Meltzerboy this is an interesting interpretation because the moment of “ensoulment” is frankly impossible to determine. I truly cannot believe a faith that has such a long tradition of careful consideration of various moral questions would believe that a baby an inch inside the mother is not human while a baby an inch outside IS human. I am wondering if this concept was determined before science, pictures inside the womb and knowledge of fetal activity…babies inside the womb sucking their thumb, twins with arms around each other, the famous photo of the baby inside the womb grasping the finger of the surgeon who was repairing a defect in utero. Surely you believe all of these are human beings? I have a particular understanding working for a pediatric heart surgeon who did many operations on babies in utero. We would meet the pregnant woman, see the big baby bump, those in the OR would see the baby and then after the birth there would be “the bump” as a beautiful child, alive and healthy thanks to the surgery.
Sadly I think Robert’s “2” is the most frequent basis for abortion. This is the secular elite viewpoint and I know, I was raised by two of them. Perhaps I feel I understand the other side because I was a part of it for the first forty years of my life. They truly do not feel that unborn babies are human. Further many of them extend this belief to a born baby that suffers from physical or mental “defects.” The term “after birth abortion” or “wrongful birth” has been coined for this version of infanticide.
Now I do understand a different belief about human beings in various stages of life. I know in your faith the Bar Mitzvah is a point of change for example or other cultures/traditions when a child moves to adulthood. But I don’t know how to say a being with all of the elements to someday be an indpendent, self sufficient human being is not a human being before that occurs.
Anyway as I said, my belief is that human life is human life at all stages, unborn, born, loved, unloved, valued or demeaned. I just don’t see any way to reconcile that any other point of view does not require an arbitrary and completely unprovable set of events. And again, this isn’t because I’m Catholic. My beliefs went from being strongly pro abortion rights to being strongly pro life long before I became a Christian, much less a Catholic Christian.
Lisa