of thought, or of speech, of recognizing itself as a person, of assuming the responsibilities of a person" (p. 528).

Hence, a fetus during the first six months of pregnancy does not have the "intellectual soul" which Thomas Aquinas felt, writes Wills, "is directly created by God 'at the end of human generation' (in fine generationis humanae)" (p. 526).

In modern language, "personhood" as Aquinas defined it doesn't begin until late in pregnancy. Prior to the emergence of personhood, the fetus does not have a soul "directly created by God."


It's a convincing argument — one that I imagine (based on an endnote citation) comes from a book by Daniel A. Dombrowski and Robert Deltete called A Brief, Liberal, Catholic Defense of Abortion, which I intend to read.

But the argument depends on there not being a specific proscription of abortion in the Bible, which is a topic Wills expounds in what is perhaps his lengthiest endnote. I'm going to replicate that endnote here:

Though Jewish tradition did not draw any teaching on abortion from Scripture, modern Christians who believe in what they call the Old Testament try to dredge up something on the subject. Here are some of the desperate expedients.

Psalm 139.13-16 [actually, the verses cited are 13-15]:

For thou hast possessed my reins;
thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvellous are thy works;
and that my soul knoweth right well.
My substance was not hid from thee,
when I was made in secret,
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

This says only that God foreknows everything, every stage of a thing's coming into existence — even its primordial patterning in the lowest parts of the earth (whatever that means). That this is not a statement of when a person actually comes into being is seen from Jeremiah 1.5: "before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee."

Exodus 21.22: "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine."

The penalty is not for murder (which calls for the death penalty), but a mere fine to the husband for the possibility of losing an heir. This says nothing of the present status of the fetus, only of the future profit to the male. The woman is not treated as having any stake in the matter. Only the man.

Genesis 38.24-26:

[Wills does not actually give the quote, which is: "And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more."]

[Wills paraphrases:] Tamar is brought to be executed, but she is pregnant and is spared. But she is not spared because she is pregnant — that was known when she was condemned to death. She is spared because she produces proof that the father is the head of the tribe, Jonah.

[Then Wills adds:] Actually there is one passage in the Jewish texts that shows God himself inducing an abortion, Numbers 5.11-26 (the Lord is speaking):

[Again, Wills omits the actual text, which (including verse 27) is:]

[And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man's wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him,
And a man lie with her carnally, and it be hid from the eyes of her husband, and be kept close, and she be defiled, and there be no witness against her, neither she be taken with the manner;
And the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be defiled: or if the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be not defiled:
Then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil upon it, nor put frankincense thereon; for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to remembrance.
And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before the LORD:
And the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water:
And the priest shall set the woman before the LORD, and uncover the woman's head, and put the offering of memorial in her hands, which is the jealousy offering: and the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that causeth the curse:
And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse:
But if thou hast gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee beside thine husband:
Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell;
And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen.
And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water:
And he shall cause the woman to drink the bitter water that causeth the curse: and the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter.
Then the priest shall take the jealousy offering out of the woman's hand, and shall wave the offering before the LORD, and offer it upon the altar:
And the priest shall take an handful of the offering, even the memorial thereof, and burn it upon the altar, and afterward shall cause the woman to drink the water.
And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people.]

[Wills does provide this interpretation:]

If a woman is suspected of infidelity, her husband must bring her before a priest, who will make her drink "bitter water" into which he has mingled cursed (23). "If she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people" (27).

I don't know whether to call this last example "God himself inducing an abortion," so much as God calling for the priest to induce one, using "bitter water" as an abortifacient. But never mind. It does seem to show that God in that period of history and among those people ordered an illicit fetus of a "defiled" woman to be aborted, does it not?