There would be times when to interrupt one's pregnancy would not be the right thing to do. For example a wife could take it into her heart to spite her husband for some reason, and so deny him the son or daughter.
Or, a wife having had children by her first marriage, may be acting deviously toward her present husband in aborting her child to affect the allocation of assets in a will.
As an instance where a person committed something not in itself a crime, yet God was angry (Note; the brother had died) -
Gen 38:8-10
8 Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother." 9 But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also.
(from New International Version)
The spilling of the seed was not in itself wrong, but here the purpose behind it was wicked.
"Is abortion murder?"
Society has already made up it's mind that abortion is not murder. To borrow from our page "The Spirit In Man", --
"The whole world, probably from time immemorial, has already decided that this is the case. If a miscarriage, or still-birth, or some other interruption to pregnancy was considered the death of a human being, then there would be an endless stream of women going through the courts charged with manslaughter. The case against them would be along the lines that they smoked, or followed other habits of ill-health, and, being negligent contributed to the death of the child."
Our conclusion from "The Spirit In Man", and "The Spirit In Man References" was that the foetus does not become a human being until it takes its first breath. We saw that God does not consider the foetus to be a human life until that time.
Therefore abortion is not murder.
Emmenology
Emmenology is the study of the induction of delayed menstruation. Again defined in another place as: the study of menstruation and its disorders, particularly the study of, and therapy for, delayed menstruation.
According to the book by Geoffrey Davis, "Interception of Pregnancy. Post-conceptive Fertility Control - Emmenology Revisited" (1974), women were in control of their own pregnancy for thousands of years. It was the woman who decided whether she was going to bear a child or not. The subject was the domain of women, and the knowledge was passed on from generation to generation.
(An interesting scripture reference is the passage about the mandrakes in Genesis 30.14-16. Scholars are unable to accurately explain the use of these mandrakes, but they seemed to be related to fertility in some way. Obviously though, they had nothing to do with interception of pregnancy.)
He (Geoffrey Davis) defines, on page viii, 'interception of pregnancy' to be: the return of women to a non-pregnant state at any stage from fertilisation prior to the appearance of a formed foetus by using one of a variety of simple techniques currently available. Some of these have a long and honourable history.
Geoffrey Davis's specialty in medicine was fertility control. He writes on page x,
"The very practical objective of both [procedures] is to provide absolute assurance to the woman involved that she will remain 'non-pregnant'. If the suspicion of accidental conception exists, women who seek help may not want it confirmed; they may want their fears allayed. Interception of pregnancy is a means of guaranteeing that they are not pregnant.
The treatment is intimate and private, simple, rapid and safe, and need be used only as and when required. ....."
Enough said about emmenology. It is not our area of expertise. We are not medical people, nor are we women, and do not claim to have an intimate knowledge of these things. Suffice it to say that for thousands of years it seems, and for the vast majority, interception of pregnancy was a perfectly natural and accepted practice. It was not considered criminal or sinful, and carried no stigma.
Warning
The reader is encouraged most strongly to study the topics on these pages for himself, and, based on the Word of God to draw his own conclusions. God did not create you to do what we say.
We put down what we believe to be some basic truths on abortion, but we are not responsible for what our readers actually do with that knowledge.
We fervently hope we have been of service to you.
updated 30aug06