"infanticide" = killing babies or children. — Agustino

Right. Which is what God did and what he told Saul to do.

"murder" = killing another living creature, but especially a human being. — Agustino

So self-defence is murder?

So self-defence is murder? — Michael

Sure.

Now add 2 and 2 together and see that someone who kills another in self-defence doesn't approve of murder in-itself.

Now add 2 and 2 together and see that someone who kills another in self-defence doesn't approve of murder in-itself. — Agustino

Who said anything about approving of it in itself (whatever that means)? There are times where murder isn't wrong (assuming your definition), such as in self-defence. Therefore even if abortion is murder, it doesn't necessarily follow that it's wrong. Abortion, like self-defence, might be one of those occasions where murder is justified. And there are times where God approved of killing infants. Therefore there's room to believe that abortion is one of those occassions where God might approve (or at least not disapprove) of killing infants, and so a pro-choice Christian isn't an oxymoron.

Abortion, like self-defence, might be one of those occasions where murder is justified. — Michael

That's exactly what I've been saying.

That's exactly what I've been saying. — Agustino

But you seemed to question @René Descartes believing in God if he believed in a woman's right to choose, and then took issue with @charleton pointing out that there's no contradiction here.

So now I'm not entirely clear what you've been trying to say.

But you seemed to question René Descartes believing in God if he believed in a woman's right to choose — Michael

Yes, because abortion in-itself is wrong. There are circumstances when it may be acceptable - I listed a few.

I agree with you and LT for the most part, except that I would say that abortion should be legal if the mother's life is in danger - she should have that choice. Otherwise, in most other cases (excluding rape, etc.) it should be illegal. — Agustino

Yes, because abortion in-itself is wrong. — Agustino

But what does that have to do with believing (or not believing) in God? Clearly it's not simply the case that believing in God entails believing that all life is sacred (or whatever), given that God seemed to think it acceptable to kill children and infants because their parents didn't believe in him (or whatever the reason was)?

1) Judea was a ROMAN province and hence was under the lex Romana.
2) Jesus said NOTHING against either abortion or infanticide.
3) Run along now please!

Abortion, like self-defence, might be one of those occasions where murder is justified. — Michael

Murder is not justified. I think you mean justified homicide.

No. Life is sacred. That is exactly why killing someone in self-defence has a different status (since they may have killed you otherwise). So murder is ALWAYS wrong in-itself. In circumstances like self-defence, it's not that killing someone isn't wrong, but it's excusable since you didn't have a choice.

1) Judea was a ROMAN province and hence was under the lex Romana.
2) Jesus said NOTHING against either abortion or infanticide.
3) Run along now please! — charleton

The Jews had their own law.

Murder is not justified. I think you mean justified homicide. — charleton

I was using Agustino's definition, which is simply "intentionally killing a human". It's not a definition I agree with.

No. Life is sacred. That is exactly why killing someone in self-defence has a different status (since they may have killed you otherwise). So murder is ALWAYS wrong in-itself. In circumstances like self-defence, it's not that killing someone isn't wrong, but it's excusable since you didn't have a choice. — Agustino

This isn't answering my question. What does this have to do with God? You seem to think that believing in God requires believing that women don't have a right to choose to abort their pregnancy.

And the example I'm using from the Bible isn't a case of self-defence. Was it self-defence when God killed the firstborn of Egypt? Was it self-defence when Saul was ordered to kill the children and infants of Amalek?

Clearly there are occasions outside of self-defence where killing children is acceptable to God. Therefore it's not impossible to believe in God and to believe that abortion is always acceptable.

You are talking nonsense. Jesus and all his followers were under the Lex Romana.
Jesus' silence speaks volumes.

I was using Agustino's definition, which is simply "intentionally killing a human". It's not a definition I agree with. — Michael

Beware of false definitions; A Gusty is full of them.

And the example I'm using from the Bible isn't a case of self-defence. Was it self-defence when God killed the firstborn of Egypt? Was it self-defence when Saul was ordered to kill the children and infants of Amalek? — Michael

Irrelevant. They were forms of divine punishment.

There is a difference (you and Buxte will readily agree) between being a squishy little 6 week old fetus and a 6 year old child learning arithmetic when some well armed angry male decides to wipe out a batch of people. It's gunning down people who made it all the way to personhood, a name, preferences, friends, lovers, etc. that outrages people. — Bitter Crank

There isn't a moral difference. Both are wrong. And abortion outrages people, too....

WTF! Who put you in charge of what things are proscribed by natural law? — Pseudonym

I had a feeling this comment would come up. Taking a principled stance always offends certain sensibilities. I make no apologies for not having my mind made up and for attempting to base my position with respect to a variety of complicated issues on what I have hitherto determined to be true.

So inevitably on a philosophy forum there's a trolley, probably a hospital trolley, with a flask of fertilised human eggs on their way to be implanted in some eager would-be mothers, and of course it is out of control and about to crash down a flight of stairs and spill all these very small people into the janitors mop bucket. And there's a fat bloke with osteoporosis and a really bad heart condition just in the right place for you to push him in front of the trolley. Unfortunately he will fall down the stairs and die, but the very small people in the flask will be saved and the would-be mothers will be very very grateful.

Push, or push not?

Can I make a poll for this abortion debate, just so we have the statistics of the people in the forum? — René Descartes

sounds good. I would love to see that.

The unborn is also less developed than a born human being. How does this fact, though, disqualify the unborn from personhood? A four year-old girl can’t bear children because her reproductive system is less developed than a fourteen year-old girl. That doesn’t disqualify her from personhood. She is still as equally valuable as a child-bearing teen. The unborn is also less developed than the four year-old. Therefore, we can’t disqualify her from personhood for the same reason we can’t disqualify the four year-old. Both are merely less developed than older human beings.

You do not mean size exactly? -You mean that born human persons are developmentally the superiors of the pre-born and therefore have the right to kill the pre-born? Take care again. By this rule you are to be victim to the first person you meet who is more developed in his mind and body than your own. — LostThomist

Most of your arrangements stem from a false, non-commensurable analogy, i.e. comparing post-natal children with post-natal newborns, and extending that argument to pre-natal fetuses. Interestingly, nowhere in your opening post do you lay the foundations, the criteria, for what does or does not count as personhood. Implicitly, you believe that any and all human life, starting from conception, entails personhood, enabling you to easily assume your own conclusion. I would contest, however, that a fetus, prior to viability (the ability to live outside the mother's womb), and prior to CNS development (enabling one to feel pain), constituent, at minimum, the criteria for personhood. The vast majority of abortions - 98% - occur prior to these developments fully taking place. Afterall, we extend the concept of personhood to other sentient forms of life, do we not? Including dolphins, apes, elephants, etc.

Fertilization may be a necessary condition for personhood, but it is not a sufficient condition. It's is potential, but not actual. An important, and necessary distinction. Your claim is essentially that a gamete, or a collection of cells, is isomorphic to a conscious, thinking, feeling, and viable being is ludicrous. Otherwise, there is little difference between a collection of cells that potentially form a human life, and a collection of cells that potentially form the life of, say, another mammal.

You are talking nonsense. Jesus and all his followers were under the Lex Romana. Jesus' silence speaks volumes. — charleton

Lots of Roman provinces were "occupied territories" from the POV of the natives, and they had various religions, coinages, laws, traditions, gods, and so forth. There was a very strong financial incentive behind Roman expansion, and as long as a given province produced sufficient income, fine -- believe in whatever worthless gods you want, follow your own stupid laws, use your own coins (but pay us in Roman coinage), and follow your own ways, only as long as it doesn't inconvenience Rome.

The Romans said, "Cultural diversity and inclusive sensitivity is all fine and dandy, but we're here for the greater glory of Rome, not yours, so sell us your grain, wine, dried fish, olive oil, and so forth at an attractive price, pay your taxes on time and in the right currency, and you can continue to live."

Yes, the Jews were under the Lex Romana, and they were also under their own law -- a situation which was not unusual in the empire, but problematic. Jews and later, Christians were expected to live within the legal system of Rome, but could maintain their own religious and cultural traditions -- as long as Roman taxes got paid, markets were open to Roman buyers, and there were no insurrections. So, when presented with a trap, Jesus said to the Pharisees, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render unto God the things that are God's."

Jesus' answer was both a dodge to avoid the legalistic traps pharisees liked to set, and a reflection of necessary common practice. Rome's Internal Revenue Service could be quite aggressive.

Jesus didn't have secretaries following him around jotting down his every utterance. What the Gospels report him saying was a combination of edited oral accounts and invented dialogue inserted to address needs that didn't exist when Jesus was alive--like the Lord's Prayer, a formulaic prayer that may have developed in very early Christian worship. There are a lot of things Jesus is not reported saying anything about -- like homosexuality, why lobster is not kosher, whether beer is better than wine, abortion, birth control methods, and other such burning issues.

[Delete] @Baden

[Delete] @Baden

[Delete] @Baden

If we are to understand the word "murder" as meaning "wrongfully kill" then he is claiming that there is a moral duty not to wrongfully kill it once alive, which is trivially true, but also question-begging in context, as the argument is over whether or not abortion is wrongful killing, and so doesn't satisfactorily answer the accusation it was responding to ("you have not demonstrated objectively that once a thing has been identified as a human being it is automatically a moral duty to keep it alive").

This is why words matter. I'm not playing here, but clearing up the ambiguity caused by loaded language. — Michael

You're right. He wasn't answering your question, but you were being unnecessarily formalistic. I think his point is that abortion is wrongful killing, not illegal killing. I think that is clear from what he has written. He is not begging the question, he is making an argument.

You're right. He wasn't answering your question, but you were being unnecessarily formalistic. I think his point is that abortion is wrongful killing, not illegal killing. I think that is clear from what he has written. He is not begging the question, he is making an argument. — T Clark

@Pseudonym was asking @LostThomist to show that killing an unborn person is wrong. To respond by asserting that killing it is wrong is begging the question.

The problem is that he avoided phrasing it this way by using the term "murder", hiding this fallacy.

What's your point?
Christians are not Jews and there is nothing to suggest per se, that abortion is wrong. God does it all the time; we call that a miscarriage.
Jesus could have said something against infanticide and abortion but failed to do so. Both practices were extremely common throughout the ancient world. They were a practical response in a world where rape and poverty were common, and the chance for adoption or child services was nil. Carrying a foetus to full term could have meant selling the child into slavery.

"murder" = killing another living creature, but especially a human being.
— Agustino — René Descartes

If killing animals is murder, than humanity has murdered far more animals than human beings. — René Descartes

And god is the biggest murderer of all.
Miscarriage is his choice of abortion, and the plagues and diseases of the world are his games.

Do you think gluttony should be illegal? — Agustino

Sure, why not? And its logical consequences do affect third parties. It drives up the cost of health care, for one, and an obese pregnant woman puts their baby at various kinds of risk.