What's infuriating is how so many Evangelicals felt they had to vote for Trump due to abortion. When it's pointed out that the Bible doesn't mention abortion, you are pointed to the Apocrypha. Okay, supposing that is the rejoinder... still, it leaves the fact that out of 750,000 words inspired by God, he felt not the need to mention 'abortion' a single time, so what is God's priority on it? Does anyone really think that when God was writing/inspiring the Bible, he thought to himself, "Well, I've reached 750,000 words, and I really want to include a prohibition on abortion, but one more verse would just be too long." And that ignores things like the fact that the Biblical punishment for causing a miscarriage is explicitly less than homicide, which would go against the pro-life mantra that a full person is formed at conception.
Deeds causing death ("smiting") are generally more blatant (blunt-object trauma, beatings, stabbing, strangling, suffocating, or forcing a fall) and, before guns and poisons, required more effort than was causing a miscarriage. There were plenty of ways in which miscarriages happened, many happening naturally and many the result of accidents that could easily happen.
Interesting point. The Pope is not simply a leading cleric; he is also a politician. Abortion at any stage prevents a birth. But when does the pre-born become human?
It's obvious that the pre-born is human in genetics from conception. No matter how deformed a pre-born may be (even anencephalitic) it has undeniably human genetic material. It can never become a chimpanzee, let alone a jellyfish. But it clearly goes through stages that in no way seem human.
(OK, genetic material is not enough to make something human. An amputated limb is no longer human. Cancer cells and masses of them (tumors) are not human. Destruction of an amputated limb or of an excised tumor is not usually a crime).
Forcing an abortion is a crime. Pressuring someone to have an abortion for any cause other than medical necessity is legally shady. Doing something that might hurt one's fetus (think of fetal alcohol syndrome) is irresponsible in the extreme. Would you be willing to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages for immediate consumption to pregnant women? I would -- but it would be hard to prove that a woman is pregnant and that a bartender knows such.
