Sometimes I am challenged by pro-choice people contending that "You say 'God' is against abortion, well, if he exists, and if he is against it, how come it doesn't say so in the Bible?"

I always found that strange that they bring up God and faith first. I never do, unless I know they're faith-filled people to begin with. I guess that's what many have been led to expect of anyone who is against abortion, both by the media and by either their personal experience with some Christians and Catholics or others' experiences about which they've read and/or heard.

I also find it odd that they challenge me to "prove" that "God said" he was against abortion, firstly because they don't believe he exists, and secondly by using a book that they don't believe contains God's "words" in the first place.

I thought I'd take the near-occasion of the 33rd Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton Supreme Court decisions (Jan. 23) to put my answer out on this web, just for reference's sake. Where the quote was long, I highlighted the pertinent passage.

Please don't get me wrong, folks, I'm not turning this into a "Christian" or proselytizing blog (whatever any of that means).

Nor into a Jewish blog, for that matter...

But all Hebrew, Protestant and Roman Catholic Bibles have these quotes (a partial list, to be sure) which those practicing these faiths acknowledge as being "from God." First I'll start with those that show God forgives those who have had abortions:

"For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us." ~ Psalm 103:11-12

"He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy." ~ Proverbs 28:13

"I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins." ~ Isaiah 43:25

"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." ~ Isaiah 55:7

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." ~ Ephesians 1:7

"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." ~ 1 John 1:9

Here are the others:

"Shall I bring a mother to the point of birth, and yet not let her child be born? says the Lord. Or shall I allow her to conceive yet close her womb? says your God." ~ Isaiah 66:9

"Listen to me, all of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived." ~ Isaiah 46:3

"My chosen ones shall long enjoy the product of their hands. They shall not work in vain, nor beget children for sudden destruction." ~ Isaiah 65:22-23

"The LORD called me from birth, from my mother's womb he gave me my name." ~ Isaiah 49:1

"This day I call heaven and earth as witness against you that I have set before you life and death…Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." ~ Deuteronomy 30:19-20a

"For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am awesomely and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 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, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. ~ Psalm 139:13-16

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born I set you apart." ~ Jeremiah 1:5:

"This is what the Lord says, He who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you…'Remember these things, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I have made you, I will not forget you. I am your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb. I am the Lord, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.'" ~ Isaiah 44:2A, 22, 24

"Yet You brought me out of the womb; You made me trust in You even then…From my mother’s womb, You have been my God." ~ Psalm 22:9-10

"The Lord also brings a charge against Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways; according to his deeds He will recompense him. He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and in his strength he struggled with God." ~ Hosea 12:2-3

"For he will be great in the sight of the Lord. . . . He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb." ~ Luke 1:15

"Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?" ~ Job 31:15

"Rescue those being led away to death...If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this?' does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He Who guards your life know it?" ~ Proverbs 24:11-12

"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy…" ~ Psalm 82:3-4

Certainly these last two passages led the well-intentioned to "rescue" only the babies. But now we know, don't we, that sometimes the weak, the fatherless, the needy, the poor, the oppressed, and those who die, are the women, and often the men, too, not just the children.

This post does not contain a complete list. I could list the many more I have, but if someone still isn't "getting it" by now, they probably never will.

Lastly, there are these two more, from the New Testament (thus the Protestant and Roman Catholic Bibles only):

"For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight." ~ St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians 1:4

"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man He made every nation of man, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, 'We are His offspring.' Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think the divine being is like gold or silver or stone ~ an image made by man's design and skill." ~ Acts of the Apostles, 17:24-29