October is Respect Life Month. ACB's confirmation will be during Respect Life Month. Look, however complicated this all is and however anti-Trump you may be--be as anti-Trump as you like!--this is, for anyone who's pro-life and not an accellerationist, simply a beautiful thing.

I can understand being pro-choice on Aristotelian grounds: thinking that the fetus early on has a vegetable soul, and only gains a rational soul later.

But I think that the more consistent Aristotelian position (which matches the "you knit *me* together in my mother's womb" of scripture & the developed position of the Church) is that the change in a child from zygote to bebe isn't a substantial change, but a change of accidents:

it's the development of one creature, one human person.

There's also a kind of common moral sense to this. On some level, even when I was pro-choice, it felt murdery. A very small baby, one so small that he can't even survive by himself, should not be snuffed out.

He should be cared for. He just *should.* Didn't I know that? On some level I did, and when I admitted it to myself-- this was before I was a Christian, after having a short conversation with some Birthright ladies at a county fair- it was *such* a relief.

It felt like I could stop sitting on that part of my spirit that knew that it was wrong, could stop telling that part of my conscience to shut up.

We will live in a better and saner and more robustly humane legal order when the personhood of humans and their intrinsic value is recognized from conception until natural death. We will *all* feel ourselves to be, and will be in reality, safer in our own skins.

It will be a society where it is safer to be weak, and to be at all stages of human development, not just at your peak earning years when you are at your most independent Lockean individual-ish,

when that deceptive narrative has the most persuasive power and you get to the gym regularly and make lots of consumer choices: buying books on Kindle, contributing to your IRA (without thinking too much about the fact that that means that you'll at some point be old and frail.)

@zugzwanged & I watched The King's Speech last night, and one thing that is wonderful about it is that *even the King of England* is shown not to be an independent Lockean individual.

The person with what you'd think to be the most agency in the absolute WORLD, the head of the British Empire when it still existed, was enabled to be the man he needed to be, the king he needed to be, by his wife's support and by the help of a loyal friend.

And, interestingly, by his subjects: their acclamation of him as king, their acceptance of his rule, also enabled him to be their king, and enabled them to be his people, too: it wasn't a lessening of *their* power in the world to be ruled by such a man.

(And it would have been, to be ruled by Edward.) And that interdependence wasn't weakness: it became a kind of strength. Lots of thoughts about Moses and stuttering and God using those with halting speech.

OK what does this have to do with abortion?

Great question. I think what I'm getting at is that a baby still in the womb and George VI are alike in being dependent rational animals. In the case of the baby, yes, that rationality is in nuce, in potentia.

But King George's ability to lead effectively, to *effectively* exercise practical reason in political leadership, before he could speak well, was also only there in potentia. That doesn't mean you're allowed to kill him. Rather, teach him to speak. Give him a voice.

And do the same for every other son of Adam and daughter of Eve, however young, however halting, who is called to also learn to effectively exercise practical reason, and to rule his or her own life and household, even if not an empire.

This has been a Very O'Donovan Abortion Thread, thank you, I'll get on with my work now.

sorry: bonus tweet

David (i.e. Edward VIII) "Haven't I any rights?"
Bertie (i.e. later George VI) "Many privileges"
David: "Not the same thing."

No, they're not.