SDG wrote:
your entire problem is framing the issue incorrectly, according to Christians. This is not about "women's rights", it is about murder of the unborn. The immoveable and unshakeable difference between pro-abortion and pro-life is the determination of what is in the womb. That will never change. Christians see this is as murder and they are also protecting "women's rights"....the unborn women in the womb.
you're absolutely right, that this is the issue. but i think this is, historically, a relatively recent highlight. as far as i know, most of the biblical underpinning of this relies on a kind of phraseology, a figure of speech, or a way to express a truism. i knew you before you were in the womb. there's a lot of womb talk, mostly in the OT, and the point of that womb talk is not to express when exactly god quickens that biological mass; it's to say that god had you in his plan not
during, but well
before your mom and dad ever hid under the bleachers. in other words...
i find the scriptural basis for quickening-at-conception uncompelling. more scripturally accurate to say you became god's child way before then. obviously that's hard to fathom, but that's what jeremiah 1:5 says, and what ephesians 1:4 says. he chose us "before the foundation of the world." hard to wrap your brain around, but there it is.
when god quickens that mass of biology is, as the saying goes, god's own mystery. but i'm pretty sure that if god knew you before the foundation of the world, he didn't choose you to be one of the fetuses that gets flushed down the toilet in the fertility clinic. but christians have
chosen to believe that quickening occurs at conception, just as they choose to believe in free will, but those very same versus that champion the idea of conception-quickening also often champion the idea that your fate was also sealed before conception. bummer that.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman