The Bible doesn’t condemn abortion

Monday 27 March 2023

I listened to Bart Ehrman talking. He surprised me in asserting that the Bible doesn’t condemn abortion. In fact, according to Ehrman, the bible fairly explicitly states that the fetus is not human, and that abortion in the case of adultery is just fine. I can only assume that Christians base their claims on some ad hoc interpretation of other passages that don’t deal with abortion or the status of the fetus directly (and this seems to have happened relatively recently, if I understand Ehrman correctly). So, American Christians voted for the unbeliever Trump as a means to an end, but that end is not even based on doctrinal literalism but a on fanciful interpretation, a fiction about a fiction. Religion is weird, but it has real world consequences.