Abortion and the Bible for 100, Alex

Pastorius issued a challenge to me a week ago which I haven't had the time to respond to:
 

Reuters brings us this article on a European Union Court decision regarding fetal right to life:

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - A doctor who aborted a fetus accidentally cannot be charged with manslaughter because European states do not agree whether an unborn baby is a person, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday. The court ruled that it could not answer the question of when the right to life begins and had to leave decisions on the issue to be taken at a national level. The ruling, which carries the weight of a precedent in European countries, contrasts with United States laws that have increasingly given fetuses some legal rights. (Huh?)The court turned down an appeal by Thi-Nho Vo, a French citizen of Vietnamese origin, against the hospital doctor who pierced her amniotic sac during an examination and had to abort her six-month-old fetus.

It has always been my position that abortion is the deliberate ending of a life. However, I have never been an absolutist on the issue of abortion. There are the issues of viability, and of the mothers health, and I have been, on occasion susceptible to the Beloved argument (Toni Morrision novel) about whether it is worth bringing a child into certain worlds, such as Nazi Germany or pestilential/famished Africa. And while we're at it, if you were a thinking woman, would you really want to bring a female child into a Taliban world?
 
It would seem that, for most people, the embryo is a child if they want it, and "just tissue" if they don't. The above Reuters story challenges just such a notion.
 
And, I believe the EU Court came up with a great answer. Certainly, the Court's answer flies in the face of many of the national sovereignty arguments that are made against the EU. Who would thunk it?
 
Anyway, here's my challenge to my man Jack: What's the Biblical answer to this question? There is a specific Torah remedy, as I recall. I'm hoping you remember chapter and verse. Please don't make me look it up. That would take me hours. 

First, the Biblical question -- I believe the passage Pastorius is referring to is Exodus 21: 22-23:

If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely; but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life... (NIV)

There are two problems with this passage for modern discussions of abortion.  The first is the ambiguity with regard to who is being injured.  The above translation has "gives birth prematurely" and therefore suggests that the "serious injury" applies to the child.  But the King James has:

If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.  And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life

which allows the inerpretation that it is the woman who is suffering the "mischief" and that the phrase "fruit depart from her" indicates a miscarriage.  I tend to the former interpretation, but even the NIV has "miscarriage" as a possible translation, so the text is not clear.
 
But in either case, the passage is only concerned with unintentional harm so it is not really applicable to the abortion issue which involves intentional harm.  There is no specific passage that deals with the question of abortion in the Old or New Testament, so we have to argue on the principle of whether the Bible treats the fetus as a person.   Several sources are available online for this discussion, but I will offer a few points that seem to give a pretty definitive answer.
 
First look at Luke 1:41-45:

When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.  In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!  But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.  Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!"

This seems a pretty obvious case of the Bible ascribing human emotions to an unborn child.  "Pieces of tissue" do not experience joy.  But it could be argued that this child had already reached the point of viability.  I don't honestly see that as relevant, since any non-viable fetus would become viable if you just leave it alone, but we will ignore that point.  Yet in Psalm 51:5 we read:

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

I really don't see how you can get around this point if you are seriously trying to understand the question of when "personhood" begins from a biblical perspective.  Of course, most people dismiss this as poetic hyperbole, but such an argument can be applied to any passage that we find inconvenient.  But Christians have always looked to this passage in light of the doctrine of Original Sin, and if that begins at conception then so, presumably, does human life.  People that strive to be faithful to the historic teaching of the Christianity really do not have any alternative on this point.
 
But one final point about Pastorius' post disturbs me:

I have been, on occasion susceptible to the Beloved argument (Toni Morrision novel) about whether it is worth bringing a child into certain worlds, such as Nazi Germany or pestilential/famished Africa. And while we're at it, if you were a thinking woman, would you really want to bring a female child into a Taliban world?

This may be a good argument for not having children in those circumstances, although I would dispute that point.  But surely it has no bearing on the abortion question.  Do we really want to start judging whose life is and isn't worth living?  Job complains in 10:18-19

Why then did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died before any eye saw me.  If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave!

But as the end of that book reminds us, "The LORD blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first."  Hardly an endorsement of the accuracy of quality of life predictions.