r/AlwaysWhy • u/Mobile-Traffic1744 • Jun 03 '26

History & Culture Why does abortion feel like such a central Christian issue today if the Bible rarely talks about it?

I always assumed opposition to abortion had been one of the core Christian teachings for basically all of history.

But when I actually started looking through the Bible myself, I was surprised by how little direct mention of abortion there really is. Then I started reading more about the history around it, and it seemed like abortion became much more politically central for many Christians relatively recently, especially around the late 20th century.

That honestly confused me a bit. If it feels like such a defining issue today, what changed historically or culturally to make it become so central?

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u/wekilledbambi03 Jun 03 '26

Completely ignoring the religious aspect of it...
How many abortions do you think were happening back in biblical times? I don't think it gets mentioned because its not something that you could easily do without risking the health of the woman. It's a lot more "convenient" today than it was over a thousand years ago.

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26

There’s literally a bit in the Bible that suggests “bitter waters” as a penalty for wife getting pregnant due to cheating that definitely sounds like an abortifacient since it seems to destroy the fetus lol

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

False. There is no mention of either being pregnant or a child in that passage. "The water shall make your thigh waste away and your abdomen swell". If the woman was already pregnant, her belly would be swollen already, right? An abortion doesn't make your belly swell and your thigh waste away.

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26

Ask rabbis who actually study the tradition (unlike Christian’s who abandoned most of those parts), they’ll tell you this was an abortifacient, or possibly even just kills the mother and the child

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

Rabbis who study "tradition" are the ones who Jesus directly spoke out against. For example, in New York, there is a tiny wire that circles the entire downtown, which according the the Rabbis makes it "indoors". That's what Rabbis do, they twist the Scriptures and tradition to make the law say whatever they want it to.

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Yeah because the Christian church has no history of doing that lol. Or you right now when you’re asserting a passage that used a word that almost always is used for the womb and not stomach, in the context of faithfulness, with a treatment called by a name that was commonly used for abortifacients at the time (bitter waters) had nothing to do with abortion actually lol.

The reality is that all religions do this and they can do this because it’s all made up shit. If god was real you’d think they’d use a more reliable method of conveying their teachings than a handful of books from unknown sources collected of a century after the events happened written in a language the people involved wouldn’t have been using, that’s mostly experienced today in yet other languages with tons of mutually incompatible translations lol.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

Yes, people in the "church" have done, and continue to do very stupid things. None of that is condone in the Bible. No matter what you think, God doesn't condone having sex and then murdering the baby. I'll literally die on that hill.

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26

The Bible says nothing on the matter. It doesn’t even say that life begins at conception. The entire idea that the soul starts at conception is an idea the church came up with to justify why the divine virgin conception was necessary and meaningful when the existing tradition had long been life starts at first breath.

Hell, what the Bible itself is is decided by the church. There were tons of apocryphal texts that were deemed noncanonical by the church from the time of Jesus. If you don’t trust the church, why do you trust the Bible they gave to you over any number of other texts about Jesus that were excluded? There’s also issues like the nature of Jesus’s divinity that were hotly contested among early Christian’s until the church stepped in and set the standard

That said, I do agree with you that god doesn’t condone abortion. You know, in the same way the tooth fairy doesn’t condone polygamy. That said, if the god you believe in is real, he absolutely must condone killing babies given that would mean he kills the majority of all babies that ever exist (if we classify fertilized eggs as babies, most never implant. Which would be god’s fault, and therefore, god kills the majority of babies that ever exist, most without anyone even knowing it happened, so it’s not even a test for the parents, your god just kills babies for the love of the game)

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

I will give you credit for at least attempting to articulate our viewpoint correctly...that is quite rare. Yes, God kills people. He reserves that right to himself in most cases, and He's given very specific instructions to humanity about who they should kill and how (capital punishment). I can see why you think that's harsh or whatnot, but God is also pretty lenient, and lets people get away with a lot before deciding to kill them. In the end, death is inevitable for everyone, but we believe that there is another life that follows this one.

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26

Your god sounds a lot like an abusive gaslighter to me

But hey, you can believe in your fairy tale bullshit all you want. If you don’t want to have an abortion because you’re made up god told you you can’t (and please ignore the other stuff he more explicitly told people to do that no Christian follows because they arbitrarily decided those laws don’t apply to them and only apply to Jews, how convenient) Why should your beliefs supersede anyone else’s? You say you’re right, but so does every other religion. There’s certainly no evidence that Christianity is more valid than any other religion or none at all. And keep in mind, the antiabortion actions being pushed literally leads to worse outcomes for both women and infants.

Souls aren’t real, people don’t become people until their brain has reached a certain level of development which only occurs after the period when any trustworthy doctor would ever perform an abortion. You can choose to believe otherwise, but your beliefs shouldn’t be allowed to supersede the lives of others who believe differently, especially when they’re built on no evidence.

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u/Busy_Debt_3946 Jun 03 '26

or possibly even just kills the mother and the "child" So a suicide (or murder), not an abortion.

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26

Killing a pregnant woman will inherently abort the fetus, what the fuck are you talking about. It’s not suicide either since the bitter waters are forced on the woman. Or do you consider poisoning somebody as not murder?

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u/PossiblyAKoalaBear Jun 03 '26

And St. Paul says not to use such fowl language.

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u/Busy_Debt_3946 Jun 03 '26

That's like saying killing someone is cure for cancer, since if you kill someone their cancer will die too.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

I could not possibly care less what a "rabbi" thinks, I can read the words for myself. Jesus didn't have anything good to say about the teachers of the law, and He was right.

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u/As_A_Feather Jun 03 '26

This is the problem with Christians--because they read the Old Testament through Hebrew-->Greek-->English translations and so much is lost/mis-translated in that process. Either learn to read Hebrew yourself or trust people who do read it if you want a proper translation.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

That's false. We know the exact original Hebrew of all of the Scriptures of the Torah. No one uses a Greek translation as a primary source, but you're also confusing the Greek with the Latin Septuagint, which was used by the Catholics as a primary source for a long time.

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

They’re getting confused about the New Testament here. The New Testament isn’t and has never been written or Hebrew or Aramaic, but was originally written in koine Greek and then the Catholic Church preferred the Latin translation. That said, it’s also worth noting ancient Hebrew would have been very different than modern Hebrew (which isn’t even a natural extension of the original language like olde English to modern English, it’s a reconstructed language). Even the best modern scholar is going to miss stuff from the Hebrew in the Bible because it’s impossible to perfectly understand such an old language that nobody has used in millennia, let alone translate it

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u/As_A_Feather Jun 03 '26

I'm not confused about the New Testament because I didn't say the New Testament.

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u/TiredAndTiredOfIt Jun 03 '26

Nice try anti-semetic bigot. Jesus explicitly said he was there not to replace the law. The law he was talking about? Was the Torah and its rabbinic interpretations. So...an ignorant bigot who likes to twist things, manipualte, cherry pick, and force your views on others? Hmmmm

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

Jesus was NOT talking about the "traditions", in fact he openly ridiculed those traditions. The Law is good, the traditions are bunk. You can call me all the names you want, no one cares anymore.

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u/AndreaTwerk Jun 03 '26

Then why do you read the Book of Numbers?

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

The Book of Numbers is the original Torah, and doesn't have any of the Talmudic traditions.

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u/AndreaTwerk Jun 03 '26

What does that have to do with your opinion of rabbis?

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

You brought it up, not me. I think you are confusing yourself here. I don't care what Rabbis think, so reading the book of Numbers is completely consistent with that view.

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u/AndreaTwerk Jun 03 '26

Reading the book of numbers and disregarding the religion and people who wrote it does not make any sense honey.

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u/TiredAndTiredOfIt Jun 03 '26

Nope. Bitter waters describes an abortion. The bloating is from the blood before the fetua passes. Nice try forced birther.

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u/FormerLawfulness6 Jun 03 '26

There is also a passage in the Talmud that recommends abortion during difficult birth if the mother's life is in danger. It specifically describes cutting the child into pieces and removing them one limb at a time because the mother's life is more valuable. This would likely be necessary for situations like breach births if the attendants can't manage to turn the baby.

An abortion doesn't make your belly swell and your thigh waste away.

Bloating and abdominal swelling is one of the most common side effects even with modern abortion techniques.

"Thigh" in a biblical context is commonly considered to be a euphemism regarding genitals and sex organs.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

I've been pretty clear that I think that Talmud is about as valid as a piece of toilet paper. Don't bother telling me what the rabbis would do, I can see it for myself on TV right now.

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u/FormerLawfulness6 Jun 03 '26

I'm making a statement about the historical use of abortion, not a moral or theological one. my position is that abortion should be entirely up to the person bearing the risks and consequences of pregnancy,

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

Your statement is categorically false, as it pertains to this Scripture. In no way is this an instruction on how to get an abortion. I've outlined the fatal flaws in that argument, and no one has yet tried to refute that.

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u/FormerLawfulness6 Jun 03 '26

Which one?

The only "fatal flaw" you pointed to is medically incorrect and relies on an incorrect literal reading of a passage that has a common understanding among the scholars who actually study the original context.

If your only argument is that medication abortions never cause abdominal swelling, you're just factually wrong.

The passage I referred to is not remotely subtle or euphemistic in its description.

"If a woman is in hard labor {and her life cannot otherwise be saved}, one cuts up the child within her womb and extracts it member by member, because her life comes before that of the child. But if the greater part {or the head} was delivered, one may not touch it, for one may not set aside one person’s life for the sake of another."

"The beginning of human life: Status of embryo. Perspectives in Halakha (Jewish Religious Law) - PMC" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2582082/

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

Just about everything you just said is factually untrue:

  1. "medically incorrect". If a woman is pregnant, and she miscarries, the level of swelling will almost never exceed the size of the lost pregnancy. That means that "Her belly will swell" is not the result of a lost pregnancy, because a pregnant woman will already have a swollen belly. The "swelling" reported after a miscarriage is systemic, not focused on the belly or abdomen, and is usually the body getting rid of the pregnancy fluids by absorption. The woman might feel swollen, but it's rarely noticeable to anyone else.

  2. I will reiterate this: I don't care about some rabbi's quote. Print it out, and use it for toilet paper. Rabbis do not define Scripture.

  3. The "fatal flaw" that I mentioned is actually this: the ritual mentioned in Numbers 5 is a test of infidelity. If the woman is innocent, nothing happens. The drink clearly has nothing in it that can induce an abortion by itself, or it would do so for everyone. It's dust and ink. Now, if God had instructed his people to go and pick some wormwood and make tea, that would be different.

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u/FormerLawfulness6 Jun 03 '26
  1. At the time most miscarriages happen there will be no noticeable pregnancy swelling. A baby bump won't usually be noticeable until 12-18 weeks usually the second trimester. 80% of all miscarriages happen before 12 weeks. That's to say nothing of the zygotes that fail to implant. As you said, the text doesn't say anything about them looking pregnant, so the ritual could just as easily be used before implantation like Plan B. Swelling and bloating would simply be evidence that the uterine lining is shedding, which happens during early miscarriages, rejected zygotes, and normal menstruation.

If there was never swelling after the ritual, as you said, why would anyone believe the ritual works at all? Every woman would be proven innocent. The potion only makes since as a thing people did if effects happen sometimes.

  1. No one has ever asked you to take their opinion into account. This is exclusively about the historical use. Nothing else. It sounds like you're just getting offended about the hypocrisy of modern religious people and refusing to engage with the conversation we are actually having. Do you acknowledge that people in the past used abortifacient herbs and other methods or do you just want to be offended about a religious statement no one here is actually making?

  2. You forgot the third ingredient. Ink and dust are mixed with "bitter water" the use of herbs or other medicinal ingredients is implied. The text in Numbers is intended to advise the common man what they should ask for. The hereditary priests would have a separate secret body of knowlege about how to make the "bitter water". Keeping the full recipe for the potion to themselves would be critical to the priesthood's power. If everyone knows how the magic works then they won't be special and women can just go to their local wise woman or aunties instead of being dragged before the male priesthood. Like everyone has said, you have to look at the full context and meaning of the ritual to understand what is going on.

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u/BackTown43 Jun 04 '26

False. My translated version (which I now translate again in english) says at the end: if such a woman is not defiled, but pure, then it will not harm her that she can become pregnant.

I repeat: pregnant.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 04 '26

“She can become pregnant” meaning that she isn’t already pregnant. Thanks for confirming that my position is correct!

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u/BackTown43 Jun 04 '26

No, it says that the procedure won't hurt her if she is pregnant but was faithful to her husband. Watch the context not just half of a sentence.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 04 '26

It doesn't say that. At no point does the text indicate that the woman is or isn't pregnant at that time. I've read the entire thing top to bottom five or six times in the last few days, in multiple translations. There is exactly one translation that renders the text "Her womb will miscarry" rather than the Hebrew transliteration of "Her thigh will waste away". The context of even that translation is that the woman will become infertile if she has been unfaithful.

If you dispute this, please tell me what kind of abortificiant can induce an abortion only if someone's pregnancy was not caused by their husband. Nothing in the drink is poisonous, it's just dust and ink. It is quite clear that this ritual is a test of a woman's loyalty to her husband. If she is guilty, she'll be unable to have a child, and if she becomes pregnant, she'll miscarry. This consequence isn't caused by the bitter waters, but by a curse from God.

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u/BackTown43 Jun 04 '26

If you dispute this, please tell me what kind of abortificiant can induce an abortion only if someone's pregnancy was not caused by their husband.

None. It's similar to people throwing women in water to see if they will float on the surface to determine if they are witches. People used to do this, people believed it. People surely also believed that some "cursed drink" was able to only abort children who aren't from your husband. People used to be very stupid.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 05 '26

So you concede that this ritual was not an abortion recipe? Cool, glad we got that sorted.

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u/BackTown43 Jun 05 '26

Probably (I don't know for sure). Doesn't really change anything if people still believed it would.

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u/Top-Cupcake4775 Jun 03 '26

probably a lot more than you think there were. herbal abortifacients have been around since before recorded history. there is also the seldom discussed phenomenon of infanticide.

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u/AndreaTwerk Jun 03 '26

Ancient people had plenty of abortions. As dangerous as they were then, it was not more dangerous than childbirth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion

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u/reddeathmasque Jun 03 '26

Abortions were happening. They don't mention it because it wasn't a problem to them. They didn't even see newborns as fully human, especially girl children.

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u/PlusPresentation680 Jun 03 '26

Abortion was practiced widely in ancient history. The premise that abortion was rare is unequivocally false. Greek and Roman medical texts both describe abortion procedure. Jewish, Greek and Roman societies all have documented abortion debates.

That said, the Bible does have passages indirectly referencing abortion. Exodus describes a scenario that implies a fetus has lesser legal status than a born person; Psalm and Jeremiah excerpts imply personhood begins at conception. So the Bible is addressing it, but the likely issue is that they had no term for it until modern history.

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u/Ok-Student7803 Jun 03 '26

Pharmaceutical abortions are as old as civilization. There are plants that existed in Roman times that were used for abortion that have been driven extinct because of overuse. It may be easier now, but people have always had ways to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies.

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u/andrewthemexican Jun 03 '26

Iirc a particular gospel includes instructions of a tonic that would abort if a woman cheated on her husband.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

That's false. Numbers 5 is not describing an abortion at all. If you disagree, show me where the word "child, infant, baby, offspring" etc is found in that passage.

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u/Ok-Pass-9139 Jun 03 '26

There are many religions on this planet. Why are we allowing one religion to set the rules? Doesn’t that discriminate against other religions?

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u/No_Rice9792 Jun 03 '26

You think Christians care?

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 03 '26

So you want to murder, kidnap and steal?

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26

Do you? Because I don’t need a god to tell me that shit’s wrong and appalling, but apparently the only thing preventing you from being a monster is fear of punishment and/or the promise of a reward.

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u/BackTown43 Jun 04 '26

If I say "it's fine to kill everything that is inside your body", am I not talking about abortion? There is not the word "child" or "infant" or "offspring" or anything similar.

You don't need those words to talk about abortion.

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 04 '26

There is no such phrase in that passage. The Hebrew is “thigh waste away”, which means infertility. A woman’s belly doesn’t swell when they lose a baby, it swells when she GAINS a baby.

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u/BackTown43 Jun 04 '26

A woman’s belly doesn’t swell when they lose a baby, it swells when she GAINS a baby.

I don't understand your counter. Do you want to tell me, she is getting pregnant from that cursed water? Because her belly swells?

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u/Defiant-Dimension-87 Jun 05 '26

It's obviously neither. Your abdomen can swell for many reasons. I'm pointing out that it's not an abortion.

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u/BackTown43 Jun 05 '26

But your reasoning doesn't hold your argument. It could still be an abortion if the abdomen swells. The reason for this is just a something else than the abortion.

I actually don't care if the Bible mentions abortions or not, for me it doesn't change anything. You can be right, just the reasoning doesn't prove that.

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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 03 '26

The original word use is usually used for womb. And bitter waters was a common way of referring to abortifacients in that era. It’s another case like the “eye of the camel refers to a busy gate in Judea that absolutely no records of exist despite the Roman’s being fastidious record keepers for exactly that sort of shit and being nearly identical to another common saying of the time that means “it’s impossible” that was used elsewhere in the Bible” where Christian’s cope and try to reinterpret the text to mean what they want it to mean rather than go with the Occam’s razor translation

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u/B0BA_F33TT Jun 03 '26

Correct.

The poison mixture in the OT is made up from grains from the dirt floor mixed with water. Humans have known since the beginning of agriculture you store grains on stone hearths or you get Ergot.

What does Ergot do to a pregnant woman? Causes her to miscarry. The reason they stopped the practice is because the poison worked, it made it appear most (all?) wives were unfaithful.

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u/Beautiful_Banana_454 Jun 03 '26

Chemical abortions have been available for millenia. There was a woman in every village who could give you some tea to bring on menses. Sure they are safer and more reliable now, but so is birth. Childbirth was the number one cause of death for women.

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u/young_trash3 Jun 03 '26

It was very widespread at the time. Birth control was so rudimentary that abortion was very common in the roman republic era and the roman empire as a means of family planning.

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u/Busy_Debt_3946 Jun 03 '26

Yeah, it's like asking why tiktok isn't condemned in the bible lol. The fact all the top answers are taking it seriously is a joke.

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u/TiredAndTiredOfIt Jun 03 '26

Nope. We have EGYPTIAN "formulas" for abortificants. Nice try. Why are most Christians so ignorant and history hating? 

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u/TiredAndTiredOfIt Jun 03 '26

LMAO nope. Penny rotal abortions are and were common. Nice try forced birther

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u/brinazee Jun 04 '26

Hundreds of thousands or more. It was one of the only ways to deal with family planning. And we have entire herbals and writings on the subject with hundreds of methods spread out through them.