Unfortunately the true meaning of the phrase “pro-choice” is that people honestly believe that whether that child is a child or not is a “choice” for the mother to make.

Ditto the situation with many existing maternal medical conditions which would make carrying a pregnancy to term difficult and dangerous. In a situation wherein a mother with, for example, significant bone loss and abdominal scar tissue due to steroidal treatment and then surgery for ulcerative colitis (to name the situation of one friend of mine), a doctor’s course of action for a pregnancy might reasonably be to let the baby go as close to term as possible — 27 weeks, say — without endangering the mother’s health, then deliver and treat the premature baby in the NICU.

All that presumes, of course, that both the mother and the doctor view the child as a child, with a life to be saved if possible, and not merely a kind of disposable human-DNA tumor. We do, at this moment, have the technology to save very, very tiny premature babies, and it’s time to recognize any tiny, potentially premature baby as worth the effort and expense of saving, if at all possible, as well as the mother.

Another possible solution to the case of a woman with a life-threatening pregnancy is to put her in a time machine and send her far into the future where doctors with knowledge far in advance of our own can save both mother and baby. True, we don’t have time travel, but then again, we also don’t have the ability to transfer a fetus from a pregnant woman in mid-pregnancy to a surrogate mother. So both seem equally rational solutions.

Except for the fact that there are a great many women who were instructed to get an abortion, who not only survived, but now have living children.

You have to wonder at the motives of someone who is passionate enough to insist that these women should be saved, no matter the cost – until you say “well then a good-faith effort should be made to find a surrogate and put that baby in the surrogate’s womb, then”…then suddenly the “pay any cost to save that woman’s life” rhetoric disappears.

I don’t see that this has any more truth value than, “If prudence is a virtue, then abortion must not be treated as murder. For a rational man, prudence is a virtue.”

Remember that from the Catholic point of view, an abortion is never permissible, even to save the life of the mother—even to save the world! If a woman has a problem pregnancy, and only an abortion will save her life, it is not permitted, even though the abortion would save one life and not performing the abortion would cause two lives to be lost.

If your position is that it is always prudent to assume that a fetus is a human life because it may be a human life, you have situations like the one I just described where you know the mother is a human person, but you only assume the fetus is a human person, because you want to “err on the side of life.” I think prudence would dictate—if you are not certain the fetus is a human life—that you save the life you know is a human life. You perform the abortion to save the mother. You don’t let a “maybe person” and a known person both die because you might be killing a “maybe person” by an abortion. In such a situation not saving the mother’s life can only be justified (if it can be justified at all) if you know the unborn child is a person with a right to life.

TimC,

One more point. You seem to think I am up to no good in bringing up the matter of an immortal human soul. Actually, from my perspective, I was making a concession. In essence, I was saying, “If I look at this from a purely secular point of view, but your position as a Catholic is true, then you are right and I am wrong. A fertilized egg with an immortal human soul is a person.”

Basically what I am saying is that there are two very different ways to look at the question. From the nonreligious, secular viewpoint (which is what our laws are based on), I believe there should be a functional definition of a person—can the entity in question perceive, think, believe, decide.

From the religious perspective (or at least the Catholic perspective), God infuses immortal souls only in persons. There is no need to ask the question whether an immortal soul can perceive, think, believe, and decide. We simply have faith that in creating an immortal human soul, God brings a human person into existence.

I am saying that for a believing Catholic, the question of whether a fertilized egg (with an infused soul) is a person is answered by faith. The Church says it is a person. No further tests are required. An immortal human soul doesn’t have to meet a functional definition of a person.

You have defined personhood in two very different ways (“a person should be defined by what it can do”, then “a person exists as soon as a soul is infused”). Which is it? Is a person defined by function (communicable attributes) or by ensoulment (putting aside the question of how one might discern this)? These are quite distinct, but you seem to be trying to play both sides of the field to your advantage.