Abortion Issue Hits The work Scene

[Jake Huether]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='May 24 2005, 10:21 AM'] Hi Socrates,

It is apparent from your question that you are confusing two different things: "human life" and "personhood" (or ensoulment).

Each of the cells growing in my body, which also can be removed and grown in tissue cultures, is "human life" strictly speaking. And each daughter (offspring) cell would be "new life." But I doubt very much doubt you would want to argue that they are "persons" or ensouled human beings.

The traditional Catholic teaching- Aquinas accepted Aristotle's teaching - is that ensoulment (or personhood) occurred at forty days after conception for males and eighty days for females. This changed in the late 1800's. While the timing was off, the concept of a zygote being different from a person was not. Also, that ensoulment occurs when the newly formed body is able to receive it.

The basic philosophical concept here is that there cannot be a person until there is an individual. And individualization does not occur until about day 12 following fertilization.

A number of biologically trained theologians recognize this distinction. But, since absolute certitude is not possible, we have to be guided by "probabilism."

"The embryological view. In humans, identical twinning can occur as late as day 12 pc. Such twinning produces two individuals with different lives. Even conjoined ("Siamese") twins can have different personalities. Thus, a single individuality is not fixed earlier than day 12. (In religious terms, the two individuals have different souls). Some medical texts consider the stages before this time as a "pre-embryonic". This view is expressed by scientists such as Renfree (1982) and Grobstein (1988) and has been endorsed theologically by Ford (1988), Shannon and Wolter (1990), and McCormick (1991), among others. (Such a view would allow contraception, "morning after pills", and contragestational agents, but not abortion after two weeks). "

(In some earlier posts I think I used the term "gamete" (sex cells), when I meant "zygote" or the earliest fertilized cell containing the full genetic complement.

Littleles [/quote]
But we know not when ensoulment takes place. While great saints, theologians and scientists have speculated and hypothesized, none have proven. And the Church hasn't taught...

And thus we cannot say that abortion is okay anytime after fertilization (or in the case of cloning, etc., the instance when the necessary ingredients for individual human life have been combined or whatever) since ensoulment can accur anytime after. If you say that abortion is okay up to 12 days after this, then your only argument in the face of God at Judgment would be ignorance. Although, you would have known of the possibility of ensoulment happening before the 12 day period due to the lack of concrete teaching and / or evidence, in which case even ignorance is inexcusable. This is precisely why St. Thomas, while at the same time accepting the "40 day" rule, never taught contrary to the Church's age old Teaching against abortion.

True, a zygote, may not receive a soul immediately, but then who's to say an embryo, fetus, child, teen, young adult, etc. has received it yet?? These are all merely stages in development.

While Aristotle or others may have hypothisized based on when "twinning" occurs, we must remember that souls are spirits, they do not occupy space. So, why would it be impossible for a pre-"twinned" zygote to have been given the necessary two souls - as God is all knowing!?

Point being... we as humans will never be able to scientifically / physically calculate a Spiritual reality, unless God reveals its reality being assosiated with a physical event - like the Sacraments.

God, as yet, has not revealed to us the exact moment of ensoulment being related to a physical event. We only know that ensoulment DOES happent, and that it happens AT or AFTER fetilization... And only through Scripture do we have any specific teaching or proof of it being constrained to BEFORE birth, when Jesus says to these [children] the Kingdome of Heaven belongs.

[jezic]

tell them that people are being murdered everyday .... later add by abortion (murder)

[Socrates]

The fact is the issue of "ensoulment" is irrelevant to the morality of abortion. The Church has always taught that abortion at any time is a grave sin.

Aquinas, etc. lived in a time before modern medicine, during which little was known about the very early stages of human development, and the issue of time of "ensoulment" was speculation, rather than dogma.
Today it is known as scientific fact, that there is a distinct, living, human being from conception.

Again, if a human being is not a "person" from the beginning, at what point does he become a "person"? What is the criteria for "personhood"? Who decides this?

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Jake Huether' date='May 24 2005, 12:35 PM'] But we know not when ensoulment takes place. While great saints, theologians and scientists have speculated and hypothesized, none have proven. And the Church hasn't taught...

And thus we cannot say that abortion is okay anytime after fertilization (or in the case of cloning, etc., the instance when the necessary ingredients for individual human life have been combined or whatever) since ensoulment can accur anytime after. If you say that abortion is okay up to 12 days after this, then your only argument in the face of God at Judgment would be ignorance. Although, you would have known of the possibility of ensoulment happening before the 12 day period due to the lack of concrete teaching and / or evidence, in which case even ignorance is inexcusable. This is precisely why St. Thomas, while at the same time accepting the "40 day" rule, never taught contrary to the Church's age old Teaching against abortion.

True, a zygote, may not receive a soul immediately, but then who's to say an embryo, fetus, child, teen, young adult, etc. has received it yet?? These are all merely stages in development.

While Aristotle or others may have hypothisized based on when "twinning" occurs, we must remember that souls are spirits, they do not occupy space. So, why would it be impossible for a pre-"twinned" zygote to have been given the necessary two souls - as God is all knowing!?

Point being... we as humans will never be able to scientifically / physically calculate a Spiritual reality, unless God reveals its reality being assosiated with a physical event - like the Sacraments.

God, as yet, has not revealed to us the exact moment of ensoulment being related to a physical event. We only know that ensoulment DOES happent, and that it happens AT or AFTER fetilization... And only through Scripture do we have any specific teaching or proof of it being constrained to BEFORE birth, when Jesus says to these [children] the Kingdome of Heaven belongs. [/quote]
Hi Jake,

Yes. You make a good argument. And I certainly argee that each zygote should be treated with respect, but not given the same status as a person who definitely exists.

Again, quoting Karl Rahner (I hope I've spelled it right this time):

"But it would be intrinsically thinkable that, if we presuppose a serious positive doubt that the experimental (embroyotic) material was really a person, there would be reasons for an experiment that from a rational perspective are stronger than the uncertain right of a person whose existence is subject to doubt."

My argument when facing God would be that in the case of uncertainity, we are bound to act on what we know to be certain. I think He'd agree.

(Actually, you are opening a larger question about how to make moral decisions in the face of uncertainty. This would involve probabalism, probabilorism, equiprobabilism, compensationalism, tutorism (sp?), and, what I think is the correct approach, proportionalism).

Good post on your part!
Les

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Socrates' date='May 24 2005, 01:14 PM'] The fact is the issue of "ensoulment" is irrelevant to the morality of abortion.  The Church has always taught that abortion at any time is a grave sin.

Aquinas, etc. lived in a time before modern medicine, during which little was known about the very early stages of human development, and the issue of time of "ensoulment" was speculation, rather than dogma.
Today it is known as scientific fact, that there is a distinct, living, human being from conception.

Again, if a human being is not a "person" from the beginning, at what point does he become a "person"?  What is the criteria for "personhood"?  Who decides this? [/quote]

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. At a certain point, the soul is infused by God. Being immaterial, it does not come from the parents. But it is very doubtful that this happens at fertilization before "individualization" has occurred.

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.

Edited May 24, 2005 by LittleLes

[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.