I realize you directed your post to Archivist, but since you mentioned my name, I'll respond to a few things.
It never ceases to amaze me how anti-life pro-abortion advocates ...
I am pro-abortion but I am not anti-life. I would ban general gun ownership which causes the deaths by murder of over ten thousand Americans yearly.
...like to use the past belief of religious groups when it comes to this issue but any other issue they claim science alone can justify one's position. The quote from wikipedia that Ecco cites, which comes from Catholic scholars, leaves out the very important fact that even with such a belief in ensoulment, that same church considered it immoral to interfere with that life from the moment of conception.
If the church changed its mind about the time of "ensoulment", that is the church's problem. At one time it was quickening, at another it was first breath, at another it was conception. One would think there would be some object biblical truth, but, obviously, there isn't.
Others here state flat out what begins at fertilization is no more human than say a cow! This kind of thinking completely overlooks the fact that both sperm and egg are from human beings and therefore cannot become a cow or any other kind of animal. The life that begins at the moment of conception must either be human or it is never human. It cannot be potentially human as the sperm or egg are precisely because all the genetic material from that moment on is the same right on through till natural death. There is no clear line between fertilization and death of this new life that can be considered a starting point.
A fertilized egg is a single cell called a zygote. A single cell is not a human being.
Of those billions of skin cells, between 30,000 and 40,000 of them fall off every hour. Over a 24-hour period, you lose almost a million skin cells.
By your logic, you are guilty of murdering a million "humans" daily.
With this in mind I will also add that for any act to be moral a three-fold criteria must be met, namely the means, end and intent of the person doing the act must be moral. Combine this with the fact that all human life has an inviolable dignity that comes from God, as the Declaration/Constitution of the United States assume when it speaks of inalienable rights, and you must conclude any good law must protect all human life... from fertilization till natural death. Any law that ignores these facts is immoral and therefore unethical.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
"Inalienable Rights" given to all men, not to a cell.
Now to clarify there is only one kind of abortion that does not violate this criteria. It is called an ectopic pregnancey where, because the newly formed embryonic person attempts to implant on the uteran wall and not the mother's womb, it endangers the mother's life AND therefore it's own life! In this case it is not desirable, if there were another way, but it is morally permissable to interrupt the pregnancy, and thus, most likely, end the life of the newly formed child.
Here you are hedging.
Procured abortion, as given us by the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973, is especially henious the new person's life can be taken for any reason not serious. Education, job, age, lifestyle, and even because the child is "unwanted" are the usual reasons given that are all secondary to the newly formed person's right to life.
Those who claim this is about a woman's choice are also mistaken because they never link the issue of choice to prior to sexual intercourse where it ultimately belongs. The push for Roe vs. Wade was precisely because of the superfacial reason of separating pleasure from the initiation of new life.
Now we get back to the question raised in the OP - compromise. This is exactly what the secular Supreme Court in our secular nation did. The weighed the pros and cons, they took into consideration the historical concepts, religious and otherwise, of the beginning of human life and they came up with a comprise.
Look at the poll taken in this Christian forum. Less than 1 in 5 believe all abortion should be outlawed. You didn't even like any of the options and came up with one of your own - "If you had a "life of the mother only" option then I could pick that."
This is also driven by sterilization an contraception that insist "unwanted" children must be prevented... that is separated from the sexual act that should be open to new life as God intended. In other words the mindset behind sterilization and contraception drives abortion because neither method is foolproof and abortion must be used as a backup. If a man or woman don't want children then they simply refrain from sexual intercourse. Once they decide to partake of this act they must be open to the possibility of new life because that is the acts nature. New human life comes in no other way and to try to interrupt and separate the two is to move against God who gave human sexuality its nature. It is to sin in Christian terms. It is to disorder an act that has as its primary goal a two-fold meaning: love and life. This is to unite a man and woman and to create new human life according to God's will.
Your continued references to god remind me that I am fortunate that I do not live in a Theocracy.
