Abortion Issue Hits The work Scene

[Socrates]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='May 24 2005, 02:25 PM']
A "distinct living human being from conception" need not be an ensouled person. It can be a single human cell. And a chimpanzee, with whom we share 99.6 genetic sameness, is a "distinct living being from conception" too! But lacking a soul, he is simian rather than human, and thus isn't a person.

The possession of a rational soul is the basic requirement for personhood.

And as with most "the church has always taught...." arguments, they frequently turn out not be so.

Augustine tells us that no soul can live in an unformed body, so there can be no talk of murder in the case of early abortion. (see On Exodus 21,80). And Jerome tells us in his Epistle 121,4 that "The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired there external appearance and their limbs."

And just between us, the Church neither "teaches" nor "speaks." Only its very fallible members. [/quote]
Note I said "a distinct, living [b]human [/b] being."

A chimpanzee is not a human being.
A human fetus/embyo is human. A chimpanzee fetus/embryo is a chimpanzee.

How about a "littleles" of this monkey business, and a little more addressing the point!

The soul is defined as the form or "life principle" of a living thing. If a being is alive it has a soul. The embryo is alive, and no scientist would deny this fact. Therefore, it has a soul. It is a living human being. Face the facts, Littleles! (though I know that is hard for you!)

And the Church has indeed always taught that abortion is a grave sin. The question, was when this sin was murder, and when it was something else.
Jerome and Augustine were not speaking infallibly here.
The Church has never taught abortion to be acceptable.

That whole issue concerned "quikening" - it was thought that before the fetus could be felt to move around, it was not yet alive. WIth modern medical technology, we now know better.

And between us, and everyone reading the Church does indeed teach and speak through the magisterium! When the Pope proclaims dogma.

[1337 k4th0l1x0r]

Modern biology, and all science, has increased the understanding of God's Creation. Neither St. Thomas nor St. Jerome had access to ultrasound, microscope, or any other technology we take for granted today. They speculated on the moment a soul was imbued into a fetus because really they had no idea what the mechanism for pregnancy and reproduction was. For all they knew a woman showed signs of pregnancy first and a baby was created later. All they had to go on was the quickening. This is when the baby first moves inside the womb. At this point they knew for sure the baby was alive and had a soul, but before the quickening they could only speculate on. Movement was in fact the ONLY means used for knowing if someone was alive up until a few hundred years ago. The church did not have a definite (as in when abortion was unacceptable, not if) teaching on abortion until the advent of biology. It was always taught that abortion after the quickening was murder. Once everything about conception and the development of the baby was known, the Church could issue a solid declaration. In other words, we know better, or rather more, now.

Another flawed argument would be that the church used to teach it was okay to bury people alive. People who would not move or respond to stimulus were often mistaken for being dead. Checking for a pulse seems obvious to us, but such a thing was unknown up until a couple hundred years ago. The church would have funerals for these people and bury them. Does that mean that the church sanctions burying people alive? No! It happened in the past but with modern medicine we know how the body works and can accurately check for vital signs.

[Socrates]

[quote name='1337 k4th0l1x0r' date='May 24 2005, 03:01 PM'] The church did not have a definite (as in when abortion was unacceptable, not if) teaching on abortion until the advent of biology. [/quote]
The Church has never considered abortion at any time to be [b]acceptable[/b]! The question was at what point abortion was murder, rather than another crime.

For more on this, go [url="http://www.catholic.com/library/abortion.asp"]here.[/url]

Edited May 24, 2005 by Socrates

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='May 24 2005, 03:25 PM']The possession of a rational soul is the basic requirement for personhood.[/quote]
This is false. "Personhood" is a legal concept, and I doubt that legal documents ever refer to a "rational soul."

The fact is, the basic requirement for personhood is whatever the lawyers/judges decide it to be. At various times in history, Jews, blacks, and pre-born children have been denied legal protection as "persons" under the law.

Some people have attempted (and failed) to use science to prove that various undesireables (e.g. Jews, blacks, fetuses) are not fully human. Because science fails to show such a distinction, they look to lawyers for fancy ways to deny some humans their legal rights.

Regarding your chimpanzee example, you are also confusing terms. First, you claim that monkeys lack a soul. The monkey has a soul; but it does not have an immortal soul. Second, the "99.6% genetic sameness" measure does not mean that a chimpanzee is "almost" a person. In fact, our laws protect (as persons) legal entities (e.g. corporations) that have 0.0% genetic sameness to humans. So, DNA similarities can't be used as a determinant for legal personhood.

[quote name='LittleLes']"And Jerome tells us in his Epistle 121,4 that "The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired there external appearance and their limbs."[/quote]

(Edit)
I saw this quote from Religious Tolerance.org. St. Jerome is quoted on the same page, saying that even those who "drink potions to ensure sterility...are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived."

If you could provide some more information about this quote (other than the part about "Epistle 121, 4"), that would be helpful. There is a danger when sketchy descriptions are used to specify sources.
(/Edit)

(Edit: I found [url="http://www.ccel.org/fathers/NPNF2-06/"]this (link)[/url] which includes a summary of the Letter CXXI to Algasia, but I haven't found the complete text).

(Edit #2)
Looking over the scriptural questions asked in this letter, others have proposed that the quoted text may have been taken from the answer about [url="http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/matthew/matthew24.htm#v19"]Matthew 24:19 (link)[/url]. This reinforces the importance of getting the context of the quote.
(/Edit #2)
[quote name='LittleLes']Augustine tells us that no soul can live in an unformed body, so there can be no talk of murder in the case of early abortion. (see On Exodus 21,80). [/quote]
Well, someone has already answered this ([url="http://www.life.org.nz/abortionreligiouskeyissuesromancatholicism.htm"]link[/url]):
[quote]From the fourth century onwards, distinctions came to be drawn. Augustine, has been quoted as permitting abortion because a "soul cannot live in an unformed body," thus early abortion could not be murder since no soul had been destroyed. (On Exodus, 21, 80) Despite that statement, Augustine also warned against the terrible crime of "the murder of an unborn child" (On Marriage, 1.17.15).[/quote]
In general, I've found that "ReligiousTolerance.org" is not particularly tolerant of Catholicism--not to mention most established religions. Their positions and "facts" usually need to be scrutinized to insure that the quotes are not either misrepresentations or simply fictitious. For these reasons, I'd be careful before trusting their sources.

Edited May 24, 2005 by Mateo el Feo

[1337 k4th0l1x0r]

[quote name='Socrates' date='May 24 2005, 03:28 PM'] The Church has never considered abortion at any time to be [b]acceptable[/b]! The question was at what point abortion was murder, rather than another crime.

For more on this, go [url="http://www.catholic.com/library/abortion.asp"]here.[/url] [/quote]
I did not suggest (or mean to suggest) that the church taught that abortion was acceptable. Perhaps I phrased my sentence poorly. The church did not know when abortion was considered killing another human being or merely stopping a pregnancy. It is known today that an individual human being exists throughout the pregnancy. Such information was not known until a few hundred years ago. They knew something was alive at the point of quickening, but before that they could only speculate. After the quickening it was murder, but before that they were unsure if a living human being existed. A crime is committed if the pregnancy was aborted at this time, but it was not deemed to be murder. Since we know that life begins at conception we can separate the sin of contraception from the sins that hinder or terminate the life of the baby. Before biology the barrier was a bit fuzzier but nonetheless both abortion and contraception have always been considered sinful.

Edit: this line of reasoning requires you to step outside what we know through modern science. Suppose you didn't know anything about biology. You see a pregnant woman. You know that in several months she will give birth to a child, as you've seen this before. You walk up to the woman and place your hand on her belly. If you feel a kick, then you know there is a live baby insider her. If you were to punch her in the belly right then you would have committed murder in the eyes of society back then. The child was known to be alive. Now suppose you didn't feel anything when you put your hand on the woman's belly (nor had the woman felt anything yet). If you punch her, did you kill a child? In our modern view, definitely yes, but to someone in the middle ages the answer is uncertain. It is known at the quickening that the baby is alive, but before? Perhaps a woman would swell up for a couple months in preparation for carrying a child. There are many things people speculated on about what happened before the quickening. It was all speculation. The church taught that killing a fetus after the quickening was sinful not because the baby had moved, but because it was killing another living human being. They were not sure that another living human being was being killed before the quickening. It was still considered a crime as it kept the parents of the child from having a child.

The point of all this? To say that the church considered abortion after the quickening as murder for several years is not a denial of the modern teaching, but a stage in the development of it. The core teaching has not changed: it is gravely wrong to murder another human being. Biology has presented evidence that a living human is formed at conception. The teaching on abortion is not some specialized exception in Catholic morality. It is a piece of the teaching on the sanctity and respect for all human life in all stages of life.

[Mateo el Feo]

For a more thorough treatment of personhood, I'd recommend the following book:

[url="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0898707862/qid=1116967852/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-9988346-7059021"]Healing the Culture: A Commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom and the Life Issues[/url]
by Robert Spitzer, SJ

[Jake Huether]

[quote name='Mateo el Feo' date='May 24 2005, 02:48 PM'] This is false. "Personhood" is a legal concept, and I doubt that legal documents ever refer to a "rational soul."

The fact is, the basic requirement for personhood is whatever the lawyers/judges decide it to be. At various times in history, Jews, blacks, and pre-born children have been denied legal protection as "persons" under the law.

Some people have attempted (and failed) to use science to prove that various undesireables (e.g. Jews, blacks, fetuses) are not fully human. Because science fails to show such a distinction, they look to lawyers for fancy ways to deny some humans their legal rights.

Regarding your chimpanzee example, you are also confusing terms. First, you claim that monkeys lack a soul. The monkey has a soul; but it does not have an immortal soul. Second, the "99.6% genetic sameness" measure does not mean that a chimpanzee is "almost" a person. In fact, our laws protect (as persons) legal entities (e.g. corporations) that have 0.0% genetic sameness to humans. So, DNA similarities can't be used as a determinant for legal personhood.


Well, someone has already answered this ([url="http://www.life.org.nz/abortionreligiouskeyissuesromancatholicism.htm"]link[/url]):

In general, I've found that "ReligiousTolerance.org" is not particularly tolerant of Catholicism--not to mention most established religions. Their positions and "facts" usually need to be scrutinized to insure that the quotes are not either misrepresentations or simply fictitious. For these reasons, I'd be careful before trusting their sources. [/quote]
Wow! As usual... Very well written.

Thanks for your most valuable input.

God bless you.

[Old_Joe]

A person's a person no matter how small. That was Dr. Seuss's teaching about the Whos, tiny people who lived on a speck of dust and therefore were too small to be seen, but they existed nonetheless and could be heard by anyone listening. To say that a embryo or a fetus (which means child or offspring in Latin) is not human is an instrinsic evil and detracts from the dignity of human persons.

First of all this is not a new debate. Early Christians defended against the accusations of infanticide, which is ironic because the accusers themselves were practioners of infanticide. Tertullian, an ecclesiastical writer from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, had this to say about the unborn, "Anything that can be a man, is a man already." This means that even though an unborn child is not fully developed, will become a fully developed, thinking, acting, feeling human being if given the chance. In fact human beings don't reach full development until early-mid 20's, even then human beings continue to develop. To say that a tiny bundle of human cells is not alive is not only morally wrong, but also scientifically invalid. One of the first things that we learn in Biology is Cell Theory that is, cells are the smallest units of life. To say that human embryos are not alive is an attempt to justify abortion by making them little more than nothing. Something else that we learn in Biology are the signs of life. We learn that living things carry out metabolism, grow, learn, reproduce, etc. Every unborn human being does all of these things. Ignoring this means to deny fact. Someone could take this even further by saying that eggs and sperm can indeed become human beings if given the chance. One could go still further by saying that they have human DNA.

In defending the unborn, there's a few things we need to be careful of. There are a number of genetic disorders that arise from a lack or a surplus of chromosomes, such as Down's Syndrome or Turner's Syndrome. To say that a human being only has 46 chromosomes makes people with these disorders something other than human. Such a statement is inhuman.

[Old_Joe]

[quote name='MilesChristi' date='May 23 2005, 12:31 PM']
Based purely on biology, your coworkers are absolutely wrong. From the moment of conception a new individual life, distinct from both the mother and the father, comes into being. Biologically, what is the difference between a fetus in its first week and a 27 year old man? Only time and nourishment. Both have the 46 chromosomes found in humans. With time and nutrition provided by the mother, the fetus grows and develops; however, there is nothing else added to the fetus after conception which would make it human at a later time. Life clearly begins at conception. [/quote]
Sorry, I didn't mean to call you inhuman or anything with the last paragraph in my previous post. You are right. I just wanted to bring something else into the discussion.

[Guest OREMUS]

"You formed my inmost being; You knit me in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13; NAB). God has formed us, God has purpose for us. While science and biology play and integral and vital role in the crusade against abotion, we cannot forget that every being at conception (as the Church teaches) has a soul. To destroy that person in the womb is annihilation of a human soul. To interfere with life's ordained course is a sin. We can see this in Genesis 38 where Onan prevents fertilization by wasting "his seed on the ground to avoid contributing offspring..." (Genesis 38:9; NAB). The Lord was so upset with Onan's actions that He took Onan's life! The unborn are precious, for "did not He who made me in the womb make him? Did not the same One fashion us before our birth?" (Job 31:15; NAB).

The World Health Organization estimates that there are about 46 million abortions every year worldwide. That’s approximately 1.5 babies a second. This is not simply murder, it’s genocide. Clearly abortion is the systematic massacring of an entire group of people: the unborn; and this group has no voice of its own. We have to be that voice.

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Socrates' date='May 24 2005, 02:45 PM'] Note I said "a distinct, living [b]human [/b] being."

A chimpanzee is not a human being.
A human fetus/embyo is human.  A chimpanzee fetus/embryo is a chimpanzee.

How about a "littleles" of this monkey business, and a little more addressing the point!

The soul is defined as the form or "life principle" of a living thing.  If a being is alive it has a soul.  The embryo is alive, and no scientist would deny this fact.  Therefore, it has a soul.  It is a living human being.  Face the facts, Littleles!  (though I know that is hard for you!)

And the Church has indeed always taught that abortion is a grave sin.  The question, was when this sin was murder, and when it was something else.
Jerome and Augustine were not speaking infallibly here.
The Church has never taught abortion to be acceptable.

That whole issue concerned "quikening" - it was thought that before the fetus could be felt to move around, it was not yet alive.  WIth modern medical technology, we now know better.

And between us, and everyone reading the Church does indeed teach and speak through the magisterium!  When the Pope proclaims dogma. [/quote]


(1) The term human or simian are subdivisions of primate. There is a minor genetic and chromosomal difference.

(2) Your insistance on the term "human" seems to be an attempt to presuppose personhood even in individual single cells. There is absolutely no evidence that personhood occurs at fertilization. That's only the preconception of a belief system, and is contrary to Catholic scholastic philosophy which insists on individualization as a precondition for personhood.

Are you aware of the difference between an animal soul (as in chimpanzee) and a human soul eventually included in a human being after its purely animal soul? Even Aquinas recognized that succession.

(3) I'm addressing precisely the point. Even the Church's scholastic concepts as well as its earlier teaching do not accept the theory of "immediate animation."

(4) Please note that "the life principle" also animates the human cells that I might extract from myself and grow in culture. Are you now claiming that these automatically possess an immortal soul and are in need of baptism? They are unquestionably alive (ie possess an animal soul) and are unquestionably human

(5) Jerome and Augustine were reflecting the thinking of their time the same as we are reflecting the thinking of our time. (Did you ever notice the claims for an "infallible" church teaching or even an ordinary church teaching disappear once the error is recognized? )

What I disproved was the assertion that the Church had "always taught" that abortion was wrong. I was not arguing the rightness or wrongness of Jerome's and Augustine's teachings. Just the fact.

(6) On the contrary, fundamentally we don't "know better" at all. All we have is a better understanding of the biology involved. But if the concept that a complete chromosome set in a living cell is the same as ensoulment is correct, then all our tissue cultures have individual immortal souls and need to be baptized!

(7) And I have already demonstrated that the magisterium can be in error, as in its approval of the moral legitimacy of slavery based on its interpretation of scripture and the natural law. (And the earth does move around the sun no matter what the magisterium tells you. )

LittleLes

Edited May 25, 2005 by LittleLes

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='May 24 2005, 09:42 PM']There is absolutely no evidence that personhood occurs at fertilization.[/quote]
Personhood is a legal construct! How can one show evidence of personhood? And if you want to restrict the legal personhood of some group, how hard is it to simply massage your definition until it excludes those who you don't want?

[quote name='LittleLes' date='May 24 2005, 09:42 PM']That's only the preconception of a belief system, and is contrary to its own scholastic philosophy which insists on individualization as a precondition for personhood.[/quote]
It sounds like you're trying to convince us with a preponderance of SAT words. Speaka da English, pleeze.

Edited May 25, 2005 by Mateo el Feo

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Mateo el Feo' date='May 24 2005, 09:19 PM'] Personhood is a legal construct!  How can one show evidence of personhood?  And if you want to restrict the legal personhood of some group, how hard is it to simply massage your definition until it excludes those who you don't want?


It sounds like you're trying to convince us with a preponderance of SAT words.  Speaka da English, pleeze. [/quote]
(1) Scholastic philosophy is the philosphical system used by the Church. It is system taught in seminaries and other Catholic institutions.

(2) A rational individual is a person. Personhood is NOT solely a legal construct.

(3) Since the immaterial soul is said to be created by God, it is not the result of a biological (material) action of the parents, as would be the "animal" soul. Therefore, the claim that as soon as there is a genetically complete cell of the human species, there is an immortal soul is unfounded.

If one claims that there is ensoulment automatically is this case, then each somatic (skin) cell containing a nucleus which has a complete set of human chromosomes and can be cloned automatically has an immortal soul.

(4) And again quoting Fr. Karl Rahner ,SJ: "It cannot be inferred from the Church's dogmatic definitions that it would be contrary to faith to assume that the leap to spirit-person happens only during the course of the embryo's development. No theologian would claim the ability to prove that interrupting pregnancy is in every case the murder of human being.

(5) And I don't want to put Socrates on the spot, but if he has a "magisterial" teaching claiming immediate ensoulment of the zygote, which evidently Rahner didn't know about, perhaps he will share it with us.

Edited May 25, 2005 by LittleLes

[Mateo el Feo]

I didn't have any trouble with the individual SAT words. It was the way that you threw them together that didn't make sense.

[quote name='LittleLes'](4) And again quoting Fr. Karl Rahner ,SJ: "It cannot be inferred from the Church's dogmatic definitions that it would be contrary to faith to assume that the leap to spirit-person happens only during the course of the embryo's development. No theologian would claim the ability to prove that interrupting pregnancy is in every case the murder of human being.[/quote]
Well, I've already quoted St. Augustine. That's the little-known theologian you quoted earlier. Some claim him to be a doctor, though I don't know if his teachings are as great as the wise Fr. Rahner. LOL
[quote name='St. Augustine' date=' On Marriage, Book 1, Chaper 17']Sometimes, indeed, this lustful cruelty, or; if you please, cruel lust, resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain before it was born.[/quote]
([url="http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF1-05/npnf1-05-27.htm#P3936_1489853"]link[/url])

He speaks of offspring that is "advancing to life." We know that cell division begins to happen (i.e. advancing to life) immediately after the sperm and ovum meet. This "advancing to life" begins even before implantation. If the embryo isn't a person, then why would St. Augustine describe it as being "slain"?

Regardless of the definition of "person," science does prove that human life begins at the moment of conception. The only question occurs when pro-abortion lawyers want to restrict the definition of "person" to exclude pre-born children. This was the same way that blacks and Jews were stripped of their personhood.

[quote name='LittleLes']If one claims that there is ensoulment automatically is this case, then each somatic (skin) cell containing a nucleus which has a complete set of human chromosomes and can be cloned automatically has an immortal soul.[/quote]
Ignoring this comparison, legal "personhood" is not dependent on the presence of an immortal soul. If you can find a legal document (from USA) that refers to the presence of an immortal soul as a determinant for the status of "personhood," I'd like to see that document.

Atheists deny the presence of an immortal soul at all stages of life. So does that mean that no human being is a person to them?

[quote name='LittleLes'](2) A rational individual is a person. Personhood is NOT solely a legal construct.[/quote]
Personhood of undesireable human beings is only seriously questioned in the legal realm. But, for a more complete definition of the term in the philosophical realm, [url="http://www.lifeprinciples.net/MessagePersonhood.html"]see this link from LifePrinciples.net[/url].

[Socrates]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='May 24 2005, 08:42 PM']

(1) The term human or simian are subdivisions of primate.  There is a minor genetic and chromosomal difference.

(2) Your insistance  on the term "human" seems to be an attempt to presuppose  personhood even in individual single cells. There is absolutely no evidence that personhood occurs at fertilization. That's only the preconception of a belief system, and is contrary to Catholic scholastic philosophy which insists on individualization as a precondition for personhood.

Are you aware of the difference between an animal soul (as in chimpanzee) and a human soul eventually included in a human being after its purely animal soul? Even Aquinas recognized that succession.

(3) I'm addressing precisely the point. Even the Church's scholastic concepts as well as its earlier teaching do not accept the theory of "immediate animation."

(4) Please note that "the life principle" also animates the human cells that I might extract from myself and grow in culture. Are you now claiming that these automatically possess an immortal soul and are in need of baptism? They are unquestionably alive (ie possess an animal soul) and are unquestionably human

(5) Jerome and Augustine were reflecting the thinking of their time the same as we are reflecting the thinking of our time. (Did you ever notice the claims for an "infallible"  church teaching or even an ordinary church teaching disappear once the error is recognized? ) 

What I disproved was the assertion that the Church had "always taught" that abortion was wrong. I was not arguing the rightness or wrongness of Jerome's and Augustine's teachings. Just the fact.

(6) On the contrary,  fundamentally we don't "know better" at all. All we have is a better understanding of the biology involved. But if the concept that a complete chromosome set in a living cell is the same as ensoulment is correct, then all our tissue cultures have individual immortal souls and need to be baptized!

(7) And I have already demonstrated that the magisterium can be in error, as in its approval of the moral legitimacy of slavery based on its interpretation of scripture and the natural law. (And the earth does move around the sun no matter what the magisterium tells you. )

LittleLes [/quote]
(1) More evasive monkey business unrelated to the topic of abortion.

(2) The human fetus is a human. What other species is it? It is alive and it is human, therefore, it is a human being. Apparently, you want to try the common trick of applying other criteria for personhood, claiming that some human beings are not persons.

(3) You're dodging the issue. Where does the Church teach that abortion is morally acceptable? (Why you should even care what Catholic teaching on this is is beyond me, as you flatly reject the teaching of the Catholic Church, and even of basic Christianity!)
A fetus is alive (therefore animated).

(4) These cells do not naturally grow into an adult human being.

(5) Neither Jerome nor Augustine condoned abortion, but regarded it as abominable.

Jerome:

"I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).

(6) We know that the embryo is a distinct living creature with its own set of dna (distinct from the mothers), and soon after its own blood type (sometimes distinct from mother's), its own beating heart, its own brainwaves. It is a living human person, not a part of the mother's body. To deny this is to be wilfully blind. (something you seem to specialize in, Littleles!)

(7) As usual, you evade the issue, by turning your post into another tired and irrational rant against the Church. You have demonstated no such thing and have been reputedly shown to be wrong about this. For a refutation, [url="http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9907fea2.asp"]read this.[/url]

Again, at what time does a human being's existance begin according to you?

Edited May 25, 2005 by Socrates

[Norseman82]

[quote name='KobeScott8' date='May 23 2005, 09:09 AM'] But any advice could be useful. [/quote]
My advice is to carry around a picture of an aborted baby and if you can't get in a word edgewise, show them the picture.


In the breakroom, of course....

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Socrates' date='May 25 2005, 11:57 AM']

The human fetus is a human. What other species is it? It is alive and it is human, therefore, it is a human being. Apparently, you want to try the common trick of applying other criteria for personhood, claiming that some human beings are not persons.

(3) You're dodging the issue. Where does the Church teach that abortion is morally acceptable? (Why you should even care what Catholic teaching on this is is beyond me, as you flatly reject the teaching of the Catholic Church, and even of basic Christianity!)


(5) Neither Jerome nor Augustine condoned abortion, but regarded it as abominable.

Jerome:

"I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).

We know that the embryo is a distinct living creature with its own set of dna (distinct from the mothers), and soon after its own blood type (sometimes distinct from mother's), its own beating heart, its own brainwaves. It is a living human person, not a part of the mother's body. To deny this is to be wilfully blind. (something you seem to specialize in, Littleles!)

[/quote]
(1) It's alive! It's human. Therefore, it is a human being! True, but not yet a person.

My skin cells are alive and human also. And they each have the same genetic content of the embryo. Does that make each of them a person?

(2) And again the "unique DNA, " therfore an individual person argument. What about identical twins (monozygotes) which have the same DNA? Do they share a soul?

(3) It appears that both Augustine and Jerome were ambivalent on the question of abortion as we know it.

Augustine tells us that no soul can live in an unformed body, so there can be no talk of murder in the case of early abortion. (see On Exodus 21,80). And Jerome tells us in his Epistle 121,4 that "The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired there external appearance and their limbs."

(4) The Church did not teach that abortion was murder in all cases. Please note that until 1917, canon law did not proscribe excommunication for abortions performed before the 80 day following conception, because the traditional teaching claimed ensoulment occured at day 40 for the male and day 80 for the female. Since the sex of the products of conception could not be determined, the presumption was that murder was unprovable.

[Aloysius]

yeah, before we specified it as murder it was a sexual sin. it's still always and everywhere evil.

this is a matter of scientific error in the past. Aquinas et al. believed we started out in the womb as a vegetable, became an animal, and then became a human. we obviously know nowadays that every detail is already determined by the genetic information contained in the embryo and as such can say with Turtullian "He who will be man is man already".

before then it was a sexual sin on the same par as contraception, always taught to be evil. it was given allowances baseed on faulty scientific understanding.

now it is considered murder because scientific knowledge advances and we realize that the entirety of the human person is contained within the embryo, the only thing needed is nutrition to make it develop. well, that's us in a nutshel, our entire human person exists here and the only thing needed to make us grow into the next stage is nutrition.

if we started out as vegetables, it would not be murder to abort; Aquinas et al. were thus correct. if we were animals, there would be no murder in aborting;p Aquinas et al. were thus correct. Scientific advances show that from the moment of the embryo the entirety of the physical human person is contained within genetic information and thus at that point we are human, not vegetable or animal.

[jmjtina]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='May 25 2005, 09:54 PM'] (1) It's alive! It's human. Therefore, it is a human being! True, but not yet a person.

My skin cells are alive and human also. And they each have the same genetic content of the embryo. Does that make each of them a person?

[/quote]
The skin cells are [u][i]human[/i][/u] skin cells.

It is not a human.

What makes a human a person then?

[jmjtina]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='May 25 2005, 10:07 PM'] now it is considered murder because scientific knowledge advances and we realize that the entirety of the human person is contained within the embryo, the only thing needed is nutrition to make it develop. well, that's us in a nutshel, our entire human person exists here and the only thing needed to make us grow into the next stage is nutrition.

[/quote]
here here.