In his second sermon in the
“You Asked For It” sermon series (delivered March 16, 2014), Jon presents
comments on the topics of Singleness and Abortion. This post will address his position on
abortion, and a subsequent post will comment on his treatment of
singleness. Jon’s treatment of abortion
hinges on three claims, that his position is Pro-Baby, Pro-Woman, and
Pro-Scripture. His position is none of
the above. The content of his sermon
runs directly contrary to the best interests of mothers and babies and society,
and, further, runs directly contrary to the Biblical position on abortion[1].
Restrictive abortion laws
do not have fewer abortions[2]. They just increase the rate of dangerous
abortions[3]. Jon’s failure to address these facts
massively undermines his claims to be “Pro-Woman” and “Pro-Science”. Restricting access to abortion simply makes
people’s lives worse, at no benefit to anyone, not even to fetuses.
Contrary to Jon’s claims,
there is not necessarily a contradiction between a law that allows abortions
and a law that allows fetuses to inherit property, or for people who kill
fetuses against the wishes of the mother to be tried for manslaughter. He is not arguing for equal human rights for
fetuses, he is arguing for special rights for fetuses at the direct expense of
mothers. If a person, an adult, with
full rights and standing in society is unable to survive unless you give them a
kidney, or you give them your blood, or you donate any of your body to their
survival, you have every right to deny them that. If Jon still has two intact kidneys, that
does not make him a murderer, even if he could literally go to the hospital
today and save someone’s life by donating one of them. Similarly, refusing to carry a fetus to term
is in no way murderous.
But Jon presents the claim,
currently fashionable in evangelical Christian circles[4],
that Jehovah reads abortion as an example of murder, and, relatedly, that He
begins human life at conception. As it
happens, the Biblical treatment of these subjects runs directly contrary to his
claims.
Jon cites several verses
that indicate that Jehovah takes an interest in the unborn. Such as:
Even before I was born, God chose me and called my by his
marvelous grace.
-Galatians 1:15 (NIV)
All of which are directly
in line with another passage, that he didn’t cite:
The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
- Jeremiah 1:4-5 (NIV)
The
Jeremiah passage makes it clear though, that the Jehovah of the Bible takes no
special interest in the moment of conception.
All of the passages that talk about an interest from before birth talk
equally about an interest from before conception. They claim that Jehovah had an interest in
these particular individuals from before we were even conceived. They do not speak at all to the issue of
abortion, or to life beginning at conception.
Jehovah’s law, presented
in the Old Testament, clearly directs that murders should be executed:
Anyone who hits and kills a
fellow human must be put to death.
- Leviticus 24:17 (MSG)
Compare that with this:
“When there’s a fight and in the fight a
pregnant woman is hit so that she miscarries but is not otherwise hurt, the one
responsible has to pay whatever the husband demands in compensation. But if
there is further damage, then you must give life for life—eye for eye, tooth
for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise
for bruise.
- Exodus 21:22-25 (MSG)
Explicitly, Jehovah treats
fetuses as property, which, if destroyed, lead to a debt of compensation, just
like any other possession, and unlike the mother. If the mother is harmed, then a life debt is
incurred. In the eyes of Jehovah as
presented in the Bible, a fetus is not a human life.
Jon in this sermon actively avoids mentioning the
one passage of scripture that explicitly deals with the abortion, which I’ll
explore in detail here. It’s a passage
that I have never heard any contemporary Christian mention in any context. The official party line seems to be to just
pretend that it doesn’t exist. Here’s Numbers
5:11-29:
“If any man’s wife goes
astray and behaves unfaithfully toward him…[5]if
the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife, who
has defiled herself[6];
or if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife,
although she has not defiled herself- then the man shall bring his wife to the
priest… The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel and take some of
the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water… And
the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. And the
priest shall put her under oath, and say to the woman, ‘If no man has lain with
you, and if you have not gone astray to uncleanness while under your husband’s authority[7],
be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority[8],
and if you have defiled yourself[9]
and some man other than your husband has lain with you… the LORD make you a
curse and an oath among your people, when the LORD makes your thigh rot and
your belly swell… Then the woman shall say ‘Amen, so be it.’… When he has made
her drink the water, then it shall be, if she has defiled herself and behaved
unfaithfully toward her husband, that the water that brings a curse will enter
her and become bitter, and her belly
will swell, her thigh will rot, and the woman will become a curse among her
people. But if the woman has not defiled
herself, and is clean, then she shall be free and may conceive children… Then
the man shall be free from iniquity, but that woman shall bear her guilt[10][11].”
-Numbers
5:11-31 (NKJV)
To reiterate the content of the text: If you[12]
get jealous and think your wife has cheated on you and she’s pregnant, take her
and with a shame offering (to emphasize to everyone in your community how
shameful she is) to the priest. When you
get there, in addition to horrifically shaming her, the priest will force your
pregnant wife to ingest an abortifacient.
If the baby dies, she’s a cheat, and will, for the rest of her life, be
utterly shunned by society. If the baby
doesn’t die, she’s not a cheat, and you’ve just publicly humiliated her,
terrified her, and tried to kill off her fetus for nothing, but at least you
know the baby’s yours… and since you’re a man, there are no negative
consequences whatsoever to you for any of this.
So, this text presents contemporary Christians
with a dilemma. In my experience, again,
they solve the dilemma by never ever ever acknowledging that this verse
exists. I spent, at a bare minimum, two
hours a week, every week, for decades in my young life in church. It easily adds up to over two thousand hours
of exposure to Christian propaganda on a wide range of subjects while
particularly young and impressionable, and it featured a perversely
disproportionate emphasis on the subject of abortion. And these verses were literally never
mentioned. They are absolutely
everything the Bible says directly about abortion. And in all that time they weren’t mentioned
once. Anyway, on to the dilemma: there exist only two possible answers to the obvious
question ‘does the magic abortifacient actually work in the way the Bible claims
that it does?’ The possible answers are
‘yes’ and ‘no’.
Socially conservative Christians who claim to take
the text literally (like Jon) will tend to lean ‘yes’. In which case, if the magic abortifacient
works as described, if it genuinely uses Jehovahan magicks to never endanger
fetuses that got half their chromosomes from their mother’s husband, but kills
fetuses that got half their chromosomes from a married woman and half from
someone other than her husband, then Jehovah stone cold kills fetuses. There’s no trace of mercy or acknowledgement
that the circumstances of its conception are no fault of the fetus. This Jehovah is an enthusiastic aborter. Bastard?
Dead. So sayeth the Tetragrammaton. And, as it happens, that’s the less malignant
option.
Christians of a less literal bent may lean toward
‘no’, possibly seeking to avoid blaming Jehovah for the monstrous framework
presented by Scripture as law. But if
the magic abortifacient is a lie, the framework’s implications get even more
horrific. There are two possibilities
for how this will play out, if the aborting dustwater doesn’t work as
advertised, and both of them are terrible.
If Jehovah isn’t magically directing the dustwater to be a perfect
paternity test, it still either does or does not have abortifacient
properties. Maybe the priest’s dust just
makes the water taste bitter and has no abortifacient effects at all. In that case, accused innocent women who miscarry
for any reason after taking the infidelity test will be shunned for the rest of
their life. The test will ruin their
life, irredeemably and forever, all on a lie from Jehovah. Also, the husbands of cheating women who
happen not to miscarry will invest untold resources in raising some other man’s
child in a society where social identity centers on lineage, and will continue
living with and trusting a cheat, also, all on a lie from Jehovah.
Worse still, what if the dust actually is an
active abortifacient, but is in no way imbued with magic (despite the spell the
priest said over it)? Then Jehovah
through His priests is killing or sparing women’s fetuses indiscriminately,
legitimate and illegitimate alike, while also indiscriminately ruining the lives
of women cheaters and non-cheaters alike.
So, to Christians, the question is “which monster
do you think you worship”? The bastard-fetus
killer, or the life-ruining liar? I
think my beliefs about Jehovah are actually much kinder to Him than the options
open to Christians here. I see Jehovah
as a fictional deity imbued by his authors, through no fault of his fictional
own, with their own eccentric, misogynist monstrosity. Which strikes me as significantly less
malignant than the theist alternatives.
[1] Jon
often throws around statistics and data without citations. In so doing, he’s directly denying his
audience the opportunity to fact check him and his sources. He includes citations to bible verses when he
quotes scripture; it would be no more work to include citations to his
scientific or statistical claims. In
this sermon, for instance, he misuses the uncited statistic “84 percent of all
expecting moms decide not to have an abortion after seeing the ultrasound of
their baby.” He’s trying to support
forcing women who seek an abortion to look at an ultrasound of their baby, but
his statistic presumably includes women who planned and wanted their
pregnancies.
[2] Sedgh,
G., Singh, S., Shah, I. H., Åhman, E., Henshaw, S. K., & Bankole, A.
(2012). Induced abortion: incidence and trends worldwide from 1995 to 2008. The
Lancet, 379(9816), 625-632.
[3]
Grimes, D. A. (2003). Unsafe abortion: the silent scourge. British Medical
Bulletin, 67(1), 99-113.
[4]
This anti-abortion stance hasn’t always been fashionable among
evangelicals. For a discussion of how it
fell into vogue, see:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/
[5] You
should always be skeptical of ellipses in quotes. They implicitly mean ‘trust me, I’m not
leaving any important context out’. And
the last person you should trust is anybody who says ‘trust me’. So I’m explicitly saying the opposite
here. Don’t trust me. Dig out your Bible, or point your browser to
biblegateway.com. Read the whole
text. Interrogate everything. Ever. I
feel that I’ve included all of the relevant content in the quotes. But don’t take my word for it when I do it,
and certainly don’t accept the word of a preacher when they do it.
[6]
Seriously? “Defiled herself”? No blame for the man involved in this
extracurricular defilement? What the flaming
crap, Bible? It’s almost as if you were
written by men, for men, in a world where women aren’t yet even second-class
citizens or something.
[7]
I’m just going to go broken record if I keep footnoting all the marginalization
of women in all the Bible quotes. But
then if I don’t footnote every glaring instance, we’ll all just go back to ignoring
how the anti-woman sentiment utterly permeates the entire book, which is even
worse… so, footnotes it is, I guess.
[8] Women,
man. They just can’t catch a break in
this book.
[9] See
Footnote 2, again.
[10]
If your wife (always your wife… you are never the wife… the Bible never adopts
the woman’s perspective: it remains of, for, and by men throughout), who can
under no circumstances divorce you, ever has sex with anyone else, she’s 100%
guilty. And you’re not. Completely regardless of how you’ve treated
her. You are 100% innocent. Because you’re a man. This was all clear already, from the content
of the chapter. The Bible just wanted to
reiterate it here in the last verse. I
want to say out of spite, but that’s not quite right. It’s really just for emphasis. Like when you add exclamation points and big
arrows in the margin next to text you’ve already underlined and hit with your
highlighter.
[11]
Note that if the magic infidelity test comes back negative, there’s no shame
whatsoever directed towards being a paranoid husband and publicly, permanently,
humiliating your wife by falsely accusing her of cheating on you.
[12]
Again, ‘you’ are always the man; the phallicentrisim is in the original text. I feel like I should add (pic) for
“Phallicentrism In Source” everywhere this comes up, like (sic) for spelling
errors in quotes, but I’ll resist the urge.
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