This lesson is dedicated to Mary Elizabeth Coleman State Senator from the 22nd District of Missouri, and an endless champion of making sure that government has a say in your reproductive rights.

We hear the Right To Life contingent tell us about the sanctity of human life even at the point of conception and only a few cells have started the process towards becoming a human. They will ultimately point to the Bible as their guide on this. If the Bible tells us what to do we should do it, correct?

I suppose that it is important to bring these cell globules to full term specifically when the globule in question might be the first born male. Because as Exodus 22:29-30 tells us Yahweh will be needing you to sacrifice that son to him.

Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.

So… If I have this straight… sanctity of life begins at conception but ends at birth so that the life can be sacrificed. One wonders if Senator Coleman has done the right thing and has sacrificed her first born son to Yahweh as required in the Bible. If not is it because all of her 6 children are girls. That would be a lucky break. Or could it be yet another case of people choosing what parts of the Bible to live by and ignoring others?

It is true that eventually the Bible comes down pretty hard on the concept of child sacrifice. And as Heath D. Dewrell writes in “Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel,” The priestly class kept going on about this because old habits die hard unlike say a sacrificial baby.

But the fact remains that child sacrifice is in the Bible. And not just this one time.

Leviticus 27:28-29 – “No one who may have been set apart among men shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death.”

• This suggests that certain people dedicated to Yahweh could not be redeemed and had to be killed.

Ezekiel 20:25-26 – “I also gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live; I defiled them through their very gifts—by making them offer up all their firstborn—in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am Yahweh.”

• This is one of the most striking passages, as Yahweh admits to having given Israel laws that led them to sacrifice their firstborns.

And these verses were not edited out after the elites in Jerusalem had decried this to separate their emerging culture from their evil cousins the Canaanites. What we seem to have here is another case of the Bible not maintaining a logic within itself and more like the bears killing children for insulting bald prophets or just ignoring inconvenient things like the dietary restrictions on eating shell fish.

Maybe Mary could tell us exactly what parts of the Bible to believe and which not to believe?