The best kept secret about Catholicism and abortion is that the Catholic view of when the fetus becomes a person is precisely the same as that asserted in Roe v. Wade. Whatever definition one wants to posit about fetal personhood, the fact is nobody knows. To paraphrase Roe, the justices declared that science, law, philosophy and theology had not been able to answer this question and neither could the Supreme Court. If you read various Catholic documents, the same opinion emerges. Over the centuries theologians and popes have suggested when they think God might confer personhood on the fetus, and they have come up with different answers. When the fetus first moves, when it is 40 days old if it is a boy or 80 days old if it is a girl, when it is viable, when it can no longer split in two and become twins. But in the end the church says what the court says “We don’t know.”
That is a ridiculous assertion.
There is not one single papal teaching about the soul infusing a girl at 40 days and a boy at 80 days after conception.
That's what Thomas Aquinas THOUGHT. Based on the science of the day.
But Thomas Aquinas is not infallible on matters of faith and morals.
The uncertainty about "when life begins" is far more abstruse: like does it start once the sperm begins to penetrate the ovum, or once it's completely through, or once the cells begin to divide...
The Church assumes that once growth begins, there is life.
We're talking about a debate over an event that takes place in the span of twenty-four hours.
For the purposes of the abortion debate, it's not even relevant. Because the actions take place on such a microscopic level and in such a short period of time, that you can't target such a creature for abortion even if you tried. Like you can't say to yourself "hey, if I get that sperm before it completely penetrates the ovum, maybe I won't be taking a human life."
The truth, as science became more and more certain, so did the Church. We now know that life begins at conception-- that the conceptus is a human being, because they retain a morphological continuity. Animals can go through various stages and change shapes, but nothing in the animal world goes from non-living to living, from one species to another, on its own.
Of course the similarity stops there. The court says we do know that women are persons and therefore we will leave it to each of them to decide what they think about the fetus and what they think about giving their body over to its development.
You can't leave it each person to consider what they think of a human being. That's immoral. Nobody has the right to regard a human being as inferior and not worthy of life.
This position is the most condescending of all and the most ridiculous. Many women regard their fetuses as full human beings. Kissling says that they're not human beings, but doesn't have the logic or the courage of her convictions to say that these women are wrong.
No other human being is required to risk their life for another. To do so is considered crazy or heroic. A parent need not give a kidney to a dying child.
No, but a mother has a responsibility to protect her offspring and not take an object and cause his death. There's a huge difference between not wanting to save a life, and wanting to kill him.
Is it not time to focus at least to the same extent on what pregnancy means for the person whose body is occupied by the fetus as on the fetus?
Way to deflect the debate.
The debate is this.
Are all human beings equal and deserving of rights?
Yes.
Is the fetus a human being?
Yes.
Pregnancy is another matter.
Is it not time to recognize that the woman gets to consent to this visitation
VISITATION?
Visitation is when a person knocks on your door.
When YOU create the being inside of you through your own actions, that's not visitation. That's YOUR doing.
and that coercing her into providing her body for another “being” is not a routine event,
Did you ever notice that poor choices frame responsibility as "coercion".
Yes, in this society, we coerce people to respect other human beings.
A gift that must be freely offered?
Or maybe a blessing that should be freely accepted AS SUCH.
UPDATE
Just FYI
From the Merck Online Manual:
A baby goes through several stages of development, beginning as a fertilized egg. The egg develops into a blastocyst, an embryo, then a fetus.
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