What argument? It isn’t an argument.
Hector_St_Clare:
Excuse me, what? Speaking as a pro-lifer, what could I possibly find to celebrate in Roe v. Wade? From our point of view, children one day after conception are as much members of the human family, and as deserving of protection, as children one day after birth. Roe v. Wade, as a ‘compromise’, makes about as much sense as Stephen Douglas’ ‘compromise’ position on slavery.
The only solution I could possibly ‘celebrate’ would be one that banned abortion, with stringent penalties, but made reasonable exceptions for serious medical threats to the mother’s health. No doubt it’s unpleasant to have to bear a child you’d rather not, but those concerns are absolutely trivial compared to the life of a child, and shouldn’t have much weight in how we judge these issues.
That is an extreme position, very comparable to pro-choicers who believe that the fetus may be eliminated even one minute before birth.
Rejection of extremism is an ideal of wisdom.
Let me suggest that the abortion discussion deserves its own thread. I think it’s tangling things up here.
Hector_St_Clare:
You’re aware that early Christians generally believed that abortion was murder, that a lot of late first and early second century texts explicitly condemn it, that as far as i can tell none of them seriously disagreed about that, that Basil of Ancyra explicitly said ‘abortion is murder, whether the fetus be formed or unformed’, that his views were upheld at the sixth ecumenical council, and that early Christians generally, at the very least, dated the divine personhood of Jesus Christ starting from his conception, right?
An they also thought that the Sun & planets revolved around the Earth, and explicitly taught that as an article of faith, and punished those who disagreed (as Galileo learned).
But they were flat-out wrong.
An they also thought that the Sun & planets revolved around the Earth, and explicitly taught that as an article of faith, and punished those who disagreed (as Galileo learned).
But they were flat-out wrong.
Galileo lived in the 17th century, what does the beliefs of the 17th century church have to do with ‘early christians’?
Having said that, no more abortion hijack.