The ONLY Biblical passage that "defends" a fetus considers it only to be PROPERTY. And the passage condones slavery! Ex. 21:20-25.

Let's look first at Ex. 21:22-25 ---

22 "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she has a miscarriage but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

First off, the person being defended by those verses clearly is the woman. (There's no suggestion that her fetus be removed and evaluated for injuries, so that the appropriate penalties of "an eye for an eye" or "a tooth for a tooth" could properly be imposed upon the assailant. And verses 23-25 make it quite clear that only the woman's injuries are being considered, here.) (Emphasis in verses 22-23, above, is mine.)

And the penalty for causing a miscarriage only (covered by verse 22, clearly could be pretty much anything -- or nothing! There's nothing in there to imply that a capital offense had been committed.)

Next -- I love it whenever Anti-Choicers/RRR cultists draw upon that passage, thinking that it somehow supports their stance. Because it would be hard to come up with one that could be used as a better example of just how UNlikely it is that the Bible would to the extent of defending RPEs.

GLOSSARY RPE -- Reproductive-Process Entity. Any entity of the four stages of the human reproductive process: gametes (sperm & ovum), zygote, embryo, and fetus. ALL four are living, potential people. Interesting Fact More than 1,000,000,000,000,000 (that's a quadrillion) Stage One potential people are electively aborted DAILY, worldwide, by men, while the Anti-Choicers hypocritically look the other way and whistle a tune. And while they continue to seek to disrupt and wreck the lives and future opportunities of millions of women.

Here's another reason why. Ex. 21:20-21 (NIV) ...

20 If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, 21 but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.

Here we see the Bible treating:

A. An already-human being (person) as mere property.

B. The slave can be either a male or a female.

C. There is no penalty to the assailant if death doesn't occur.

D. If death does occur, the penalty is unspecified.

So let's consider this scenario: A 13-year-old girl (or it could be a boy) suddenly and inxplicably provokes the wrath of her owner, who takes a rod and violently thrashes her mercilessly to within a millimeter of her life, and leaves her lying in a senseless and unconscious bloody heap in the middle of a dusty road. She lies there in abject agony, mixed with periods of unconsciousness, for two days and nights. Then, 47 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds after the beating, she manages to struggle to her feet and stagger off, crippled and maimed, teeth broken off, arm broken, and with an eye put out. The penalty to her owner for having inflicted such horrendous, unconscionable and cruel damage? NONE!!

Or she DIES. What is her owner's penalty then? It's unspecified. For all we know, it could be 3 lashes on the back of his hand by a fellow slave owner, wielding a wet noodle.

Given all of this, any notion that the Bible would be concerned with mere RPEs becomes totally ludicrous.