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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31032 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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The latest abortion kerfuffle is decently well in the past now, and we've had a number of good threads on it in various places. I think it's a reasonable time to ask here:

Have you changed your personal opinion or political position on abortion access at all over the course of the last year or so? If so, to what, and based on what?

I'm pro choice, and also pro-infanticide (of disabled children). Not as prescriptive policy, but something that ought to available as an option to parents.

However, I feel extremely disgusted and strongly about abortion activists, and think there need to be limits. Generally EU seems to have fairly sensible legislation.

Abortion and any similar killing is an extremely serious affair, and should be treated as such. Being proud of having an abortion seems completely perverse.

Hard to express what I hate about them. It's the same sort of disgust I have to people who treat dead enemy combatans with disrespect.

also pro-infanticide

I'll take the bait. Go on then, spell it out

I am absolutely not pro-infanticide, but the killing, or at least exposure of crippled or deformed infants is extremely common throughout history. In ancient Rome it was considered something you kept quiet, but by no means a crime or a horrific crime as it might be considered today. Oftentimes people were not considered 'full' humans until they had lived a few years already, partially because mortality rates among infants and young children were so high. The idea infanticide is a heinous moral abomination seems to be a product of the slow christianization of western morality.

Technically illegal but socially tolerated infanticide was a thing in a society as rich and Christian as Victorian England. Very quickly after the practice is stopped, we get a change in the law to make infanticide a relatively minor crime (which it still is in most of the Commonwealth).

Society can't make women raise unwanted children (it can barely make deadbeat dads pay child support, and collecting cash under threat of violence is something states are good at) and generally doesn't try. The real-world feasibility of a pro-life regime depends on the availability of loving adoptive parents (which is currently not an issue, at least if you are willing to see large-scale interracial adoption).

I mean, you could also have orphanages, which is strictly worse than adoption, but it does do the same job.

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