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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.
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.
You could say that about a lot of things. Institutionalised rape, slavery and child brides were pretty common and accepted throughout the ancient world as well, but it would be unusual for a person to defend those things today.
Ancient world? A lot of the things were popular at most 200 years ago.
Some forms of institutionalized rape I think I could still argue for in an anonymous format. I think a reasonable argument can be made of a husband having sexual rights in a marriage presupposing he’s being a good husband and it’s part of the marriage compact. And Russian serfdom (which was supposedly quite harsh) and Chattel slavery was less than 200 hundred years.
That's the marriage debt, it applies to both spouses (wives too have a right to sex) and it's not rape, since in marriage you are presumed to give consent to sexual activity with your spouse. There was a fine-grained legal distinction that rape was sex without consent, and since married couples consented to have sex, the crime of rape could not be committed within marriage (which is not to say that the act of rape could not be committed).
Forcing someone unwilling, by threats, violence, or other coercion, is wrong. That's not what marriage is supposed to be. So even if the spouses have a right to ask for sex from each other, and merely "I don't feel like it" is not good enough reason to refuse, you should not rape your wife (or husband).
Well then what IS your prescription for the scenario where Spouse A says "Sex please" and Spouse B says "No I don't feel like it"?
I have enough Chestertonian-fence respect in the wisdom of the ten thousand generations before me to suspect that if there WAS a solution better than marital rape, they'd have thought of it.
That's always going to happen occasionally. The idea that any religious authority would approve of forcing it in all cases is silly, so I won't address that, instead I'll assume you're saying something like Partner B has been refusing sex for an extended period of time, say six months at a time.
While I'm a big Chesterton guy, you also have to consider that the thousands of generations before you lived in different circumstances. Particularly, I don't think you can keep the "forced sex is ok if you're married" fence up if you've torn down the "living within a community of people who you can talk to about it" fence. Maybe a Benedict option argument at some level? The idea of Marital Debt comes largely from ecclesiastical court cases where spouses literally went to a formal tribunal to determine the answers to these questions! At a less formal level, you and your spouse go to your mutual priest and confessor, alone or together, and seek guidance. Today, we call this practice marital counseling, the only difference is the training of the counselor changing from theological to psychological, from one brand of nonsense to another more cynically.
We've also lost the kind of family honor-bonds that protected both parties to a marriage. A woman in an abusive marriage might count on pressure from her father, brothers, uncles, male cousins, and general social opprobrium to prevent overly vicious abuse. A husband who was too violent with his wife risked social outcast status, or revenge, even if divorce was impossible. Today, that kind of thing is unthinkable: we don't live in close knit families, private violence is anathema, and there is no sense of honor that would lead a would-be-Sonny to defend his sister.
Catholicism, of course, absolutely forbids divorce. Other religious traditions, nonetheless quite strict on their own views, take different attitudes:
So what does a solution look like? Compromise, talk to each other, talk to spiritual/moral counselors you respect, reach a place where things work for both of you. Just like you would for literally any other marital issue.
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