[narses]

All significant sin is deadly, hence the label 'mortal'. That is a theological issue. Abortion is a matter of Natural Law, intrinsically evil regardless of your religion, or lack thereof - just like murder, rape, arson and the like.

I'm pinging the Catholic List to ask those better read than I to explain the difference between Natural Law and religion. I do know that our country was founded on a bedrock of Natural Law.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it " -- Thomas Jefferson, An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia