{"id":15670,"date":"2011-02-10T11:54:45","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T16:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/?p=15670"},"modified":"2017-05-03T19:07:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T00:07:51","slug":"is-abortion-a-violation-of-the-5th-or-the-6th-commandment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2011\/02\/10\/is-abortion-a-violation-of-the-5th-or-the-6th-commandment\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Abortion a Violation of the 5th or the 6th Commandment?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Recently at Vox Nova there has been a bit of a spat<\/a> about how abortion relates to the 5th<\/sup> and 6th<\/sup> commandments (in the Catholic reckoning), i.e. the prohibitions against killing and against adultery, respectively.\u00a0 I write this post in the spirit of calling out one\u2019s allies<\/a>.\u00a0 I am an ally of Matt Bowman who insists that abortion is the primary social justice issue of our time, and I am an ally of Morning\u2019s Minion who believes that abortion will never be abolished as long as it is treated separately from the rest of the life issues, broadly conceived.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>

Now, to be fair, MM\u2019s post was not about this question specifically and debates in comboxes may not be the best places to gather someone\u2019s systematic thoughts on the matter, so it is entirely likely that both MM and Matt Bowman will find much they agree with in my post.\u00a0 At least, I hope they will.\u00a0 My manner of calling out is not meant to be a strident one.\u00a0 I seek common ground, not continued polemic.<\/p>\n

First of all, I think everyone involved in the debate admits that abortion is a direct violation of the prohibition of killing.\u00a0 Second, I don\u2019t think anyone denies the relationship between sexual license and an abortion culture.\u00a0 A reading of the debate may give this impression, but the two sides have been forced into such awkward readings because they are responding to each other\u2019s polemics.<\/p>\n

I want to propose that a wider reading of the issue can get us past the incomplete positions that our polemics force us into. And I want to start by noting a very simple fact:\u00a0 the argument is about abortion\u2019s relationship to two consecutive<\/em> commandments.\u00a0 We are talking about the 5th<\/sup> and the 6th<\/sup>, not the 3rd<\/sup> and the 8th<\/sup>, or even the 5th<\/sup> and the 7th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

The commandments<\/a> are not structured arbitrarily, and they are not simply structured from most grievous to least grievous sin.\u00a0 There is a logic inherent in them.\u00a0 The first three deal with our relationship with God because, without that, our relationship with our fellow humans (dealt with in the final 7) hasn\u2019t a leg to stand on.\u00a0 They are not in this order because failing to keep a given Sabbath holy is of greater concern to the Almighty than killing a given human.<\/p>\n

The first of the final 7 deals with our relationship to our parents because of its foundational nature in our human formation as moral people.\u00a0 The last four deal with our relationship to our neighbor, particularly our neighbour\u2019s property and good name.\u00a0 That leaves number 5 and number 6, side by side, smack dab in the middle of the list.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

I propose that these two should be read together just as naturally as numbers 9 and 10.\u00a0 Have you ever noticed the correlation between those people and communities who think the world is 6,000 years old and those who believe in the rapture?\u00a0 The overlap is almost complete.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because if you don\u2019t understand the beginning, you don\u2019t understand the end.\u00a0 Crazy ideas about creation lead to (or stem from) incoherent and unchristian ideas about God and God\u2019s relationship to creation.\u00a0 And that leads to crazy ideas about eschatology.<\/p>\n

Myth becomes useless, a lie.\u00a0 Symbolic religious language loses its power to convey deep truth and the only truth we have left is that utterly flat bit that fits under the rubric of the scientific method and modernist (not post-modernist) readings of history.\u00a0 Reality becomes so constricted that there is not room for real transcendence and God becomes one more actor on the stage of history, different from the rest only in terms of immense power.\u00a0 Yahweh abandons eternity and takes up abode, not in Bethlehem, but on Mount Olympus.<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with the 5th<\/sup> and 6th<\/sup> commandments?<\/p>\n

If, in the cosmic scheme, misconceptions about the beginning and the end are intertwined with each other and with misconceptions about the meaning of God, the universe and everything, the same is true in the social scheme.\u00a0 The commandments about murder and sex go side by side because murder ends life while sex initiates it.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t understand the beginning of life, then you don\u2019t understand the meaning of life.\u00a0 And if you don\u2019t understand the meaning of life, you don\u2019t understand the meaning of death.<\/p>\n

But the commandments actually reverse<\/em> the order of Genesis and Revelation.\u00a0 The prohibition to kill (the end) comes before the prohibition of adultery (beginning).\u00a0 In other words, we cannot truly understand life if we do not understand death.\u00a0 A few thousand years after the 10 Commandments were written, another Moses came along and said roughly the same thing.\u00a0 First he said, \u201cthose who lose their lives will find it.\u201d\u00a0 And then he showed us how, dying on a cross before leaving the empty womb, I mean, tomb.<\/p>\n

What does this relationship have to tell us about abortion?\u00a0 First of all, we are right to link abortion with sexual license. \u00a0The right wing is correct if they point out that our material prosperity alone will not end abortion.\u00a0 We must change people\u2019s attitudes towards sex and its place in human life.\u00a0 Without that, all the health-care, maternity leave, or childcare subsidies in the world will not stem the tide of blood.<\/p>\n

But the right wing is incorrect to dismiss the place of such programs in reducing abortions.\u00a0 It is not simply that poor people in the richest nation in the history of the planet get abortions while living with air-conditioning, jewelry, cable TV and motor vehicles.\u00a0 It is that, in denying the importance of universal health care in such a wealthy country we make a statement about the value of life.\u00a0 In the vast expenditure of resources on military adventurism, we make a statement about the value of life.\u00a0 In the perpetuation of a gun-loving culture, we make a statement about the value of life.\u00a0 In the Satanic and ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor, we make a statement about the value of life.\u00a0 In the public executions by the state, and the fervid support thereof, we make a statement about the value of life.\u00a0 In the perpetuation of the consumerist status quo we distort, by utterly flattening, a genuine understanding of human fulfillment.<\/p>\n

We tell people, by our actions and our political priorities that death is trivial and that life is dull.\u00a0 And then we tell them that it is their own selfishness that causes them to misunderstand sex.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 We must teach our children and our neighbors about the value and meaning of human sexuality if we hope to end abortion, but we will have no impact on their views about the beginning as long as our witness about the end is ambiguous.\u00a0 You can\u2019t teach people that killing solves some problems, but not others.\u00a0 They won\u2019t believe you.<\/p>\n

\n

Brett Salkeld<\/a> is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently at Vox Nova there has been a bit of a spat about how abortion relates to the 5th and 6th commandments (in the Catholic reckoning), i.e. the prohibitions against killing and against adultery, respectively.\u00a0 I write this post in the spirit of calling out one\u2019s allies.\u00a0 I am an ally of Matt Bowman who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2991,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,350,604,150,191,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-brett-salkeld","category-consistent-life-ethics","category-culture-of-death","category-culture-of-life","category-death-penalty"],"yoast_head":"\nIs Abortion a Violation of the 5th or the 6th Commandment?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Recently at Vox Nova there has been a bit of a spat about how abortion 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