by the way, you doubtless know the story of the angel with the drawn sword. Any idea what, specifically, the angel is supposed to have said to Smith?
Yeah. Practice polygamy or be killed. I don't remember the angel saying anything about producing children, though. (By the way, there may have been a "drawn sword," but I highly doubt it was the angel holding it. . . )
LOL! I'd never thought of the symbolism before...
Yes. The angel's supposed to have told Joseph Smith to practice polygamy or be destroyed. In a couple of the more detailed versions of the story, including, if I'm not mistaken, the one Joseph Smith told to Mary Rollins Lightner, the angel also specifically invokes Jacob 2:30, commanding him to raise up seed unto the Lord.
He certainly made use of biblical precedent. But what reasons did he give why the ancient patriarchs themselves practiced polygamy? And was this his sole rationale?
I don't know the answer to either question.
Well, there was also the procreative rationale, as previously mentioned. Smith gave a few reasons why the ancient patriarchs practiced polygamy--e.g., God commanded it. Another was to fulfill the promises of an innumerable seed, as discussed, for instance, in the Abraham material of D&C 132. Sarah gives Abraham Hagar to "fulfill...the promises" that his seed would be as the sands of the seashore. Smith's use of biblical precedent and claimed polygamy commandment from God are both intimately tied to his 'raising up seed' rationale for the practice.
The abortion hypothesis would seem much more likely in the absence of this rationale. Perhaps a cumulative case could be made for the limited use of abortion, but right now I don't see where the materials for such a case would come from.
Don, just to clarify, I'm not saying I believe Joseph Smith procured abortions. I don't know whether he did or not. You were explaining the reasons why you think the Sarah Pratt letter probably isn't reliable, and you list as one of your reasons that Joseph Smith procuring abortions would be unlikely in view of the fact that he had used procreation as a reason in his explanations to the women that got him in the sack, thus contradicting Sarah Pratt's claims through improbability. All I'm saying is that I don't think that it's as improbable as you do, and therefor I don't think it's a good reason to dismiss Sarah Pratt's letter. There might well be other reasons to dismiss it, and you'd know better than me, but I don't agree with this particular one.
Also, let's take stock of some facts for a moment. Joseph Smith was being extremely secretive about his practice of so-called plural "marriage" (sorry for the ubiquitous quotes in my posts on the subject, but I do not regard these "marriages" as real marriages in any reasonable sense of the word, and thus indicate that). Joseph Smith was lying to the public and most of the church, and some of its leaders, about his practice of polygamy at this time, was he not? There were denials upon denials stacked with denials. So no matter what Joseph Smith told the women he wanted to boink, he couldn't exactly get one of the single girls pregnant, could he? This would completely blow away his public denials of what he was doing.
Let me repeat that. Joseph Smith could not afford for one of his (as far as the world knew) single "wives" to actual get pregnant and carry a baby to term, could he? Aside from the fact that it might be pinned on him, the girl herself, who was still single as far as almost everyone else in the world knew, would be incredibly scandalized. So no matter what Joseph Smith was telling these girls about him wanting to have children through them, their actually getting pregnant and staying pregnant by him was extremely unlikely, was it not? Well, we have good reason to believe that Joseph was boinking at least a lot of them, and we know that boinking produces children at least a good part of the time when fertile people are involved, and we know that Emma got prego many times from Joseph Smith, so he wasn't infertile. We have no reason to suspect that all these other women happened to be barren. So what did happen to the pregnancies that should have occurred amongst Joseph Smith's so-called plural "wives"? It's very improbable, in my mind, that there weren't any, so what happened to them?
It's thinking like this which allows the abortion angle to appear a lot more possible than you seem to give it credit for.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
While Joseph Smith could have used a procreative rationale to get polygamous sex and then used abortion to cover his tracks, the latter isn't the most obvious or likely follow-up to the former, and is probably the most problematic follow-up possible .
Smith didn't have to use a procreative rationale for his polygamous relationships. He could have, instead, used other rationales that would not so strongly commit him to keeping the resulting progeny. The fact that he did use that rationale suggests that he wasn't premeditating the use of abortion. While the procreative rationale would doubtless be one of the strongest rationales in the abstract, it would cease to be so in practice the moment Smith began commanding his wives to get abortions. Why not save himself the self-undermining 180 and just use a different rationale in the first place?
Also, the fact that abortion could explain the low number of polygamy pregnancies doesn't mean that abortion [ii]is[/i], or even probably is the correct explanation. It means that abortion could explain the low number of polygamy pregnanies, and should therefore be considered as an explanation.
I can think of other possible explanations:
1) There were more Joseph Smith polygamy babies than we know. One wife who was not particularly well connected stated that she knew of three, and there is no reason to think she would have known of them all.
2) The number of actual sexual liasons was relatively low. Even a typical married couple having sex a few times a week can take months of sex at that rate to achieve pregnancy. And Smith, as church president, justice of the peace, lieutenant general, mayor, store manager, hotel manager, and real-estate broker may well not have had as much time for extracurricular activities as he might have liked. He was also the most prominent and identifiable citizen of Nauvoo, and, given the mores of the day, could hardly have let himself be seen engaged in dubious comings and goings. His movements would have needed to be carefully planned. His very prominence would have restricted him.
3) Under conditions stressful for a man, sperm counts are low. And under conditions stressful for a woman, conception is unlikely to occur. The number of rapes resulting in a conception, for instance, is, in relative terms, extremely low.
4) Many pregnancies--probably over one-third--end in miscarriage.
5) The survival rate for children during pregnancy, at birth, and in early infancy was much lower at the time; so pregnancies could have occurred without resulting in children who would have lived longed enough to be known.
6) Chance. Even low probability events occur. Suppose, for instance, that Joseph Smith's polygamous relationships were found to have produced to have produced seven male children and no female. The odds of this pattern would seem, on the face of it, to be approximately 1 in 128. Would this justify the conclusion that Smith had practiced female infanticide?
7)Other, unknown factors. How much search have you made for possible explanations before implicitly asking, "What else could it be but abortion?" Life is complex. Let's take the above example of seven male children. The odds of having a male child are not, contrary to ordinary expectation, 1 in 2. In ordinary cases, the odds of having a boy are slightly higher than of having a girl. But in the case of very high status fathers, there is evidence that they produce a much more disproportionally skewed sex-ratio, probably by overproducing "Y"-chromosome-bearing sperm.
While this specific phenomenon does nothing, of course, to explain Smith's apparent relative lack of offspring, it does point up our ignorance regarding the possibilities.
Joseph Smith's (allegedly) low number of children via polygamy could have resulted from some combination of these factors. While abortion is a possibility, it's hardly the only reasonable or default explanation, as you seem to assume.
Of course, our ignorance cuts both ways. Smith could also have used abortion and, as you've suggested, managed to "sell" this in ways we haven't considered. But the very reason to think this is probably so is undercut by the fact that there are a number of equally or superiorly plausible alternatives, only some of which are yet clear.
The problem here isn't that I give too little credit to the abortion possibility, but that, considering that it is one of a number of possibilities, is evidenced with only the weakest testimony, and fits only with difficulty the very rationale Smith used to persuade women, you give it far too much.
God, I wish we could have discussions like this in Sunday School! :-P
Don
Last edited by Guest on Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Joseph Smith could not afford for one of his (as far as the world knew) single "wives" to actual get pregnant and carry a baby to term, could he? Aside from the fact that it might be pinned on him, the girl herself, who was still single as far as almost everyone else in the world knew, would be incredibly scandalized. So no matter what Joseph Smith was telling these girls about him wanting to have children through them, their actually getting pregnant and staying pregnant by him was extremely unlikely, was it not?
Non sequitir.
How do you know Smith could not afford to / would not allow one of his single wives to carry a baby to term? Smith apparently did have babies by his single wives come to term. Pregnant Nauvoo plural wives apparently stayed at home, entirely out of the public eye. And even a known 'illegitimate' birth would not necesarily have been easily pinned on Smith. Illegitimate births happen in every community, and are rarely reflexively pinned on the community's most prominent and admired citizen.
Sethbag wrote:Let me repeat that. Joseph Smith could not afford for one of his (as far as the world knew) single "wives" to actual get pregnant and carry a baby to term, could he? Aside from the fact that it might be pinned on him, the girl herself, who was still single as far as almost everyone else in the world knew, would be incredibly scandalized. So no matter what Joseph Smith was telling these girls about him wanting to have children through them, their actually getting pregnant and staying pregnant by him was extremely unlikely, was it not? Well, we have good reason to believe that Joseph was boinking at least a lot of them, and we know that boinking produces children at least a good part of the time when fertile people are involved, and we know that Emma got prego many times from Joseph Smith, so he wasn't infertile. We have no reason to suspect that all these other women happened to be barren. So what did happen to the pregnancies that should have occurred amongst Joseph Smith's so-called plural "wives"? It's very improbable, in my mind, that there weren't any, so what happened to them?
It's thinking like this which allows the abortion angle to appear a lot more possible than you seem to give it credit for.
That is the way I've always looked at it, although I knew nothing about the Sarah Pratt letter nor did I consider abortion. I don't see that abortion is out of the question, though. We know Joseph was more than capable (didn't Emma push someone down the stairs when she found out she was preggers?) of getting one or more of his women pregnant. Given that there are no verifiable children from anyone but Emma, it stands to reason that they were either hidden (by other men acting as the father) or gotten rid of.
DonBradley wrote:How do you know Smith could not afford to / would not allow one of his single wives to carry a baby to term? Smith apparently did have babies by his single wives come to term.
DonBradley wrote:Joseph Smith's (allegedly) low number of children via polygamy could have resulted from some combination of these factors. While abortion is a possibility, it's hardly the only reasonable or default explanation, as you seem to assume.
I don't assume that Joseph Smith had abortions. My main point, in response to your posts specifically, is just that I don't believe that using the abortion angle to cast doubt on the reliability of the Sarah Pratt account is a very strong argument. That's all I'm saying. He may have used abortion a few times, or he may not. But saying that Pratt's account is unreliable because she mentioned that Joseph Smith used abortion, and you believe it is unlikely that Joseph Smith used abortion, and therefor Pratt's account is contradicted by low probability, is weak in this case, because something or set of things accounts for Joseph Smith's relatively low baby count considering all the women he probably slept with, and I think I've shown, or at least argued well, for abortion being as likely, or at least not unlikely, as a lot of other things that it could also have been. I don't think Pratt's account can be deemed unreliable because she claims Joseph Smith used abortion.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
While Joseph Smith could have used a procreative rationale to get polygamous sex and then used abortion to cover his tracks, the latter isn't the most obvious or likely follow-up to the former, and is probably the most problematic follow-up possible .
Smith didn't have to use a procreative rationale for his polygamous relationships. He could have, instead, used other rationales that would not so strongly commit him to keeping the resulting progeny. The fact that he did use that rationale suggests that he wasn't premeditating the use of abortion. While the procreative rationale would doubtless be one of the strongest rationales in the abstract, it would cease to be so in practice the moment Smith began commanding his wives to get abortions. Why not save himself the self-undermining 180 and just use a different rationale in the first place?
Also, the fact that abortion could explain the low number of polygamy pregnancies doesn't mean that abortion [ii]is[/I], or even probably is the correct explanation. It means that abortion could explain the low number of polygamy pregnanies, and should therefore be considered as an explanation.
I can think of other possible explanations:
1) There were more Joseph Smith polygamy babies than we know. One wife who was not particularly well connected stated that she knew of three, and there is no reason to think she would have known of them all.
2) The number of actual sexual liasons was relatively low. Even a typical married couple having sex a few times a week can take months of sex at that rate to achieve pregnancy. And Smith, as church president, justice of the peace, lieutenant general, mayor, store manager, hotel manager, and real-estate broker may well not have had as much time for extracurricular activities as he might have liked. He was also the most prominent and identifiable citizen of Nauvoo, and, given the mores of the day, could hardly have let himself be seen engaged in dubious comings and goings. His movements would have needed to be carefully planned. His very prominence would have restricted him.
3) Under conditions stressful for a man, sperm counts are low. And under conditions stressful for a woman, conception is unlikely to occur. The number of rapes resulting in a conception, for instance, is, in relative terms, extremely low.
4) Many pregnancies--probably over one-third--end in miscarriage.
5) The survival rate for children during pregnancy, at birth, and in early infancy was much lower at the time; so pregnancies could have occurred without resulting in children who would have lived longed enough to be known.
6) Chance. Even low probability events occur. Suppose, for instance, that Joseph Smith's polygamous relationships were found to have produced to have produced seven male children and no female. The odds of this pattern would seem, on the face of it, to be approximately 1 in 128. Would this justify the conclusion that Smith had practiced female infanticide?
7)Other, unknown factors. How much search have you made for possible explanations before implicitly asking, "What else could it be but abortion?" Life is complex. Let's take the above example of seven male children. The odds of having a male child are not, contrary to ordinary expectation, 1 in 2. In ordinary cases, the odds of having a boy are slightly higher than of having a girl. But in the case of very high status fathers, there is evidence that they produce a much more disproportionally skewed sex-ratio, probably by overproducing "Y"-chromosome-bearing sperm.
While this specific phenomenon does nothing, of course, to explain Smith's apparent relative lack of offspring, it does point up our ignorance regarding the possibilities.
Joseph Smith's (allegedly) low number of children via polygamy could have resulted from some combination of these factors. While abortion is a possibility, it's hardly the only reasonable or default explanation, as you seem to assume.
Of course, our ignorance cuts both ways. Smith could also have used abortion and, as you've suggested, managed to "sell" this in ways we haven't considered. But the very reason to think this is probably so is undercut by the fact that there are a number of equally or superiorly plausible alternatives, only some of which are yet clear.
The problem here isn't that I give too little credit to the abortion possibility, but that, considering that it is one of a number of possibilities, is evidenced with only the weakest testimony, and fits only with difficulty the very rationale Smith used to persuade women, you give it far too much.
God, I wish we could have discussions like this in Sunday School! :-P
Don
I think it's probable that Joseph Smith used some form of birth control, if not abortion. This tells me that for Joseph Smith procreation wasn't his only rationale. The rationale that he gave in the 1843 revelation was procreation, but when he approached Nancy Rigdon in 1842, procreation was not mentioned. Instead, it was that God had permitted them to have pleasure. Given this dual purpose, I think it's possible that he gave another rationale for delaying the fruition of such unions until a safer time and place. Multiple pregnancies would have made it more difficult to keep polygamy secret, and children would have provided good evidence for those who would want to prosecute him for adultery. I don't think abortion can explain all the absent children. BY married women in 1842, 1843, and several in 1844, but didn't have children from his plural marriages until 1845, although he had children by his non-plural or legally married wife in 1839, 1842, and 1844. Likewise, Emma was giving birth in 1840, 1842, and 1844. Heber C. Kimball almost had a plural child in 1842, but the child died shortly after birth. Otherwise he had no children until after Nauvoo. It seems to me quite probable that Joseph Smith and those practicing polygamy were intentionally preventing the birth of plural children, through various methods of birth control.
I do not want you to think that I am very righteous, for I am not. Joseph Smith (History of the Church 5:401)