Sabbath 15/4/36/120

Dear Friends

It often comes up in question that abortion is condemned by the Bible on the grounds that it is murdering the child: How does one believe that Exodus 21:15 gives anyone permission for abortion? An innocent child in the womb does not hit/beat/abuse their parents.  The fact is that it has always been taught by the Churches of God and within Judaism that where a child threatens the life of the mother then that child must die.

Life begins when blood is formed as the blood is the life thereof.  Thus a child is classified as a living being shortly after conception when the cells divide enough to form blood.  If that child left alone will cause the death of the mother then under the law the child is to be taken to save the mother.

The Roman Catholic Church perverted this doctrine and made the child to live in preference to the life of the mother.  The mother was allowed to die, often in agony, and the child was taken.  This absurd false doctrine was used and the children were placed in orphanages and many were abused by the priests that ordered the mother to die under their false doctrine.  This false doctrine was taken into South America and written into the constitutions of some countries and many women have died as a result.

Recently the court of Human Rights of the Americas ruled that these constitution provisions violated the human rights of the mother.  It was thus decided that where a foetus threatened the life of the mother and had to be taken, it was taken in the case in question by caesarean. The foetus is only able to survive at a critical size and thus the foetus will die. In ectopic pregnancies the foetus is taken by medical procedure.

The doctrine that any child that threatens the life of the parent is as old as the law itself and is kept to this day in Judah and in the Churches of God and long before modern medicine. They have been taking children by caesareans for thousands of years, hence the name taken from Julius Caesar.

The Laws of God were kept by the entire Church for thousands of years including Christ. Christ condemned the Pharisees for their traditions which corrupted the law, not for the people keeping the law itself which he did. To assert otherwise is antinomianism.

The law carries with it the responsibility to make alive. The law has always been interpreted by the Sanhedrin and the church according to the texts. If the life of the child threatens the mother then it is to die. As life begins with the creation of the blood shortly after conception then the life of the child is able to threaten that of the parent and does so threaten mothers on a regular basis. It is the law of God that any child no matter of what age that threatens its parent is to die.

A woman is quite at liberty to die if her unborn child threatens her life but she also has a responsibility to ensure that her living family is also cared for and her husband is able to have other children. Such a decision is unwise and akin to suicide. The child usually will not survive either in these circumstances.

None of us should seek to control the minds of others and restrict the law of God. No woman in the Churches of God is to be made to feel guilty because they had to make such a dreadful decision.

For a proper understanding of the law, the matter is covered in the paper Law and the Sixth Commandment (No. 259). Look also at the issues of the healing doctrines that forced people to refuse treatment in a number of spurious issues.  This is doctrine in the Churches of God.

Wade Cox