I believe that miscarried children have a soul, however that is just my belief. And surely any child who is born and living has a soul.
However, please don’t mislead people about Church teaching. The Church does NOT teach, in ANY document about when God infuses a new life with an immortal soul. That it happens immediately when it happens is not a question, but the Church does NOT teach WHEN it happens. People have a right to know the truth about Church teaching. This does not mean the Church ever condones abortion. Of course it doesn’t.
I’m sure you can find someone who believes it happens at the moment of conception, just as I’m sure someone else can find people who say it doesn’t happen until birth, etc.
Yes, the Church DOES teach that a soul is infused at the moment of conception.
II. “BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE”
362
The human person, created in the image of God,** is a being at once corporeal and spiritual**. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.
364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”:
it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232
Man, though made of
body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. 233
365 The **unity of soul and body **is so profound that one has to consider
the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e.,
it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.
366 The Church teaches that
every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.235
382 “
Man, though made of
body and soul, is a unity” (GS 14 § 1). The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God.
2270 **Human life **must be respected and protected absolutely from the
moment of conception. **From the first moment of his existence, a human being **must be recognized as having **the rights of a person **- among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.72
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.73
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.74
2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:
You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.75
God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves.
Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.76
CONTINUED…