In “Abortion: Historical and Biblical Perspectives”, John Rasmussen states that abortion is strongly opposed in the Biblical context. He makes his argument by introducing the Genesis creation story, where God made men in his own image which suggests that human life is sacred. Rasmussen also brings up that God later goes on to warn Adam and Eve to not eat the apple or they will die to make the argument that God does not wishes for human to die. God also tells Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” therefore God wishes for human to reproduce and
live. After he has made it clear that life is sacred and that life is what God wanted, Rasmussen then goes on to argue that life begins at conception by giving multiple supporting versus. In Ex 4:11 and Job 31:15, both versus state that God has shaped each and every human being while he/ she was in his/her mother’s womb. Rasmussen then implies that the act of abortion is a destruction of God’s sacred gift of life, therefore a sin. The problem with Rasmussen’s argument is that he is taking the scripture in an extreme literal sense. While the argument that God wants to maintain life is certainly strong and that God has created men in his image is clearly stated in the Bible -- nowhere in the Bible suggest that the womb references are purely literal. Just because multiple people used phrases such as “did not he who made me in the womb” or “I have molded you in your mother’s womb”, it cannot be assumed that this is word-for-word accurate and not a figure of speech.
and says that “surely it includes abortion”. It is unclear how he jumped to that conclusion as he did not support that statement with any evidences; therefore it is a mere assumption and does not make his argument any stronger.
Similar to Rasmussen, Bruce Waltke also argues that fetuses should be considered as human life from evidences found in the Bible in his article”Reflections from the Old Testament on Abortion”. However, Waltke’s argument is much more...