you need to understand that no one is being forced by the State to have an abortion
what we see from supposedly devout Catholics liken Biden, etc, is an effort to facilitate abortion.
{ nfbw
#9,127 to mvdlap
#132 & shvvtr
#136 } Biden was not elected to enforce Vatican Law/Doctrine. As a Catholic he may believe that the sanctity of life begins at Conception, but he has no obligation or authority to be anything other than neutral on the matter when the sanctity of life begins. The Constitution upon which Biden took an oath to uphold says human life is protected ftom moment of birth. That is consistent with Judaism and perhaps the first millennium of Catholicism
According to Dante:
Hence, Dante’s works are good for glimpsing Church doctrine in the early days, since Dante won’t support any teachings not sanctioned by the Church.
In Dante, there are passages which discuss the development of human life and the soul. They are very interesting for a peek into what the early Church felt about human life and its beginnings. Dante’s version, like much of his thinking, is very Aquinian – via St. Thomas Aquinas, the great early Christian philosopher who wrote in the 1100’s.
Dante’s version of the beginnings of human life (and the development of the human soul) is not exactly in accord with modern science, but nevertheless, it is straight from Aquinas. Early peoples had some knowledge of conception and the development of the fetus in the womb. Women miscarried back then, and when you look at the material, you can see the fetus in the rejected uterine matter. From there, they could postulate various things.
First of all, soon after conception, the beginnings of human life take shape.
Stage 1: Dante says that in the beginning, the fetus is animate, but it is not even yet an animal. It is more like a plant; it is “vegetative.” This seems strange, but what he means is in terms of consciousness. To say it is like a plant means it is alive, but it can’t think. Plants are alive, but they don’t seem to think. In other words, it has the soul of a plant. I assume that killing a fetus at this stage would be as sinful in Church terms as killing a plant.
Stage 2: Later the fetus changes into a form that is part-animal and part-plant. This seems odd again, but he’s again speaking in terms of consciousness, or soul. Dante describes this fetus as being like a sea anemone, or as having the soul of a sea anemone. A sea anemone is an animal that looks and somewhat acts like a plant. It probably has a brain, but clearly it’s none too bright. It’s nearly transitional between plant and animal metaphysically speaking.
It’s vegetative (alive) and it has elementary sensory abilities, but not much beyond that. Killing a fetus at this stage would be as sinful in Church terms as killing a sea anemone.
Stage 3: After that, the fetus changes into an animal. But it is a non-human animal. Once again he speaks metaphysically. This means that it can’t really reason or think intellectually, or that it has no consciousness. It’s like a dog or a cat, or it has the soul of a cat or a dog. Killing a fetus at this point would be as sinful in Church terms as killing a dog or a cat.
Stage 4: Finally, at some point, the fetus is touched by God through some sort of mechanism and it is given a soul. At that point, it becomes a human being, since non-human animals lack souls.
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It follows from this that the Church believed that in Stages 1-3, the fetus was not yet a human being. It was presumably for this reason that abortion was allowed until quickening.