DON’T elect that would-be baby killer Obama.
It has been said before, and will be said again:
You are not voting for the Pope, or the next Messiah.
USA is not, and G_d help us, never shall be a Christian Caliphate.
Of the people
By the people
For the people
Or something very much like that, I believe.
As for when life begins: We do not know.
Best estimates are a few million years after the Earth became cool enough to support liquid water.
But that is not the context you are trying to define, even if that is what your words mean.
The fusion of a spermatazoan and an oocite is not the beginning of life.
It is the beginning of the possibility of a new individual, or several.
Yes, it is certainly the beginning of a new form of, (in our context, here), humanity.
You might call it a human being, for it is definitely human, and definitely a being, ie alive.
However, by that definition, both spermatazoa, and oocites are also human beings.
If you want to define absolutes, then your language needs to be absolute.
Mother Church says, and this is true, that the beginning of every new human life is conception.
That is, the cause of A is B.
That does not mean that for every B there will be an A, or that one B causes one A.
There is much between B and A.
Actually one might say, more accurately:
B:=> n x A, where n is any whole number from zero to, possibly more than four.
So conception does not initiate an individual, for the zygote is free to fission ito identical siblings.
Mother Church has agonized much over when the new individual receives its imortal soul, and left the verdict open.
His Holiness, JP23, in his epistle favoured conception, buit that was just his opinion. You might agree, or disagree.
This is all angels dancing on the head of a pin.
It is undefined, and undefinable.
No-one has yet come up with a better guess than the quickening, or about week 16.
Scientifically, this is feasible, for it represents the infant beginning to run on internal systems, ie, it is the beginning of its independence.
It is certainly a major improvement on birth.
So logically, when, and under what circumstances might a pregnancy be terminated?
1/ When there is a real and present mortal danger to the mother, and thereby to the pregnancy. For the pregnancy cannot be saved, and the mother will also be lost.
2/ Where the pregnancy will not produce a viable delivery, ie, the foetus is ancephalic.
3/ Getting into grey areas: where the pregnancy will result in a hopelessly disabled birth.
Honest judgements would, to varying degrees, support the above.
Below this line, ther are no simple judgements.
Inconvenience, non mortal danger, non-hopeless disability.
Let the objector pay.
If the mother is incapable of raising a severely disabled infant, then thoe who insist that the pregnancy must come to term, are responsible for the upkeep, and development of that disabled child.
In nature, a disabled infant would rapidly come to a sticky end, and so be removed from the genetic pool. Euthanasia is surely preferable to a sticky end.
Pre-quickening termination is a suitable means of euthanasing non viable pregnancies, and involves no suffering to the foetus, as there is then no operable nervous system.
Yes, in the Kingdom of G-d, where non of these bad things happen, let there be no abortions.
But Our Lord also said that in the Kingdom, there would be no marrying, or giving in marriage, no birth, and no death, for we will all be as the angels.
But for now, we have this precious planet to care for, and we must follow the rule imposed upon us by the limited resources of this blessed blue sphere
Don’t get me wrong,
Abortion is not an acceptable means of birth control.
There is only one acceptable means of birth control.
ps.
My view is that once the infant has quickened, it is a baby waiting to be born, and, every effort should be made to ensure a viable live birth, once this moment has passed.
That means that if a termination is then required for urgent reasons, for the welfare of the mother, it must be put off as long as is physically possible, so that the premature nbirth has the best possible chance of survival.
Partial birth termination is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
