Thursday, March 22, 2012

Limits of Abortion

While studying for class this evening (Colonial New England) I came across the below passage from an article by Mr James Drake, "Restraining Atrocity:  The Conduct of King Philip's War" (The New England Quarterly, Vol 70, Issue 1, page 56)
If a man have a stufforne or rebellious sonne of sufficyent yeeres of understanding, viz., 16, wch will not obey ye voyce of his father or ye voyce of his mother, & yt when they have chastned him will not harken vnto them, then shall his fahter & mother, being his naturall parents, lay hold on him, & bring him to ye majestrates assembled in Courte, & testify to them by sufficyent evidence yt this their sonne is stubborne & rebellious, & will not obey their voyce & chasticement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a sonne shall be put to death
The citation is Massachusetts Records, 3:101.

Frankly, this isn't much different from the admonition from Deuteronomy, Chapter 21, verses 18 to 21.  The spelling is better in the newer editions of the Bible.

I supposed that this more open view of abortion in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was closed off once the Irish were given permission in the State Constitution to hold office.

Regards  —  Cliff

1 comment:

  1. They likely had the notion that if the life was not of value. Or, that the "stubborne & rebellious" would ultimately metastisize into the community and should be preemptively snuffed.

    This is somewhat of the modern Republican stance. Except the GOP relieves the parents of the nasty burden, having duly deputized goon squads and robed pharisees to wield the ax.

    ReplyDelete

Please be forthright, but please consider that this is not a barracks.