This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
No, but if they believe that the infant in the womb is not a person, such that it can be terminated at any point without guilt, that's something they have in common with leftists, not with conservatives.
The Didache says, in so many words, "you shall not murder a child by abortion" (Roberts-Donaldson). Is that what you're asking for?
The specific biblical proof-texts include things like Jeremiah 1:5 ("before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you"), but these are more quibble-able, if you're so inclined. Footnote 5 here mentions some of the others.
Augustine, describing sin, writes in On Marriage and Concupiscence, that cruelty and lustfulness, "resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain before it was born." This is about a plain a condemnation of abortion as I can imagine.
To personhood specifically, in City of God XXII.12-13, Augustine considers whether aborted infants will be included in the Resurrection, and he considers the question again in Enchiridion 85-6. Here he interestingly admits to ignorance:
I take Augustine here as saying, "A late-term infant in the womb is clearly alive, such that killing him or her is murder. I do not know at what moment in the womb the infant begins to live. That question is currently beyond scientific understanding."
Today many Christians would presumably add, "Today, we have greater scientific understanding, and therefore do know what Augustine did not, which is that life begins at conception."
Augustine always frames this in terms of 'life', but the logic seems applicable to personhood, to me? He does not use the exact moral vocabulary that modern thinkers do, but I think the direction of his thought is pretty clear.
But that would be a very motivated reading. ‘Life’ is either a chemical process that has continued unmolested for 200 million years, living gamete to pluripotent cell to living gamete, or else is something that sperm and eggs don’t have but late term infants do.
“Life begins at conception”, is a convention, and “life is something that slowly accumulates as a foetus develops”, is also a convention. You cannot choose between them scientifically.
More options
Context Copy link
I take it as an answer in line with what @aaa said below, which is something like "it's not in the Bible, but clearly something that was believed by early (more Western than the founders?) Christians within 200-300 years of founding". Except for the longer excerpt from Augustine, though, the arguments don't really seem to obviously be implying an outright "personhood"/complete equivalence of fetuses to central examples of "persons" angle, instead going for general pro-natalism (most obviously in the "poisonous drugs to secure barrenness" text: it's associating abortion with contraception which involves no "conceived seed" at all, and the "conceived seed" vocabulary + implication that it has not yet "received vitality" also sounds like it considers the fetus less than human).
At least without context, Jeremiah 1:5 sounds like it's more about God knowing the future. If you want to read meaning into the phrasing in "formed you in the womb", it only seems to suggest that "you" were formed at some point while being in the womb (so between the point where the fertilised egg leaves the tube and birth).
Sorry, but this seems like what Scott called "Eulering" to me. Defining life, for moral purposes, is not the magisterium of science to begin with.
The Didache is from the first century. If there was nothing critical of abortion in early Christianity, that part was added in very early indeed. I think it's just plausible that early Christians considered it too obvious to require mentioning that abortion is a form of murder - you might compare the way that, for instance, early Christian writings on suicide are similar. As far as I can tell it was just considered obvious that suicide falls under the heading of murder.
Regarding life, I grant that there is room to quibble, but insofar as it is scientifically true that conception is the first moment at which a unique, genetically distinct, new organism comes into being, I think it's reasonable for a modern Christian to consider that morally relevant.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link