Per #3. A body becomes “ensouled” when it draws its first breath?
This opens the way to “full birth abortion.” Just put a plastic bag over the baby’s head as he’s being born.
No breath, no soul, no murder.
Why our concepts of when human personhood begins should depend on the pre-scientific musings of ancient Hebrew priests is beyond me.
BTW, the Catholic Church long considered human life to begin at “quickening,” when the mother becomes able to feel the baby moving. Their change of this position was based on better scientific understanding of the pregnancy process.
Per #3. A body becomes “ensouled” when it draws its first breath?
This opens the way to “full birth abortion.” Just put a plastic bag over the baby’s head as he’s being born.
No breath, no soul, no murder.
Why our concepts of when human personhood begins should depend on the pre-scientific musings of ancient Hebrew priests is beyond me.
{that wasn't the logic of a majority of those priests...contra what J. Neil Schulman says...)
BTW, the Catholic Church long considered human life to begin at “quickening,” when the mother becomes able to feel the baby moving. Their change of this position was based on better scientific understanding of the pregnancy process.
Not only the Catholic Church, but the Jewish/Christian writer of the 1st Century, a Medical Doctor no less, Dr. Luke, thought so.
"But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!" (New Testament bible, Luke 1:44, 45)
(Only persons leap for joy....blobs of protoplasm could care less....)
Also King David,the great hero/poet/king of Jewish history, writing in the Psalms around 1000 BCE proclaims:
"For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. " (Psalm 139:13, 14)
How sad it is when someone with a marvelous religious heritage abandons it for modern secularist sirens...