While the traditional Christian teaching opposing abortion has been relatively unanimous until the twentieth century, it has been claimed in more recent decades that certain Biblical passages support the view that the fetus, or unborn child, has a lesser moral status than a born child, in a way that might support the permissibility of abortion. In this paper, I address the foremost three texts used to argue this point: Genesis 2:7; Exodus 21:22–25; and Numbers 5:11–31. I argue that interpreting the former in the literal way necessary to support abortion leads to untenable moral and exegetical conclusions, indeed straightforwardly contradicting other Biblical texts. I then demonstrate that the most plausible readings of the other passages—on textual and contextual grounds—do not support a lesser moral status, one of the passages plausibly even supporting full moral status, for the unborn child.

中文翻译：

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为什么堕胎的圣经论点失败

虽然反对堕胎的传统基督教教义在二十世纪之前一直相对一致，但近几十年来有人声称，某些圣经段落支持这样的观点，即胎儿或未出生的孩子的道德地位低于出生的孩子，在一种可能支持允许堕胎的方式。在本文中，我将讨论用于论证这一点的最重要的三个文本：创世记 2：7；出埃及记 21:22-25；和民数记 5:11–31。我认为，以支持堕胎所必需的字面方式解释前者会导致站不住脚的道德和解释结论，实际上直接与其他圣经文本相矛盾。然后，我证明其他段落的最合理的解读——基于文本和上下文——不支持较低的道德地位，