Friday, August 16, 2019

A Contrarian Word :Steve King

Time for my contrarian side to show:  Seems to me people don't understand Steve King's words, as reported in this NYTimes piece.

He's wrong, of course, but there's a bit of truth there.

The issue is, if we humans had always had the means and the will to abort all fetuses what would that mean today?

People interested in genealogy know a truism: go back far enough and everyone is related.  So it makes sense that everyone has a rape, or incest, in their chain of ancestry.

Where King goes wrong is in his conclusions.  He's saying, as I understand him, if fetuses which result from rape or incest can be aborted, then everyone with rape or incest in their ancestry would be/should be dead.  That's wrong.  Suppose King David rapes Bathsheba and she becomes pregnant, a pregnancy which is aborted. That doesn't mean that neither David nor Bathsheba will have descendants.

The answer to the issue is: while nobody today would be alive, all the people who were alive would have no rape or incest in their ancestry.

S

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