They're actually fine with children dying because it means they get to go to heaven early, plus the adversity it causes their loved ones is beneficial. I'm serious, they told me this when I asked as a kid.
Better question is why wouldn't parents immediately sacrifice their newborns on the Blood Altar? I can only go to hell once but I could sire many children and give them all a guaranteed ticket to heaven. Actually, I could even take a shortcut and blow up a maternity.
... now that I think abkjt it, I guess some fundamentalist lunatics have probably already done it, and now I'm sad.
No it’s not- scripture says the soul enters at its first breath. Their arguments are nonsensical because they can’t really argue the real reasons.
They’re opposed to abortion because they want people- specifically the poors, and specifically the black poors- to have to have that kid. Unplanned/unwanted kids provide a huge economic strain on the family, and greatly reduce the ability of the other kids to succeed in life.
This means they’re more likely to continue a tradition of low wage blue collar jobs, or even better, get in on the school-to-prison pipe and provide more or less free labor for ages.
(Of course the other reason is the raging misogyny.)
It’s also the same reason why they’re so against social safety nets, universal health care and public education.
scripture says the soul enters at its first breath.
Do you remember where this is said? I grew up in a church and remember a lot of the rhetoric about how sacred life is and blah blah blah, but I don't specifically remember that part. I'd say knowing that scripture would help me convince people that their views are incorrect, but let's be real, these people don't want their minds changed.
loads of places, more or less. Keep in mind, it's the human soul ('made in his image'), that makes us 'special', compared to animals. christian doctrine, this distinction is what makes it acceptable to kill animals for food, etc. It's not murder because they have no soul. So the technicality of when life begins is different than the technicality of 'when is it murder'.
When 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, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
The punishment for causing a miscarriage is the more as taking the life of livestock, as seen in Exodus 22:1
If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.
which is why exodus 21 specifies if there is harm (to the mother), the punishment for murder is death.
It also is why it's specified that if others do it. If the husband, well... that's an entirely different matter. which, abortions... they even contain a recipe.... in numbers 5- but only if the husband wants.
The Torah notes a child who does not survive thirty days after birth does not get full funerary rites (a grim implication of infant mortality of the age).
Dan McClellan notes the current positions on the point of ensoulment come from Greek positions: Conception (Platonian?), Quickening (Aristotlean?) and birth (Epicurean? It's all Greek to me.) For most of Christian history, the quickening was the standard (about 22 weeks). The conception became popular after the 1970s when abortion access was made accessible and the controversy was used as a rallying point to unify Christians to conservatism as a voting bloc.