So there is a terrible dilemma to an unwanted pregnancy.

If a fetus is a full human life, why in the old testament is the penalty for killing a fetus a monetary fine rather than a capital penalty which should be expected for murder Mujus? Care to explain?

It's a dilemma that is none of your business.

"The mother's body is the life-support system for the fetus"

Forcing a woman to be human life support against her will is the worst kind of violation of one's autonomy. From this you get laws against women falling down stairs and laws against any kind of miscarriage (which are not a joke, they've been implemented). I wouldn't be surprised if pro-lifers start advocating total state control of a woman's diet & menstrual cycle. The tentacles of anti-abortionism are extensive, indeed. Nobody can say they're for "limited government" who believes they should control a woman's medical decisions about her own body involving issues of her own health.

Woman can do whatever they want with their own bodies. Unborn children are not part of the woman's body. Do some DNA testing on that if you like.

Already pointed that out, they'll just claim it's "misinterpreted". Even though the Catholic bible, which would be the most anti-abortion one would think, clearly says "miscarriage" and not "premature birth".

"Unborn children are not part of the woman's body."

Where do they reside, pray tell? Where do they sleep, eat, breathe? Are they at the Holiday Inn? Where do they come out of when they're born? Do they come from a stork?

This thread asks for theological grounds, not scientific or logical views.

On what theological grounds can you say a fetus is a person? There are none.

misinterpereted. HA! Rabbis, who speak the language the torah is written in, "interpreted" it exactly that way 2000 years ago, how the fuck are they interpreting it better than the rabbis.

Hilarious

its obviously those wily rabbis deliberately misinterpreting it for political reasons BEFORE THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.

The theological reasons have already been clearly stated.

Putin: yes, the children are within the mother, connected to the mother, sustained by the mother, but that does not change the fact that they are not part of the mother. The children are just that, children.

People have a choice already. They can choose not to procreate if they don't want a baby.

I feel bad for you Putin. I've read this whole thread and you sound bitter and misguided. You can't make a logical argument and you can't seem to understand others' arguments.

When in doubt, declare your opponent to be illogical and lacking in reading comprehension. Especially important is to not provide a single example of said deficiencies. Make sure you declare victory. Especially if you have contributed little to nothing regarding the discussion. Also insert some random attacks on your opponent's
personality, perhaps add some psycho-evaluation.

Anything is better than actually engaging the discussion or addressing the arguments.

"but that does not change the fact that they are not part of the mother. "

A distinction without a difference. The fetus is contained within the woman's body. Therefore you have no authority whatsoever to dictate what the woman does regarding her own health and medical decisions regarding pregnancy. Women are not human incubators with no autonomy. They are entitled to defend themselves from anything that may harm its health and well-being, including things which reside inside of it.

A zygote is not a child. A month old fetus is not a child. A three month old fetus is not a child. It's a potential child.

" They can choose not to procreate if they don't want a baby."

I'm waiting for pro-life men to line up for their vasectomies.

"Woman can do whatever they want with their own bodies. Unborn children are not part of the woman's body. Do some DNA testing on that if you like." - By that logic the vast majority of the cells in your body are not part of your body. Biologically that argument doesn't fly.

"I feel bad for you Putin. I've read this whole thread and you sound bitter and misguided. You can't make a logical argument and you can't seem to understand others' arguments." - I have to say Putin gets that sort of sanctimonious "You never understand what I'm saying as well as I understand what you're saying." bullshit a lot. You know what guys? His reading comprehension is as good as anyone else in these forums. Just because someone doesn't accept every specious argument you make that we've all already heard 100 times doesn't mean they don't understand you. It just means they're sticking to their guns, and rightly so. So enough with this "Oh I feel sorry for you because you don't understand differing viewpoints" bullshit. Everyone can understand the words you are saying. It's just the words you are saying are wrong.

I've engaged on this site plenty of times. This is not the first abortion thread. I've stated my views and defended them. I've dismantled pitiable arguments like yours.

Why don't you answer regarding the child's DNA differing from the mother's? It is because you can't answer. You know it to be true.

The worst part is when you try to quote scripture or try to attack different translations. It's pathetic and I feel embarrassed for you. You don't even realize you're making arguments that not even liberal theologians would make...

Shut up mafialligator. Nobody cares what you have to say. There, was that unsanctimonious enough for you? :P

"The biggest theological grounds for arguing for a soul in utero is when John the Baptist responds to the Holy Spirit and "leaps" inside his mother's womb when Mary tells Elizabeth she is pregnant with the Christ-child.

That plus the scripture "before I formed you in the womb I knew you" would imply that god imbues us with something recognizable before birth, soul or personality...hard to say."

Blowing up your first argument- The holy spirit is not a human, and god said to moses that a fetus was not human, so therefore this does nothing to challenge that, the holy spirit (not a human soul) supposedly entered the womb. Not convincing at all.

Blowing up the second- It says god knew you before he formed us in the womb. And... God knows everything, and this passage obviously shows that he knows us even before we are conceived. It says we are formed in the womb, no one would argue that, however the logical leap that that refers to a soul or a personality is a considerable one. I don't believe anyone disagrees that we are formed in the womb.

shoddy shoddy evidence if i may say so myself. Shoddy evidence that is also contradicted by earlier bible verses.

You don't even know what you're saying santaclausdimwits. I'm tired of arrogant people who have spent next to no time studying scripture claiming that they know anything about it. It's not even worth trying to explain to you.

woah i read that wrong, wtf is this stuff about john the babtist jumping into his own mothers womb

arrogant people like you

Children are entitled to life even when they are contained within someone else. They have a right to be protected from those who would senselessly and cruelly burn them with saline or cut them into pieces, or vacuum their brains out through a tube. Putin, it sickens me that there are people who think that is okay.

Here is what I know.

1. Judaism, the religion yours formed from, and the book you selectively chose from to damn homosexuals and the like, CLEARLY differentiates a human life from a fetus life

2. Jewish Rabbis at the time of Jesus interpreted these passages to allow terminations of pregnancies in certain situations

3. Jewish Rabbis at the time of jesus knew hebrew and aramaic about 100 times better than whoever say the passage is misinterpreted and they weren't tainted by this modern political debate

4. The fact that Christians see the fetus as a human MUST have ammounted to a change of doctrine at the birth of Jesus, but no such change of doctrine is espoused upon unlike similar changes such as kashrut and the sabbath.

Who exactly is ignorant of their scripture?

"I've engaged on this site plenty of times. This is not the first abortion thread. I've stated my views and defended them. I've dismantled pitiable arguments like yours."

You're just another one of a long line of smug rightwing blowhards who always thinks he is self-evidently correct and never thinks he has to justify himself.

"Why don't you answer regarding the child's DNA differing from the mother's? It is because you can't answer. You know it to be true."

It's irrelevant. The potential child is contained within a woman's body. Not yours. A woman doesn't forfeit control over her own body and concern for her own well being just because something is living inside of it. You didn't address a damn thing and want me to chase after irrelevancies that don't matter.

"The worst part is when you try to quote scripture or try to attack different translations. It's pathetic and I feel embarrassed for you. You don't even realize you're making arguments that not even liberal theologians would make..."

Blah, blah, blah, right. You're so much smarter than us all but we're the arrogant ones. I quoted verbatim from the Revised Standard Bible, that translation is the most common translation of that verse.

Keep on declaring victory Jacob. Why bother posting in this thread if we're all so self-evidently wrong and you're not going to bother explaining why? Go find something more productive to do with your great wit, charm, and intelligence.

"Shut up mafialligator. Nobody cares what you have to say. There, was that unsanctimonious enough for you? :P" - Yes, and yet what it lacked in sanctimoniousness it made up for in vapidity. Congratulations.

"Children are entitled to life even when they are contained within someone else." [citation needed] THIS IS A BELIEF. By just stating this point as though it's a fact you're begging the question. You're just presupposing the answer to the question we're discussing. "Because I've decided a fetus is a person it's wrong to kill it. Therefore killing a fetus is wrong." Well thanks, but just because you've arrived at that conclusion somehow doesn't mean the rest of us did. In what sense in a fetus a person? How so. That is the point you need to argue.

"Putin, it sickens me that there are people who think that is okay."

It sickens me that people like you are passing laws which inflict penalties on women for "criminal miscarriages" or accidentally falling down stairs. It sickens me that people like you oppose even the morning after pill or believe a day old zygote is more important than the health and privacy of fully developed, born, and living adult women.

I'd believe your whining about "children" if you people ever showed any concern for living children and the mothers who care for them, instead of demonizing them as lazy welfare moms to rip off the system. Or cared about adoptee rights instead of using us as your poster children to advance to anti-women agenda. Or cared at all about investing in pre-natal care and clinics instead of shutting them down.

No, you're just a bunch of misogynists who use pre-fully formed human forms as a bludgeon against female emancipation. The same cretins who find no problem carpet bombing the rest of the world into ashes want to make us believe that they have such tenderness for the most rudimentary forms of human "life".

Jacob. Let's say, hypothetically that you have a tapeworm in your intestines. Now, you want to go to the doctor to get a prescription for niclosamide to kill the tapeworm and get rid of it, so you can stop feeling nauseous and so on and so forth. On your way into the doctor a vegan stops you and says "You can't kill that tapeworm, it's a living thing, you have no right to get it out of your body. If you didn't want a tapeworm living inside you, you shouldn't have eaten contaminated meat." Does this vegan have any right to try and stop you making medical choices about your own body?

Now you'll say that this analogy isn't good, because the tapeworm doesn't have a soul, but the fetus does. Obviously my hypothetical vegan would disagree. That's just a personal belief you will say, but then, why is your personal belief here more important than his? Why do you get to impose this view on others through legal mechanisms while my hypothetical vegan does not? (For the record no real vegan would ever say that. Obviously they wouldn't object in the slightest to you getting rid of a tapeworm, and would then point out that if you didn't eat meat you'd never have ended up with one in the first place.)

Oh please, you're full of hatred and bigotry. You claim to be open-minded but you just have a political axe to grind. Keep working yourselves up into a fervor - everyone can see right through it.

Goodnight, I'm going to bed. I'm going to sleep like a baby,or do I have to say fetus to appease you nutjobs?

it is far from settled that a fetus has a soul