Remember this is the same book that says “Oops we can’t let the Benjaminites die out because the prophecies won’t come true unless there are 12 tribes so because we won’t intermarry with them as punishment they can kidnap and keep women from a nearby people as wives so they survive.”
The article is fascinating.
The largest organized religious group in the United States is an evangelical community founded specifically in support of slavery, and against a movement within its former parent community to oppose slavery.
Evangelicals, did not, as a while, oppose chattel slavery, whether for literalist or other reasons.
> Early Adventism published positions in harmony with the Physicians' Crusade Against Abortion, though it was not active in that movement. The church produced its first set of abortion guidelines in 1970, when American attitudes toward abortion had changed and some of the church's hospitals were experiencing in creasing pressure from their communities to provide abortion services.
> Less than a year after the first set of abortion guidelines was developed, the church revised and expanded it. The resulting liberalized guidelines have allowed Adventist hospitals a great deal of freedom in their abortion practices, a freedom that has resulted in a large number of abortions being performed. Although the church has been hesitant to let it be known, at the present it is clearly not, in either policy or practice, limiting its medical institutions to therapeutic abortions.
^ From 1991.
I think the church, historically, has been so conservative that they are unwilling to contort the scripture to get it to support their political ambitions to the same extent other churches are (although lately that's not so true). This is similar to how the Southern Baptists initially supported and ran an op-ed praising the Roe v Wade ruling[2].
[1] https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1991/08/abortion-hi...
[2] https://billmoyers.com/2014/07/17/when-southern-baptists-wer...
The spermatozoid and the ovule are living cells. /s
I'm not a theologian, but I know the Adventists took a much harder stance against killing real, live people in war than they did about in the abstract in utero, and that makes rational sense to me. Everyone has a different take on scripture so I expect for other religions it will say what they want to it say.
> Reading all these verses – and many others – and combining them, I don't think it is correct to state that: "the bible says nothing about abortion".
Great, don't get one. In any case, that's not how the Adventists have historically seen it, and I'm not an Adventist now in any case.
In the New Testament, Elizabeth who is pregnant with John, says the following when greeting her cousin Mary, pregnant with Jesus: "43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy."[Luke 1:43-44] Elizabeth here describing the reaction and importance of hearing the Mary's greeting, and surely the visit of the baby in her Womb, Jesus Christ.
I am aware that certain rabbinic traditions might allow for abortions under certain circumstances, but Jesus tend to tighten the interpretation of the Ten Commandments rather than loosen it: " “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”" [Matthew 19:8-9] And even the disciples thought He set the bar high, as they responded with the following: "10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”"[Matthew 19:10 and read the following verses for Jesus’ response]
Reading all these verses – and many others – and combining them, I don't think it is correct to state that: "the bible says nothing about abortion".