So I really want to talk about that debate, but first I want to iron out one more thing on the topic of #EndAbortionNow. This angle on the topic was brought to my attention by my lovely and excellent wife, Chowon.
My objection to #EndAbortionNow, on the 14th of this month, was that they are attempting to conform the government to Biblical Law by advocating an incremental change to the government as a whole, whereas they decry incremental changes in the area of abortion on the grounds that abortion is opposed to Biblical Law. To be clear, I am of the opinion that #EndAbortionNow is the best and most consistent anti-abortion movement to date. I recognize that in their general discourse they do advocate "a return to Biblical standards" in America, they are solid theonomists, my brothers and sisters in Christ for which I have the utmost respect and love, and I am 100% in agreement with the idea that abortion should be stopped immediately. I would not by any means tell them to stop what they're doing, but I want to encourage them to perhaps apply their worldview more thoroughly, if not more consistently, in the way they go about attempting to change politics and law.
In this blog, I want to take a closer look at the implications of this distinction, between advocating change to individual laws and advocating a change to the entire system. I'm picking on #EndAbortionNow because I know that they are theonomists, and I honestly don't think there are very many of us out there, so if anyone might be able to sympathize with me, then I think it's them.
The top 5 reasons for wanting an abortion, according to a few studies (here's a website), were:
1. Unready
2. Can't afford a baby
3. Done having children
4. Don't want to be a single parent
5. Not mature enough to be a parent
-- and for the record, the top 3 outweigh all others by a significant percent.
I want to suggest the following:
A. These are legitimate reasons for a newly pregnant woman to be distressed about her circumstance, (although not legitimate reasons to murder), and they need to be addressed
B. Biblical law addresses and resolves these issues directly, and in good ways
C. American law does not provide any good resolution for these issues
After some discussion of those points, I will conclude that if abortion is made illegal right now without also immediately conforming the rest of the government to Biblical law, then both the mother and the father will be made vulnerable to cascading legal injustices.
Alright, so first let's talk a little about the way that U.S. law handles the situation, and what injustices would take place if abortion were made immediately illegal without a complete overhaul of the government. To save space, because I tend to write long blogs, I'm going to just give one example. I think this example categorically touches "reasons" 1, 2, 4, and 5. I think the situation in this example is not too uncommon to be used in argument.
I want to take a look at the case where a young unmarried person becomes pregnant, and the boyfriend refuses or is unable to marry or provide, and perhaps threatens to abandon her on account of the baby. Many (most?) states require the father to provide child support if the baby is born, and if he is unable to pay then he may be put in jail, or he may be simply commanded to make the payments in the future, or on a certain schedule. Jail itself is an unjust penalty, not beneficial for the inmate who is surrounded by other criminals for an extended time, expensive for the taxpayers who feed him, and not mentioned as a penal sanction in any part of Biblical Law. Furthermore, if he is put in jail or never pays child support, then the woman receives nothing from him. The compulsion for men to pay child support is weak, and the penalty if he doesn't is counterproductive. As it would stand, in the case where a new mother, identifying that the man will seek to abandon her, decides to pursue abortion illegally, but without the man pressuring her to do so directly, she alone would be penalized. It's unjust to penalize only the mom, and to so weakly compel the father to provide, because the man must be required to take responsibility for his role in producing the child. The role of justice is to make the victim whole again, and to penalize the criminal in a way that restores the land and deters other would-be criminals. In short, U.S. Law minus legal abortion does not justly hold the father accountable for his role in the production of this new life, it doesn't make the woman whole again, and it doesn't deter other would-be unsupportive fathers. But this point is difficult to really demonstrate without comparing it against the Biblical standard.
Let's look at the way that the Bible addresses the issue.
I have to start by addressing the most obvious thing, (don't give up and stop reading when I say) abstinence. If you're not ready to have kids, even by accident, the Bible makes it pretty clear that you shouldn't be having sex (do I need to cite verses for this?), and if you are overcome by physical passions, then you should get married (1 Cor 7:9), and if you're married, then you shouldn't be holding back (1 Cor 7:5, Mal 2:15). There's no such thing as consequence-free sex.
Now let's get into what I really wanted to talk about: holding the father accountable in a just way, and in a way which protects the woman and ensures that she and the baby will be provided for.
In scripture, if two consenting unmarried people have sex, then they are required to get married, except if the woman's father forbids it. Biblical marriage involves the father of the bride giving a dowry to the newly married couple (Gen 24:53, 1 Kings 9:16, Matt 28:18), and the husband of the bride giving a bride price to his new father-in-law (Gen 31, 24:12, 1 Sam 18:25, Ex 22:16-17)[*see note at bottom about "bride price"]. After the marriage, the woman has "marital rights", including food, clothing, money, and self-sacrificing love, which the husband must provide for her (Ephesians 5:25-33, Exodus 21:10). If the husband fails to provide for her, she is allowed to divorce him (Exodus 21:11 demonstrates this for the case of a wife who was taken while she was a slave; if she divorces, then her debts are forgiven as part of the divorce). There is no legal requirement for a father to give a dowry, but the legal requirement for a bride price is expressed in several passages. Women in the Bible are legal co-owners of the family property (Numbers 27, Proverbs 31). If they divorce, she may take half of of his assets with her.
If an unmarried woman becomes pregnant by consensual intercourse, then she and the man are required to get married, and he is required to provide for her per the laws above. If the father of the bride refuses to give his daughter to the man, then the man still has to pay the bride price. (Exodus 22:16-17)
If she is betrothed, and is raped, then the rapist gets the death penalty (Deut 22:25). If she is not betrothed, and is raped, then the rapist is legally bound to her family. He has to pay her parents the bride price, and then he has to pay a fine of 50 shekels of silver** to the father, he has to marry her, and the man cannot ever initiate a divorce (Deut 22:28-29). The father may refuse to give his daughter to the man, as he is capable of negating any oath taken by members of his family until they are given away by him in marriage (Ex 22:16-17, Numbers 30). In this marriage, as stated above, the father of the bride is not required to give a dowry, and the wife is not restricted from initiating divorce. If she chooses to divorce him, as stated above, she will take a portion of his assets with her in addition to what he already lost in the bride price and the fine. If he is unable to pay the bride price and the fine, in accordance with the rules about failure to pay off debts, he becomes a slave to the father of the bride at a state-defined wage until the fine is paid off.
Now, I know that atheists like to portray these laws by paraphrasing them as "you must marry your rapist", but if you look at the way this practically works out, the man is put at the mercy of the bride's family. Not to mention, the way atheists summarize this is just plain inaccurate, because the father can refuse to let her marry him and she can initiate a divorce. Let's do a quick comparison:
In America, a rapist is put in jail for a period of time. For the entirety of his sentence, the bride and her family pay for his food, bedding, and clothing with their taxes. He is surrounded by other criminals for a few years, and then he returns to society a hardened man who has difficulty finding employment. The bride's family is harmed by the offense, and then they are forced to pay again for it in taxes, and society doesn't benefit from his time in jail. Under Biblical law, the rapist has to pay the bride's family a bride price, plus 3 years wages, plus half of his remaining assets, and if he can't afford it immediately then he pays it off by becoming the slave of the bride's father. Which one gives back to the bride's family? Which one is more burdensome on society?
So, to bring this back around, my point is that the man has certain responsibilities which he must justly perform for any woman who he has sex with. To simply demand that a woman should not be legally allowed to murder her children without also demanding that a man must be legally required to take responsibility for his actions in the matter, is neglectful to the woman and her family. I'm completely in favor of saving the baby, and justice has to be done fully, not in part.
But here's the thing. Suppose we make abortion illegal and we also enact all the Biblical the laws mentioned above in this blog. In that case, we would still be exposing people to further injustice for lack of other intertwined Biblical Laws which I haven't even mentioned here! (For example, imagine implementing slavery as a penalty without first defining the parameters around it, such as the rules limiting physical punishment on slaves, the rules about how slaves can't be kept for more than 7 years, and the rules about how slaves can't be people who were kidnapped and sold, and how the kidnapper and any person found in possession of the victim are given the death penalty.) God doesn't deal in partial packages. If you change gravity a little bit, then everything falls apart. Justice, like all the rest of God's reality, is a complete package. If you change justice on one point, then it is no longer justice (James 2:10).
So, to conclude, it's not acceptable to correct the U.S. law on just one point, even though it is a very important point. The only way to approach this is to advocate the complete removal and replacement of all U.S. laws with Biblical laws.
---------------
Notes:
*The practice of paying a bride price does not imply or necessitate any objectification of the woman. Nowhere in the Bible is there any indication that women are to be seen as a commodity. In fact, a virtuous woman is said to be priceless (Proverbs 31:10); the language used to describe her parallels the language used to describe Wisdom itself (Proverbs 3:15, Job 28:15-17). Instead, the bride-price fulfills the responsibility of the bride to care for her parents on her behalf, and reimburses (in part or full) the dowry. A careless and uninformed atheist may attempt to rebut this point by quoting Leviticus 27, which describes the price to buy back people who have been dedicated to God, and which effectively penalizes men more than women for otherwise neglecting their responsibilities toward God.
**The fine in this case was 50 shekels, which is about 575 grams of silver according to my footnotes. The value of a shekel varied significantly over time and location, but to give us an idea we can look at the value of a denarius, which was 4.5 grams of silver. From what information I can find, 1 denarius would cover 10 days worth of food for a soldier, and was reasonably close to 2 days pay. Applying this back, the bride price required in this case can be said to have been just over 3 years wages.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
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