i’m not sure any scientist would say that a “clump of cells is really a person.” am i reading you right? personhood?

hauerwas, as far as i have read, is concerned less with the questions of personhood and more with christians practicing hospitality, even towards “clumps of cells.”

Well timed, also. The toxic, contemptuous exchanges hereabouts had nearly pushed me away from Vox Nova.

Let’s here more from writers like Hawerwas and Kicanas who don’t fit neatly into binary progressive/conservative categories.

It isn’t my faith that tells me that a clump of cells is really a person, it is science. My faith tells me that I must therefore nurture that person.

when you get people talking about blastocysts as a “cute babies,” you know you’re dealing with wildly perverse commodity fetishism.

if people — both pro-life and pro-”choice” (note that I don’t credit that position) — could better understand _why_ abortion is so horrible, we could get somewhere.

it doesn’t do any good to insist that a blastocyst is “really” a baby and that ending the life of a blastocyst is murder. it trivializes faith to say, “my ‘faith’ tells me that the clump of cells is ‘really’ a person.”

no, the clump of cells is a gift from God, in need of proper cultivation and reception. it is the refusal to receive the gift of what _could be_ a person that makes abortion so evil. it is equally the refusal to have faith that one lives in a community that welcomes the young and vulnerable.