WN: Rudy Giuliani Tells Pro-Life Advocates: Get Over Abortion Issue -

[Tubal-Cain]

What is it that you don't understand about the shedding of innocent blood of a baby by murder, which is an abomination to God that you don't understand?

"Shedding of innocent blood" is a euphemism for murder. This leads to the question: what is murder? Per the most likely reading of Ex 21:22, killing a fetus is not always murder. This shows that strict literalism should be abandoned (as it always should be when a euphemism and a proverb is used). As I mentioned before, we're back to square one where we need an ethical theory to help answer the question. I have an ethical theory, desire utilitarianism, while no one else here has provided any.

Abortion is shedding of innocent blood, period, and it is an abomination to God.

You conveniently ignored the fact that shedding blood is not always involved in an abortion. If you are true to your literalism you will have to admit that you have no biblical grounds for opposing very early abortions or the harvesting of stem cells since no blood is shed.

It's written in plain words so that a child could understand it. Your rationalization is beyond logic here.

Recall that you have rationalized it away in the cases of early abortions that don't shed blood, war, and the death penalty. I would contend that you too realize it just means "don't murder" and that's how you rationalize things in other situations. You consider all abortions murder, regardless if blood is literally shed or not, and that's why you use the passage in that case. You consider innocents killed during war to not be murder and so you disregard the passage in that case. Finally, you think killing a wrongly convicted man is not murder and so you disregard this passage in such cases.

On the other hand, I take the euphemism and proverb to mean don't murder and apply that command consistently within the construct of my ethical theory. My ideas on abortion are already given. I support just wars and oppose unjust wars. I oppose the death penalty because we can prevent the murder of the wrongly convicted with life imprisonment.

[Guest LadyC]

tubal, you might want to do a little more studying about the passage if you think the attacker of a woman whose fetus doesn't die is not guilty of murder. you've misinterpreted that passage based on paraphrased editions. this has been discussed at length before on these forums.

if the baby is born prematurely, the attacker is not guilty of murder. however if the baby is stillborn or miscarried as a result of the attack, the biblical punishment is a life for a life.

[Tubal-Cain]

tubal, you might want to do a little more studying about the passage if you think the attacker of a woman whose fetus doesn't die is not guilty of murder. you've misinterpreted that passage based on paraphrased editions. this has been discussed at length before on these forums.

if the baby is born prematurely, the attacker is not guilty of murder. however if the baby is stillborn or miscarried as a result of the attack, the biblical punishment is a life for a life.

Actually I'm basing it off of the work of scholar Richard Elliott Friedman. The reading you propose is possible but not the most likely.

[Tubal-Cain]

Cain:

Exodus Chapter 21, if you notice starts out with in the very first sentence:

NOW THESE ARE THE JUDGEMENTS which thou shall set before them.

The cases mentioned in Exodus 21, including verse 22 that you refer to give rules of justice that were/are to be applied. They are simply to teach us that we must be careful to do no wrong, either directly or indirectly. If we do wrong, you must be willing to pay the penalty , and in no way endorse the deliberate legalized murdering of a baby by abortion at any stage. You have misintepreted the meaning of the passage of Scripture, which involves justice.

In the Torah, justice is a life for a life when it comes to murder. Hence, if the fetus were a life on par with that of the mother then one who killed the fetus would have to be put to death. However, the most likely reading of the passage spares the life of the attacker. This is not compatible with your view that all abortions are murder. If all abortions are murder then the attacker in this story would have been executed. Ex 21:22 deals with more than mere justice. It deals with specific type of incident and how justice should be applied in that instance.

Moreover, I have never endorsed abortion, I have said it is permissible in certain circumstances. There is a big difference. There are things you should do (good things), things you should not do (bad things), and things it is permissible to do (neutral things).

I didn't ignore it, Cain. The topic here is abortion in this thread, I didn't see any need to change the subject as some have tried to do which just confuses the issue.

Then you misunderstood what I said so I will rephrase it: It is possible to abort a embryo/fetus without shedding blood because not every embryo/fetus has blood to shed. For example, you may consider taking RU486 as an abortion but no blood is shed when that pill is taken. If you're going to take your passage from Proverbs literally with regard to some abortions then you have to take it literally on all abortions.