The practice of willfully killing alive unborn humans is evil, and to try to divert the discussion into lines meant to obfuscate the basic truths regarding the wrongness of killing for arbitrary notions and basic selfishness is close to aiding and abetting evil. Your desire to pin gray upon the various appearances of the early ages in a human lifetime is quite telling. Self-justification is a powerful drive don'tchaknow.
I am not an abortion advocate. I am merely pointing out how the Church for over 1200 years generally believed that no soul was present until a defined point in the development. And efforts to demonstrate that science had improved to the point of leading the Church to its 1869 decree on abortion fail any test of logic. Augustine was well aware of what very early fetuses looked like. He didn't simply imagine it all. He was a scientist as well as a philosopher. Even today, we know that the early fetus is completely unformed, sexless, brainless, lacking any central nervous system. The question is what we know today that Augustine didn't know that makes one so sure a soul exists at that very early stage?
Lies are the necessary tools of those defending the abortion slaughter.
I won't accuse anyone of lying, but I can tell you that when Pius IX issued the encyclical banning all abortions in 1869, it was not through any new scientific knowledge. Yet those who try and justify the distinction between the Church's early policy on abortion and its current policy use that very point...that science had improved. How would you describe that tactic?
Are all defenders of abortion evil? Hardly, but most in favor of unfettered abortion 'rights' are deluded by graying arguments diverting attention to such notions of sentience, learning capability, heartbeat, etc, just as you seem so willing to divert this discussion.
I'm not the one who was attempting to use science to justify the timing of ensoulment. Once you use science, you cannot simply back away from it. Your side of the issue determined that after these miraculous scientific breakthroughs in the 1800s, the Pope, using science as a guide, determined that ensoulment took place at the instant of conception, not later, after a more formed and animated fetus could be observed. Now you say that I am graying the issue by discussing it in scientific terms. If science is at issue, then yes, sentience, a central nervous system, etc are fair topics. If you are relying solely on faith, then no.
Nor have I or anyone on this thread been discussing abortion as an "unfettered right".
The practice of willfully killing alive unborn humans is evil, and to try to divert the discussion into lines meant to obfuscate the basic truths regarding the wrongness of killing for arbitrary notions and basic selfishness is close to aiding and abetting evil.
Again, we are going into a circular argument, but suffice it to say that if it is evil today, it was evil during the time of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Ergo, they were evil.
Your desire to pin gray upon the various appearances of the early ages in a human lifetime is quite telling. Self-justification is a powerful drive don'tchaknow.
How so? This entire debate has been about that very point, the timing of the ensoulment of a pre-birth human life. Again, I'm not the one who attempted to link it to science. In fact, my issue is with the Constitution, not with the "faith" of anyone. My concern is over what point a human is sufficiently developed to be considered a person for purposes of the Bill of Rights.
But it's a lot easier to label someone as simply evil, than to debate an issue on its face.
Take care.