That’s good and ok start and stand up first for what you want. Nevermind Christ did not address the word abortion directly and it never appears in Scripture. While He certainly addressed the others of which you are not starting with.
Were you at the parish around the corner from me standing in protest of war? Christ did speak of the peacemakers being blessed too you know. Or in favor of quality, affordable healthcare to take care of the sick? Oh no you could not have been because they did not have such protests. Only abortion. Other issues are hardly mentioned in several parishes I have frequented. Well I’ll take that back. The priest at the corner parish did say his answer to the poor is simply to get a job. Peace.
I suppose you haven’t read the USCCB doctrine of Social Justice either???
It can be found at
www.USCCB.org
catholic.com/library/Abortion.asp
Abortion
The Catholic Church has always condemned abortion as a grave evil. Christian writers from the first-century author of the Didache to Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life”) have maintained that the Bible forbids abortion, just as it forbids murder. This tract will provide some examples of this consistent witness from the writings of the Fathers of the Church.
As the early Christian writer Tertullian pointed out, the law of Moses ordered strict penalties for causing an abortion. We read, “If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely [Hebrew: “so that her child comes out”], but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Ex. 21:22–24).
Jesus didn’t throw this law under the prophet’s tent. He said he came to “fulfill” the law, not abolish it.
This applies the lex talionis or “law of retribution” to abortion. The lex talionis establishes the just punishment for an injury (eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, compared to the much greater retributions that had been common before, such as life for eye, life for tooth, lives of the offender’s family for one life).
The lex talionis would already have been applied to a woman who was injured in a fight. The distinguishing point in this passage is that a pregnant woman is hurt “so that her child comes out”; the child is the focus of the lex talionis in this passage. Aborted babies must have justice, too.
This is because they, like older children, have souls, even though marred by original sin. David tells us, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5, NIV). Since sinfulness is a spiritual rather than a physical condition, David must have had a spiritual nature from the time of conception.
The same is shown in James 2:26, which tells us that “the body without the spirit is dead”: The soul is the life-principle of the human body. Since from the time of conception the child’s body is alive (as shown by the fact it is growing), the child’s body must already have its spirit.
Thus, in 1995 Pope John Paul II declared that the Church’s teaching on abortion “is unchanged and unchangeable. Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors . . . I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church” (Evangelium Vitae 62).
The early Church Fathers agreed. Fortunately, abortion, like all sins, is forgivable; and forgiveness is as close as the nearest confessional.
The Didache
“The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).
The Letter of Barnabas
“The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (Letter of Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).
There are other teachings of the Church and the Early Church Fathers which I have already posted. Apparently you haven’t read them. Go to
catholic.com/library/Abortion.asp
if you are interested in hearing the absolute truth. Of course since you don’t believe in anything the Church teaches, I suppose this is a useless effort.
Jesus spoke the words, the Church has interpreted them in many tomes. Can you prove her wrong according to absolute truth?
CPA, I could answer with my faith beliefs and you might be surprised if you think pro choice folks are pro abortion. But it is not alone my faith or reason regarding when the fetus becomes a human being and life begins which should be the law of the land. I am merely 1 of over 309,500,000 in the US. Nor was I a member of the Supreme Court in 1973. I have one vote just about like the rest of us and I don’t use it to force my religious beliefs on this to make it the law of the land. You can if you so choose. But do let me know when science answers about the soul.
