When pro-lifers insist that, "life begins at conception", why do pro-choice advocates stumble in their response or clam up?
The pro-lifers are kicking pro-choice ass by repeating their message "life begins at conception". We will never win this battle if we concede this point.
The simple quick retort is "no, it doesn't" or "no,life does not begin at conception". Why don't we hear that from NARAL and other leaders? Why don't we say it unequivocally when discussing this issue?
Why not say the supposition that "life begins as conception" is an opinion. Furthermore, it is an opinion that is shared by the minority of people in this country. It is an opinion that is not established medically or scientifically. And it is an opinion that has not enjoyed univeral acceptance historically.
It was not until modern times that the church accepted this stance.
From Religious Tolerance.org Religious Tolerance.org
"17th TO 19th CENTURY CE (Abortion becomes murder again):
In the 17th century, the concept of "simultaneous animation" gained acceptance within the medical and church communities in Western Europe. This is the belief that an embryo acquires a soul at conception, not at 40 or 80 days into gestation as the church was teaching. In 1658 Hieronymus Florentinius, a Franciscan, asserted that all embryos or fetuses, regardless of its gestational age, which were in danger of death must be baptized. However, his opinion did not change the status of abortion as seen by the church.
Pope Pius IX reversed the stance of the Roman Catholic church once more. He dropped the distinction between the "fetus animatus" and "fetus inanimatus" in 1869. Canon law was revised in 1917 and 1983 and to refer simply to "the fetus." The tolerant approach to abortion which had prevailed in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries ended. The church requires excommunication for abortions at any stage of pregnancy."
For over 1,000 years there has been no consensus as to when life begins.
More from Religious Tolerance.org Religious Tolerance.org
"St. Augustine (354-430 CE) reversed centuries of Christian teaching in Western Europe, and returned to the Aristotelian concept of "delayed ensoulment." He wrote 7 that a human soul cannot live in an unformed body. Thus, early in pregnancy, an abortion is not murder because no soul is destroyed (or, more accurately, only a vegetable or animal soul is terminated). He wrote extensively on sexual matters, teaching that the original sin of Adam and Eve are passed to each successive generation through the pleasure generated during sexual intercourse. This passed into the church's canon law. Only abortion of a more fully developed "fetus animatus" (animated fetus) was punished as murder.
Augustine had little influence over the beliefs of Eastern Christianity. They retained their original anti-abortion stance.
St. Jerome wrote in a letter to Aglasia: "The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it [abortion] does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired their external appearance and their limbs" 8
Starting in the 7th century CE, a series of penitentials were written in the West. These listed an array of sins, with the penance that a person must observe as punishment for the sin. Certain "sins" which prevented conception had particularly heavy penalties. These included:
practicing a particularly ineffective form of birth control, coitus interruptus (withdrawal of the penis prior to ejaculation)
engaging in oral sex or anal sex
becoming sterile by artificial means, such as by consuming sterilizing poisons.
Abortion, on the other hand, required a less serious penance. Theodore, who organized the English church, assembled a penitential about 700 CE. Oral intercourse required from 7 years to a lifetime of penance; abortion required only 120 days.
Pope Stephen V (served 885-891) wrote in 887 CE: "If he who destroys what is conceived in the womb by abortion is a murderer, how much more is he unable to excuse himself of murder who kills a child even one day old." "Epistle to Archbishop of Mainz."
Pope Innocent III (?-1216) wrote a letter which ruled on a case of a Carthusian monk who had arranged for his female lover to obtain an abortion. The Pope decided that the monk was not guilty of homicide if the fetus was not "animated."
Early in the 13th century, Pope Innocent III stated that the soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of "quickening" - when the woman first feels movement of the fetus. After ensoulment, abortion was equated with murder; before that time, it was a less serious sin, because it terminated only potential human life, not human life.
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) also considered only the abortion of an "animated" fetus as murder.
Pope Sixtus V issued a Papal bull "Effraenatam" in 1588 which threatened those who carried out abortions at any stage of gestation with excommunication and the death penalty. Pope Gregory XIV revoked the Papal bull shortly after taking office in 1591. He reinstated the "quickening" test, which he said happened 116 days into pregnancy (16½ weeks)."
With Alito's appointment to the Supreme Court the pro-lifers can taste victory. Recent actions by the South Dakota legislature is but the first of many anti-abortion laws we are about to see. We need to be prepared. Game is on.