This argument, and arguments like it, miss the nature of the issue.

If abortion is the immoral killing of an innocent human being/person, as pro-lifers claim, then it doesn't matter if it's a Christian/jewish/other religious ritual [see note] (we don't allow child sacrifice even if it's a sincerely held religious ritual).

If abortion is amoral, simply removing unwanted cells/not violating the rights of any individual then and only then does the religious ritual argument for remaining legal make sense.

To summarize, the "religious ritual" argument only works if you presume that the pro-choice view is correct. If pro-life claims are correct it's irrelevant. This and similar arguments distract from the true issue and prevent people from understanding the other.

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Note: I understand abortion isn't necessarily a "ritual" in Judaism, just that it's permitted (mandated?) in certain situations. I simply use the term "ritual" to signify either a ritual or a religiously allowed practice.

Yeah, but is it? Both legally and biblically, personhood starts at birth. Nobody I know of holds funerals for their miscarriage, or gives it a name. At least not for early stage miscarriages (which, as with abortions, are far, far more common than miscarriages and abortions late in the pregnancy).

However, more interestingly, do you think you could cite where (a) the Bible forbids abortion or (b) the Bible makes clear that life begins at any point prior to birth?

[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%202...

I too, am interested in this answer and have not misrepresented any biblical passages.

Given the above information, I don't find the idea that The Bible doesn't directly condemn abortion to be the gotcha that reddit atheists think it is. I think it suggests that life-at-conception was so obvious to the authors that they didn't feel the need to distinguish between abortion and murder, much in the same way that life-at-conception was mainstream biology until the moment it became politicized. The Bible doesn't go very in depth about the benefits of exercise, do we therefore interpret it to suggest we should all get fat, or is this just so obvious that the authors didn't bother to put it in? Should we start using 50 layers of abstraction and euphemism to believe that being fat is fine, just as we do with abortion (oh, we started doing that too).

Furthermore, (and this might surprise you if you are from an American context) most Christians in the world do not believe in Sola Scriptura, the belief that the Bible is the soul source of authority. We also venerate saints and the Church Fathers, and the Church itself (whether it be the Catholic Church or one of several Orthodox Churches), all of which we believe to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Abortion was condemned very early on by the Church Fathers. This is all to say that The Bible is not the soul source of authority for most of the world's Christians and therefore not the soul battleground for the religious debate on abortion.

Well, this is a pleasant, open minded start... but thank you for the references.

> much in the same way that life-at-conception was mainstream biology until the moment it became politicized.

I think most mainstream biologist believe that a fetus is living cells and, hence, life. Most mainstream biologists would not, and did not, agree that humanity begins a conception, similarly most would agree a human is dead upon brain death and not "alive" simply because the corpse still has a heart beat. This is a discussion that was foisted upon biology and politicized, not vice versa.

The abortion debate is a fundamentally a religious debate, so it's good to understand it from that point of view.

As an atheist, I have no qualms or guilt about choosing to pull the plug on any biological "human" without a functioning cerebrum and cerebellum.

The third trimester is when the abortion debate gets at all tricky for me.

If this is your idea of an open, honest debate you can keep it.

Mosaic law does distinguish between violently inducing a miscarriage (punishable by a fine to be paid to the father) and murder (punishable by death) in Exodus 21. It is unclear whether there was any penalty for a self-induced miscarriage, though that would not have been uncommon in other ancient societies.

"When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Not only is the fine specifically a punishment for inadvertently hitting the woman (in the case where the child is not harmed), but it says "life for life", proving that children in the womb are considered alive and their death is a capital offence, just like killing an adult.

"When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that she has a miscarriage but no other injury occurs, then the guilty party will be fined what the woman’s husband demands, as negotiated with the judges. 23 If there is further injury, then you will give a life for a life"

The traditional Talmudic interpretation is that any harm to the fetus is to be punished with a fine, and any harm to the mother is punishable wound for wound: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/abortio....

> Not only is the fine specifically a punishment for inadvertently hitting the woman (in the case where the child is not harmed), but it says "life for life", proving that children in the womb are considered alive and their death is a capital offence, just like killing an adult.

I'm not sure what you're taking "so that her children come out" to mean, but it is usually understood as a reference to an induced miscarriage.

I took it to mean that the children are born prematurely. In any case, it doesn't say "so that the bundles of cells come out".

It seems like you're taking one literal interpretation of a specific English translation as the only legitimate reading. There is plenty of scholarship and commentary by ancient and contemporary authors who can shed light on how the text was read (and, in this case, upheld in a legal setting) in the original Hebrew.

Jumping immediately to an accusation of dishonesty is uncalled for.

Yes. That's not a viable fetus, and keeping it in the womb forever isn't going to change that

Their pro-life stance would hold A LOT more weight if they were out protesting wars and military spending, not to mention foreign occupation through military means and trying to have that money spent on humanitarian programs. I give credit to the Amish for at least being consistent (and no, I'm not religious).

[1] https://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_war.htm

I'm Christian, but I see no biblical argument against abortion. I'm not a fan of abortion, mind you; I think any abortion is a tragedy on some level, and unwanted pregnancies are better prevented than aborted, but sometimes medical complications simply make abortion necessary. And I'd rather leave the hard decisions in the hands of the people affected by them than having legislators force those decisions on them.

I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't agree with this statement. The narrative that abortion is used as a form of contraception is largely a false one, but accidents do happen. Most of the women who get abortions already have a child, surprisingly. [1] EDIT -> well, I was surprised, I guess I should say

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-ge...

You'd think, and yet there are pro-lifers who oppose abortion and yet also want to make contraception less accessible.

Not everybody has a rational or even logically consistent position in this.

Of course there is philosophical discussion that goes beyond that, but since making it a crime is a legal matter, it's probably within reason.

Even that can become fiercely political.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_and_activism_in...

Although it might be convenient to treat life as being somehow legally symmetrical, I think that is still a position that needs to be justified.

To give a strange analogy, if someone gathers all the materials needed to make a bomb, but doesn't mix them together, they can still be arrested for bomb-making, even though, in a strictly chemical sense, they haven't made anything that can donate.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/18/three-in-te...