According to the Zapotec doctrina (Feria 1567) that I am analysing, male and female fetuses develop for different amounts of time before they receive their souls. (Click the image to enlarge it.)
(I still don't have a lot of the grammar worked out in this section...)
This Wikipedia article says that this idea of 'ensoulment' goes back to Aristotle, though the article there says 40 days for males and 90 days for females. One consequence in the early church was that some considered the abortion of a fetus before 'ensoulment' not to be murder, but some more minor offense. So it was permissible, in some views, to abort a female fetus at a later stage than a male fetus. (Though how would someone in the early church be able to tell the sex of a fetus??)
More philosophical that the usual blog posts!
(I still don't have a lot of the grammar worked out in this section...)
This Wikipedia article says that this idea of 'ensoulment' goes back to Aristotle, though the article there says 40 days for males and 90 days for females. One consequence in the early church was that some considered the abortion of a fetus before 'ensoulment' not to be murder, but some more minor offense. So it was permissible, in some views, to abort a female fetus at a later stage than a male fetus. (Though how would someone in the early church be able to tell the sex of a fetus??)
More philosophical that the usual blog posts!
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