Children as property: The common root of religious child abuse and the pro-life movement

On the surface, valuing embryonic life and abusing children are at odds, but with a biblical view of childhood, these positions can go hand in hand.

Why do the same people who fight against abortion argue that parents should have the right to hit their children and deny them medical care or education, as some conservative Republicans have done recently? How can someone oppose family planning because a pill or IUD might have the rare and unintended consequence of interfering with implantation, and then endorse beating a child, which might have the rare and unintended consequence of battering her to death?

These two positions fit together seamlessly only when we understand the Iron Age view of the child woven through the Bible and how that view has shaped the priorities and behavior of those who treat the Bible like the literally perfect Word of God.

Children as property: The common root of religious child abuse and the pro-life movement