Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

Don’t assume we know God’s way. Or what it means to know, love and serve God.

Speaking only for myself, I am pretty sure those persons that die before implantation are doing a better job of knowing, loving and serving God than I am.

I by the way do not see any problem for the Church and Christianity arising from fact that “Nature” indeed is unbelievable brutal. Thus in my view scientifically life indeed very much might begin with conception without contradicting my understanding of God. Yes God obviously allows for plenty of tragedy (from our limited selfish human perspective at least) – add to that tragedies of our own makings and you have a rather unpleasant reality – but you also have plenty of beauty and greatness . Certainly our planet could not survive if all of a sudden we humans became much more efficient in reproducing than we are. It seems to me one way or the other we are forced ( either by choice or brutal nature) to gravitate to a sustainable situation – in the past brutal nature limited explosive human population growth – these days we come to recognize that some modesty in terms of number of children is very much in order. Indeed in most industrialized nations we see the average family size ever so slowly declining towards perhaps sustainable levels for this planets resources.

That said I realize I did not express my prior sentiments very well – actually after I had a bit of time to ponder your points I can see your perspective – sure it is important to point out the reality that life is very fragile – 60% + of embryos never make it etc.. In my view that thought however can not be used to justify piling on top of already pretty bad percentages. The cold reality that nature indeed randomly does not allow for every embryo to mature does not make for a particular strong argument to deliberately add to the pile of tossed life.
Thus in my view that sort of data is a crutch at best.

These days a predominant scientific world view really frames large parts of all our everyday agenda.
Most of us very much enjoy trying to understand our surroundings and attempt to influence it in mostly positive ways – these days we successfully cure all sorts of ailments that would have killed much higher percentages in previous generations – we overall are rather successful in creating comfort, housing, clothing, we grow more food than ever, communicate with more people, understand more about the world, create stunning things and have over all a jolly good time.
Consequently our average live expectancy more than doubled the last 2000 years.
(LOL we should have some of the pro life guys run the numbers – if they can add up to 50 Millions killed “children” due to one Supreme Court decision 30 plus years ago in the US, I imagine using the same math we could arrive at many billions actually living humans as a direct consequence of progress in science and technology.
Big surprise in any case that for the majority of us parents ( catholic or not) just popping out children is not exactly the most timely responds– in my view the decline in average children per family is not a tragedy at all but the natural responds of conscious responsible humans reacting to the reality of our time.
In this country we are free to have any number of children – yet on average most of us seem to stick with a number between 0 to 3 – go figure. And yes of course in such a society it is acceptable to make choices – still while most of us use one form of birth control or the other most of us would never consider Abortion for our families.
On average we are doing just fine as a society with the laws the way they are really.
And honestly this kind of mindset did not fall from the sky overnight. Isn’t it curious for example that our last two Popes came from rather small families for its time –
JPII was a single child and the Ratzinger family of 3 was slightly below average for a catholic bavarian family. Plenty of choice by those parents if you ask me.

The very high rate of natural embryo loss is of interest for a number of other reasons. For those old enough to remember the Baltimore Catechism, among the earliest questions and answers were these:

Q. Who made you?
A. God made me.

Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know, love, and serve him on this earth and to be happy with him forever in heaven.

Now, given the rate of early embryo loss (perhaps 60% or higher), what are we to make of God making humans to “know, love, and serve him in this world”? If every fertilized egg is a person, the majority of human beings don’t get the opportunity to know, love, and serve God in this world. What exactly is this world for if the majority of human beings bypass it? What does it mean to say that baptism is essential for salvation if the majority of human beings cannot possibly be baptized? Even baptism of blood and baptism of desire are impossible for a lost early embryo.

The explanatory power of Christianity is seriously diminished if persons come into existence at conception but the majority of them die before implantation. The Church does not know what happens to unbaptized infants. Some Christian denominations think they go to hell. For centuries the Catholic Church taught (officially or not) they went to limbo. Now the Church says we can hope they are saved, but we can’t know. It is a huge gap in what the Church is able to say about human beings. It doesn’t know the eternal fate of the majority of them.

Ellie,

Why would you say natural deaths are “willed by God”? If people die of lung cancer from smoking, that is a natural death, but is it willed by God? In some sense, of course, everything that happens is God’s will, from the earthquake in Haiti to all of the abortions that take place in the United States.

And, as you say (somewhat contradicting what you said earlier) people do mourn miscarriages. Basically everyone I have ever known in my entire life who has died has died of natural causes. I did not mourn them any the less. Murder is certainly shocking, but a death is a death, and we mourn all deaths except the deaths of embryos that fail to implant. If you believe that life begins at conception, then an embryo that fails to implant is just as much the death of a person as a death by miscarriage, abortion, or death at birth, or death a few days after birth.

I by the way find the theoretical numbers accumulated by pro life groups particualr here in the US equally dishonest.
In my view if all those aborted embryos would have resulted in birth likely we would have much higher teen pregnancy and much younger mothers but NOT necessarily a significantly higher number of children per family .
As a society we seem to have concluded that it much more preferred to have mothers give birth to children when they are socially/ mentally/ physically fully ready to have them.

It isn’t a question of “life”–a shelf fungus is “life.” It’s a question of personhood. The law has gradually pretty much defined “personhood” to begin when a viable fetus can be separated from the mother. If this occurs pre-term, it can have been done surgically, if necessary to save the life of the baby or the mother; or it can happen spontaneously. If the latter, the premature fetus can often be kept alive artificially, using our wonderful medical technology. The law does not, at this time, recognize a blastosphere as a person, or as a “tiny little innocent baby.”
All of that said, my personal religious view on the matter is irrelevant to the law, since we are not living in a theocracy.
Since this thread started out as a discussion of terminology, this might be a good place to bring up the use of the word “baby” by the anti-abortion contingent. To many “baby” properly refers to a live human birth; or, perhaps, to the fetus, but only once it has quickened in the womb. When anti-abortionists refer to one-month fetuses as “babies” they do so for emotional, rather than for logical, impac–and to distort the “scientific” angle of the debate.
I do think that a solid, scientific argument can be made for legal “personhood” beginning at conception on the basis of the genetic make-up of the fetus. It is certainly human, and uniquely so, even before it has arms and legs, or a brain. It does not, however, yet have a “life” of its own. So, to me, “life” is a useless word in this controversy.

Note: I am not saying that natural embryo loss in any way justifies abortion. I am asking the question why aborted babies are the object of so much anguish and lost embryos are not. Even deaths that nothing can be done about are mourned. If we had some terribly calamity that resulted in 60% of newborn babies dying within a few days of birth, and there was no possible way to prevent their deaths, the problem would not be minimized because there was nothing we could do about it. Part of the pro-life message is that all lives are in some sense equal, be they adult lives or embryo lives. So why does no one give any thought to early embryo loss?”

The reason why miscarried babies or embryos that do not implant are not mourned is because: the pro-life movement sees those as natural deaths willed by god.

The reason why an abortion is seen as tragic is because those were caused by the hand of their own mother.

Which do you think is more tragic, a 9 year old that dies naturally from a congenital disease or a 9 year old that is murdered by their own mother? Of course they are both tragic, but there is something even more tragic and horrifying about a mother killing their own child vs nature taken its course.

Children die from cancer all the time, those never make it to the news, but a child that is murdered by their mother always does. The public is far more haunted by a mother that murders their own children than they are by a child that dies from a natural death. Look at Andrea Yates and Susan Smith, people still talk about that, are still outraged, but not much air time is given to children who die from a congenital disease.

And actually, many Catholics do mourn miscarried babies. In my area, there is a whole section in the Catholic cemetery reserved for miscarriages.

Women are allowed to collect the remains of their miscarriages, put them in a container and bury them in that part of the cemetery. A mass is said for them and you can ask the cemetery for a service to be held.

The pro-life(anti-abortion) definition of life is that it is life at conception. The next step is to then ask the person holding tht pro-choice(pro-abortion) their definition of life. Our definition is logical, logically consistent and scientific. The only other logical points if not conception are implantation, heart beat, brain wave, viability and birth. All others are an arbitrary point in time. What is your definition of life?

Rodak,
I have been saying something close to this, but not exactly this. Thank you for writing this. Perhaps if I offer a clarification in light of this comment, we will come closer to understanding one another.

It is not that I suspect every pro-choicer of understanding their approach to morality in this way. As Pinky points out, choice is a multi-vocal term and can have many applications in ethics. Furthermore, as David and M.Z. point out, autonomy is essential, if not sufficient, for Catholic ethics as well.

What I do suspect is that the rhetoric of choice allows the public justifications given for the pro-choice position to completely ignore the actual content of the choice, i.e. killing a baby. As Dan points out, when the choice becomes an existential reality for a given woman, this kind of surface rhetoric rarely holds. Ironically, one of the most common reasons women give for having an abortion is that “I had no other choice.” They feel trapped and, far too often, it is the men in their lives (boyfriends, husbands, fathers) who force abortion on women who have no desire for it themselves.

To summarize, though I don’t suspect most pro-choicers of being morally shallow individuals, I do suspect that the rhetoric of choice in the public sphere, with no reference to the content of that choice, allows morally serious people, like Heather, to continue on without considering an essential factor in the debate. Furthermore, I think it is essential for those of us who insist that the life of the child is an essential factor in this debate do well to try to understand why those who disagree with us seem capable of glossing over it, and that their capability stems from their (in our view, flawed) presuppositions and not their moral depravity and callousness.

Does this help?