No one is doubting that 1009 in Christendom was a shitty time to be alive. What we are doubting is that infanticide was an epidemic and at levels higher than other traditional societies almost all of which looked down on female infidelity.
The only bullshit is your baby worship. Confined to a small cell, a crying baby can drive someone to insanity. Any psychologist will tell you that. It’s baby worship when you start valuing babies above other human beings. Here’s a real fact about the world, if the adults are dead the baby dies anyway from neglect.
As to how a crying baby could betray someone to an enemy? I was in Vukovar when it fell. Luckily I never had to watch someone kill a crying baby or killed one myself, but I would without a thought if I had to. And just about any honest person will admit that about themselves if they thought about long enough.
And when you can’t prevent war which realistically speaking there’s not much one individual can do, do you choose to make the horror worse or minimize it as much as possible?
I highly doubt infanticide in Christendom came even close to the levels of infanticide of the Roman Empire and before. The Romans actually made laws concerning it. The father of a family, the paterfamilias, could do whatever he wanted with his children including killing them at any time or selling them into slavery. Exposing a child was a common practice and deformed children were drowned. Oddly, Roman law forbade a free-born exposed child to be sold into slavery if a passerby claimed the child. Until, Constantine, the first Christian Emperor changed the law and allowed orphans to be sold into slavery. The Egyptians also left unwanted children at the town dump. The Greeks, particularly the Spartans, would kill any child with a perceived defect. The Kronos of Carthage practiced child sacrifice (though the religious reasoning behind it kind of makes it a bad example as far as the main discussion here).
No, sacrificing everyone else for the sake of an infant is exactly what you have been advocating. If a woman wants an abortion, chances are there’s a damn good reason why and bringing that baby into the world only creates more problems. You may not like infanticide, but without access to safe abortion, it is the safest alternative available to women who don’t want to be mothers.
Horrible things happen during wartime. Your response to this unfortunate fact is to make these horrible things possible during peacetime, whereas the rational human response to that fact is to avoid war; and to strictly forbid those horrible things during peacetime.
I must have missed the part where it was agreed that adoption is somehow “unsafe” for anyone involved. Or that “not wanting to be a mother” is a good enough reason to commit murder.
This thread is just bizarre, really. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such overwrought arguments, and I’ve seen plenty around here (maybe even made a few in my time ;)).
OH MY GOD CHILDREN WILL FINANCIALLY CRIPPLE YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY AND WHAT IF YOU ARE IN A WARZONE AND ADOPTION CAUSES SERIAL MURDER AND OH THE HUMANITY.
AND PRO-CHOICERS WANT TO KILL BABIES AFTER THEY’RE BORN AND PRO-LIFERS THINK KILLING A BABY IS BETTER THAN HAVING AN ABORTION AND WHAT’S THE WORLD COMING TO EVERYONE IS INSANE.
I think that we can all agree that there are certain tragic situations where killing a baby might be the best of some awful, would-rather-not-even-think-about-it options. But in these situations, how likely is it that you could get a clean, safe, medical abortion, anyway? The problems of women who are poverty stricken and living in war zones go far far deeper than that. What is the argument here, really?
For real-world (and relatively recent) examples, the opening chapter of Charles Clement’s Witness to War (Clements is a American doctor who worked with the peasants in El Salvador in the early eighties, during that country’s civil war). He describes groups of peasants, including women with young children, keeping on the move at night while trying to avoid military and paramilitary groups, and distributing sedatives to the mothers telling them to tell their children it was candy, lest their crying give away their position, with the alternative being potential smotherings.
I don’t have a copy close at hand to confirm the exact circumstances, but sedating children to avoid risking their mothers smothering them was clearly dsecribed.
Ah, murder. See, murder is a legal term, not a moral one. Killing? Well, we do that for all kinds of reasons that are deemed appropriate by society. And even then you’d have to convincingly define a fetus (in the case of abortion) as an independently living organism. Something nobody on either side of the debate has been able to do. For me, personally, neither even enters into the argument. A woman’s body is hers to do what she wants with. It’s that simple. If she doesn’t want to carry a baby to term that’s her business and nobody else. Women aren’t baby factories and having babies isn’t the goal of every woman’s life.
I used “murder” to describe infanticide, which is what every legal code in the civilized world does. I wasn’t discussing abortion. It was ZPGZealot who said that infanticide was the only option (other than abortion) to being a mother. I just substituted murder for infanticide.
All the more reason for precision, when “abortion” and “murder” (and “child” and “fetus”) are viewed as synonyms by some participants in the discussion.
In America, the biological father of the child can stop a child from being up for adoption, can file for custody, and force the mother to pay child support. I know plenty of people for whom that financial sacrifice isn’t possible. Their wages are too low or they have other responsibilites. Paying child support for a child they never wanted would mean less food on the table for the other family members they are supporting. They have elderly relatives or extended family who will suffer greviously without their money. Dependents aren’t just what falls out of your vagina (though some idiots in family court seem to think so) and babies aren’t entitled to ruin the lives of an entire family. Two years ago I had a student worker at the university who nearly died from going without medication because he couldn’t afford food, the child support payments for a child he never wanted, and his medicine.
Why has birth control not even entered the discussion? There are more humane, and safer ways, of preventing pregnancy and birth than abortion and infanticide. I know, not 100% effective, etc., but are we just assuming that they failed or what?
And the solution to that is universal health care, not infanticide.
The discussion started because someone was shocked when in early thread I had posted if abortion were illegal and I couldn’t get a safe illegal abortion, I would give birth in secret and committ neonaticide. In some of the other situations we have been discussing, wartime and low technology societies, birth control would often not be an available option. I’m asking people what the hell do you expect women to do, other than infanticide, in situations in which the birth of another child is a disaster to the family? Do you honestly think they should drag their entire families into further poverty and despair for one baby? That’s baby worship at it’s sickest.
You’d have to ask the OP to refine the hypothetical, like I did, in post #57, though I got no response.
Well, we don’t have universal healthcare in United States do we?
The vast majority of births are not “situations in which the birth of another child is a disaster”. Most of us don’t automatically think of babies as “disasters”.
Considering the problem of overpopulation, that’s debateable. However, if you are in a position where you could comfortable absorb the impact of an unwanted baby consider yourself lucky. If you believe in something supernatural, give he, she, or it thanks that you are in that position. Many people aren’t.
I think it rather more “shocking” that you see nothing wrong with killing a crying baby because s/he’s annoying.
I guess that makes me a high priest of baby-worship. 