Bowen Ward quotes two anti-abortion books in his essay on the personhood of the fetus: John T. Noonan (1970) said: "The Old Testament has nothing to say on abortion." John Connery (1977) said: "If anyone expects to find an explicit condemnation of abortion in the New Testament, he will be disappointed.

The silence of the New Testament regarding abortion surpasses even that of the

Old Testament." Ward found this silence difficult to understand, because abortion was widely practiced during New Testament era in the Middle East. The

Assyrians had a law concerning self-induced abortions as far back as the 12th century BC. On the other hand, there are some Biblical passa

The passage implies that a person can have many children and a long life; but if he is not motivated by love and goodness, and if he is not properly buried, then it would have been better if he had been born dead. The suggestion here is that a terminated pregnancy (one that does not produce a live birth) is better than a pregnancy that produced a life that is empty and miserable. In closing, I would also remind the original author that the United States Supreme Court ruled on abortion in the Roe v. Wade case of 1973. This law left the decision to abort a pregnancy, during the first trimester, up to the woman involved and her physician. That decision marked an important turning point in public health policy. It made it possible for women to get safe, legal abortions from well-trained medical practitioners and therefore led to dramatic decreases in pregnancy-related injury and death.

Following this reasoning, a newborn becomes human after it starts breathing; a fetus is only potentially human; an abortion would not terminate a human life.

ges that might be interpreted as referring to the worth of a fetus. But even these suggest that a fetus carried less value than human life. Here are samples of passages that I have found that p

Some topics in this essay:
HW Wolff, Abortion Bible, East Assyrians, Roe Wade, God Adam's, John Connery, Hebrew Scriptures, Testament Ward, Bowen Ward, John Noonan, original author, five shekels, month age, living soul, human life,