Responding to the implications of "spontaneous abortion"--a challenging argument against "life at conception" in journal article: "The Scourge"

[Petaro]

Whilst we can argue forever without enough data on the number of spontaneous abortions, we have to look at what we know scientifically.
We know that there is no genetic alteration of the zygote after insemination of the egg. We know that women naturally, always give birth to humans,not spiders. So the natural conclusion is that the developing foetus has all the nature, including a soul, given by God from the moment of conception. There is no point of physical differentiation during this maturation process that can be found that could legitimise any philosophical argument against the Christian thesis that we are truly human from conception.
The distinction between the evil of our Fallen nature often described as the Problem of Evil, and any personal decision to create evil through sin has been made more than adequately in other posts. I have always found that the discovery of how fragile life is, such as the number of spontaneous abortions, awakens in me the glory of our creation by such a powerful God, and leads me to rejoice in our opportunity to glorify our God in the correct use of our Free Will; that very same Free Will aborted children undoubtedly use to claim their right to sit in the lap of the Father.I envy their baptism of the Will and glorify God in his fecund power.

 

[LiseTravis]

Here’s something worth thinking about. Here’s a hypothetical situation. Let’s say someone came up with a very convincing argument that life did in fact not begin at conception but later during the pregnancy (or even at birth). Lets say that this argument was so persuasive that every single Catholic on the planet was convinced (even the Pope). Well, that’s too bad, because it is not the people in the Catholic Church that define teaching on faith or morals, it is the Holy Spirit. The Church’s teachings CANNOT change. In this hypothetical situation people would attempt to change the Church’s teachings but by some miracle it would never become official.

Something like this did in fact happen once upon a time. I’m afraid I can’t remember which pope this was, but I’m sure some of you know the story. An apostate (or perhaps heretical; I get them mixed up) Cardinal conspired with a monarch to assassinate the then current Pope for the purpose of then procuring the Papacy for himself (apparently he was a shoe in). His promise to the Monarch was to change some teaching of the Church that they disagreed with. Upon becoming the new Pope this evil Cardinal suddenly had a change of heart and informed his former co-conspirator that as Bishop of Rome he simply could not bring himself to change this teaching. (If anyone can tell me more info on this situation I’d appreciate the help.)

The point is, a similar miracle would occur with the abortion issue even IF every last Catholic (including the Pope) were convinced that life does not begin with conception.

Excellent point! :clapping:

 

[THP]

What does matter, however, is what type of birth control they were coming off of and for how long (with Wilcox, this is known to be 1 day). It must be contrasted with subjects who never contracepted since the study may demonstrate more the lingering effects of contraception than the miscarriage rate for healthy women.

They followed these patients for 6 months. Unless the study showed that most of these miscarriages happen in the first month then you have a point, but I don’t think it showed that. In fact when women are preparing for an IVF cycle they are often put on the pill just before initiating gonadotropins, this is done to improve the chances of implantation.

This is a well designed study.

 

[donna369]

Another thought: earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, floods, hurricanes, etc., kill people all the time. Are we under moral obligation to stop them? Perhaps, but it’s futile to try because they can’t be stopped. Of course, the scale for these is much smaller, but moral obligation breaks down when something simply cannot be stopped.

very true, we can’t stop such things. our obligation is to help the survivors if we can. just as we help a woman contemplating abortion or at risk of losing her child. but we can do nothing for an event that happens without any warning and passes undetected.

 

[QuasiCatholic]

I think a lot of you guys are missing the point of the article here. The writer’s point was that because of the high rate of spontaneous abortion, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that “life begins at conception” without also believing that preventing or reducing spontaneous abortion should be a singularly important focus of scientific and medical research and resourcing.

Glad someone else got that.