This just in, the Bible says NOTHING about abortion.

Courtesy of Alternet:  

The Bible says nothing whatsoever about abortion. It never mentions the subject, not once, neither in the Old Testament nor the New. This isn't because abortion was unknown in the ancient world. Much to the contrary, the ancient Greeks and Romans were well-acquainted with the idea. Surviving writings from these cultures recommend the use of herbs like pennyroyal, silphium and hellebore to induce abortion; others advise vigorous physical activity to cause a miscarriage, and some even discuss surgical methods. 

It's impossible to imagine that no Jewish or Christian woman in the ancient world ever had to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. Thus, it's reasonable to conclude that the Bible's authors never mention abortion because they weren't especially concerned about it. This often forces modern Christian anti-choicers to resort to laughable rationalizations like, "It was so unthinkable that an Israelite woman should desire an abortion that there was no need to mention this offense in the criminal code." (This, in a book whose authors thought it worthwhile to set down the punishment for having a threesome with your wife and mother-in-law.) 

There are later Christian writings that explicitly mention and forbid abortion, such as the Didache. But none of these documents made it into the canon of the Bible, which must be frustrating for modern anti-choicers who'd love to have a "clobber verse" they can throw at women seeking to exercise control over their own bodies. 

Instead, religious-right activists are forced to engage in creative reinterpretation of vague biblical passages, trying to wring out something they can use to "prove" God is in favor of mandatory childbearing. One of the common ones is Jeremiah 1:4-5, which they claim as a divine endorsement of fetal personhood: 

The word of the Lord came to me, saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." 

The most obvious problem with this, besides the fact that it says nothing specific about abortion, is that it's not a general statement about all of humanity; it's a special predestination intended only for the prophet Jeremiah. What's more, from an anti-choice standpoint, it says too much: it says that God knew Jeremiah not just while he was in the womb, but before forming him in the womb. Perhaps the pro-life slogan should be, "Life begins before conception"? 

Another that's often cited is Psalms 139: 

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb... My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth."

This is a truism in the Judeo-Christian worldview, since in that belief system, by definition, God creates everything. A verse saying that he created one particular thing, therefore, doesn't establish the moral status of that thing. Presumably, in the same poetic sense that this passage puts it, it's equally true from a biblical standpoint that God "creates the inmost being" of other animals and "knits them together" in the womb, but Christians have never considered that an argument for veganism. 

This handful of vague verses constitutes the sum total of the anti-choice arsenal, even in the most searchingly creative scheme of interpretation.

The article goes on to point out that rather than venerating the life of the unborn, there are several passages in the Bible, in Genesis, Exodus, and the Book of Numbers specifically which target the fetus for death.

The facts are that the so called "pro-life" movement has ALWAYS been focused more on politics than on saving the life of any potential babies. After all if these people were so concerned with supporting human life they would be heralding programs like Head Start, WIC, increasing the minimum wage, and promoting access to birth control so that a family can manage the number of mouths they have to feed more effectively.

But they don't.

It might be of interest for these zealots to recognize that this movement is relatively new, especially considering how long that Christianity has been around, and that as late as 1974 the Southern Baptists were called upon "to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother."

And that is wasn't until  1980 that conservative Protestant leaders became vocal in their opposition to legalized abortion.

What changed? Well what changed is that in 1960 the Pill was invented giving women control over when and with whom they would have a child, and in  1973 Roe vs Wade was passed which said that even if women DID become pregnant they were no longer required to give birth.

Those changes terrified traditional thinking men who had been raised to expect that women were second class citizens who required a man to support them, protect them, and give their life meaning.

When women became independent, men became insecure.

So how best to discourage that independence? By taking away the thing that empowers women the most control over their ability to reproduce.

The pro-life movement has never been about protecting life. The pro-life movement has been about controlling life. Specifically the lives of women.