Sivad wrote:I get that there's a fundamental disagreement over the moral status of the unborn but what I don't get is what qualifies the pro-lifers as authorities on the matter?
I can't speak for all pro-lifers, but I don't think there is any ambiguity in the teachings of the historic faith on this matter.
Though, I will stand with the even more historic pre-20th century universal faith on this, that personhood precedes even conception, logically-speaking, and therefore that contraception is just as wicked as abortion.
I have given that argument before (which was actually inspired by a biblical commentaries from John Calvin and the Westminster Divines which I also combined with my ethical argument that I asked you to review in the Agora)
Sivad wrote:The Bible is ambiguous at best when it comes to abortions and on some readings it even seems to mandate it in certain circumstances.
Not really, agency and moral liability are applied to human beings from the time of conception.
Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
(Psalm 51:5) But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by His grace, was pleased 16to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles,
(Galatians 1:15)Psalm 139:13 says similar things.
Jeremiah 1:5 is also instructive.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Likewise, John the Baptist "leapt for joy" in his mother's womb at the presence of Christ, which is a consistent understanding of the person-hood of pre-born children as seen elsewhere in Holy Writ.
Likewise, in Genesis 38, we see the Onan incident, which is awfully translated into english as "Onan spilled his seed on the ground."
A literal rendition of the actual Hebrew into English would be that
"Onan destroyed his offspring on the ground." The word translated spilled does not mean spill, nor can it mean spill, and is always used in scripture to describe the angry destruction of others, either in reference to the judgement of God against sinful people, or in reference to an immoral act of murder of one against another, etc.
Every reputable commentary on that text from the apostles through the reformation, and even post-reformation confessional divines, all agreed universally that this text taught the intentionally prevention of pregnancy to be murder.
My proof in the objective morality thread debate I did in the agora has a syllogism based on their arguments from Holy Writ.
Sivad wrote:So what is the source of their authority? If it's just their moral intuition then that's just not good enough because most people don't share their intuition, in fact many people have the exact opposite intuition.
The source is in fact Scriptural, but beyond this, some of us would even go further to condemn intentionally anti-procreative sex acts under the same logic, as likewise derived from Scriptural reasoning.