By John Stonestreet and Timothy D Padgett<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In February, James Talarico,\u00a0a U.S. Senate candidate\u00a0from Texas, claimed that the biblical story of the Annunciation from the Gospel of Luke supports his proabortion position.\u00a0On the Joe Rogan\u00a0podcast, Talarico asserted that because the angel sought Mary\u2019s consent, a woman has a right to choose her own procreative destiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most obvious flaw with this assertion is that the angel did not ask Mary\u2019s permission. In fact, the angel of the Lord said<\/a>, \u201cAnd behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus<\/a>.\u201d Mary submits to accept God\u2019s will, but the only person with questions in that conversation was Mary. The angel declared what was going to happen. Mary was humbled and accepted it as the calling on her life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The deeper flaw in this and most other proabortion arguments is the assumption that whatever is in the womb is not a human life worth protecting. The inherent value of life in the womb\u2014as evident throughout Scripture from Psalms<\/a> to Jeremiah<\/a> to Isaiah<\/a> to Job<\/a> to Joshua<\/a>\u2013is something Christians have insisted upon since the earliest days of the Church. To deny that theological reality, as Talarico did, is also to commit a Christological heresy<\/a>. In the same chapter in Luke<\/a>, Elizabeth declared that her baby, who was John the Baptist<\/a>, leapt in her womb when he heard the voice of \u201cthe mother of her Lord.\u201d In other words, both John in the womb and Elizabeth out of the womb sensed that the Lord was present though still in His mother\u2019s womb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Other passages of Scripture that are wrongly used to argue for abortion include Exodus 21<\/a>. In the middle of several laws covering violent crimes, the text reads, \u201cWhen men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined.\u201d If there is harm, the passage continues, then there is a harsh penalty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pro-abortionists argue in this passage that only harm to the woman matters and the child is not as valuable. However, the more reasonable interpretation is if,because of a fight, a woman goes into premature labor and the baby lives, then \u201cthere is no harm.\u201d Thus, there\u2019s a financial penalty. If the baby dies or is injured\u2014\u201cif there is harm\u201d\u2014the attacker should face punishment up to death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another example is Numbers 5<\/a>. In a list of rules, Moses provided a test for a husband\u2019s claim of his wife\u2019s unfaithfulness. The accused woman was to take an oath of innocence and drink a mix of water and dirt from the tabernacle floor. If innocent, nothing would happen. If guilty, then, among other things, she would become infertile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a strange passage, and theologians differ on how best to understand it. Some suggest it is a psycho-somatic test to root out a woman\u2019s guilty conscience. Others think it a sneaky way for a defenseless woman to escape her husband\u2019s jealousy. Pro-abortionists assert that it is an example of an abortion ordered by God\u2019s law. For that to be the case, however, the punishment would involve the death of a baby. However, the curse reference here is not the ending of a current pregnancy but the prevention of future ones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These etymological gymnastics attempts aside, the Bible is consistent. Human life is sacred. In the womb, babies are valued, purposed, and yes, human. Throughout the biblical text, including war and sacrifice as in Leviticus<\/a>, 2 Kings<\/a>, or Jeremiah<\/a>, the worst crimes and horrors someone can commit are to murder children. In no way does God\u2019s Word dismiss, much less justify, the slaughter of the innocent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Contrary to Talarico\u2019s claim, the message of Annunciation Day is not that life and death is left to our<\/em> choice. Rather, it is in God\u2019s hands. Even in the womb of His mother, Jesus Christ was the Messiah, fully God and fully human. Even in the womb of our mothers, we are fully human, in God\u2019s image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By John Stonestreet and Timothy D Padgett In February, James Talarico,\u00a0a U.S. Senate candidate\u00a0from Texas, claimed that the biblical story of the Annunciation from the Gospel of Luke supports his proabortion position.\u00a0On the Joe Rogan\u00a0podcast, Talarico asserted that because the angel sought Mary\u2019s consent, a woman has a right to choose her own procreative destiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[119,110,200,255,179],"coauthors":[475],"class_list":{"0":"post-11422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-faith","8":"tag-bible","9":"tag-christianity","10":"tag-god","11":"tag-opinion","12":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11424,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11422\/revisions\/11424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11422"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=11422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}