What does the Bible say about Abortion?

With the elections going on and all of the talk about abortion, I decided to figure out what the Bible has to say on this constantly debated topic. If you google “What does the Bible say about abortion?” you will find 317,000 links (from both Christians sites and non-Christian alike) that argue both sides of the abortion topic. What I found is, as it is with everything, people will argue something the Bible says before actually looking into what it means and how the translation from Hebrew to English could effect the meaning.

The most commonly used verse to argue the case that God looks at a fetus differently than he does a child is Exodus 21:22-25. The following text is from the New American Standard Bible. “And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any [further] injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”

If you take the words in that verse, from that particular version of the Bible, literally, one could say that God gives more value to the woman than to the unborn child. I have argued many times with people about when life begins. To the person that says life begins at birth this verse will be taken literally – meaning it will be taken without looking into how the Bible defines certain terms, such as miscarriage. My question is how come those people quote this verse as a pro-choice verse, and do not want to know the meaning behind, or the origin of, the key words. I guess it is because if they do not look into those things, the verse fits their argument. Is that any different than most arguments people get in regarding any topic?

For those of you that are curious, the term miscarriage in the Bible has a different meaning than the meaning of the English word. The word miscarriage, as it is used in Exodus 21:22, is meant simply to say that the child is born prematurely. It does not mean, as the English word does, the expulsion of the fetus from the womb before it is sufficiently developed to survive (this comes from Webster’s dictionary). The word miscarriage as it is translated from Hebrew simply means that the child is born before its due date. If everyone agrees that the Bible was translated from Hebrew, then everyone must accept the translation of the term miscarriage from Hebrew to mean to be born early….and nothing more.

All of that being said, Exodus 21:22-25 actually shows that God says life is before birth.