Irish abortion referendum

[SomeRandom]

Don't worry about health "now." There may be a residual category of health issues, but one in five pregnancies, or 21 per cent, ends in an abortion, where as generally a woman has a 1/10000 chance of dying during child birth in the UK, or 0.01% chance. So for every endangered mother there are roughly 2000 abortions.

As for post 35 years old, the statistics suggest that there might be up to a 0.3% chance of a mother dying during child birth in developed countries, which is still 60 times less than the abortion rate for women generally.

Thus it is incredibly difficult to see any connection between health of the mother and abortion rates.

Umm, "health concerns" aren't just about the mother potentially dying from pregnancy. They include but are not limited to Infertility, stillbirth, diseases a fetus can potentially have etc.
https://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/age/pregnancy-after-35/pregnancy-risks-after-age-35/
You realize that Doctors will also take into account what complications a fetus can have when they (potentially) recommend abortion as a medical option, right?

 

[outlawState]

Umm, "health concerns" aren't just about the mother potentially dying from pregnancy.
https://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/age/pregnancy-after-35/pregnancy-risks-after-age-35/
You realize that Doctors will also take into account what complications a fetus can have when they (potentially) recommend abortion as a medical option, right?

I was responding to a specific point concerning the health of older women. I note the following from Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2015

Non-emergency Grounds of Abortion

A the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated (Abortion Act, 1967 as amended, section 1(1)(c))

B the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman (section 1(1)(b))

C the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman (section 1(1)(a))

D the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of any existing children of the family of the pregnant woman (section 1(1)(a))

E there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped (section 1(1)(d))​

In 2015, the vast majority (98%; 181,231) of abortions were undertaken under ground C. A further 2% were carried out under ground E (3,213) and a similar proportion (1%: 1,158) under ground D, whilst Grounds A and B together accounted for about a tenth of one per cent of abortions (219). The remaining 3 cases were performed under grounds F or G. The proportion of ground C abortions has risen steadily with a corresponding reduction in ground D cases (Table 3a.ii).

Ground C is the pro-choice "elective" ground.

 

[columbus]

Don't worry about health "now." There may be a residual category of health issues, but one in five pregnancies, or 21 per cent, ends in an abortion, where as generally a woman has a 1/10000 chance of dying during child birth in the UK, or 0.01% chance. So for every endangered mother there are roughly 2000 abortions.

As for post 35 years old, the statistics suggest that there might be up to a 0.3% chance of a mother dying during child birth in developed countries, which is still 60 times less than the abortion rate for women generally.

Thus it is incredibly difficult to see any connection between health of the mother and abortion rates.

That's really bad math dude.
The main reason that dying in child birth is so rare in the first world is because of abortion. Problems that risk death can be found out early and the pregnancy terminated before the threat becomes mortal.
Take a look at the statistics before abortion technology Pretty horrendous.
Tom

 

[SomeRandom]

I was responding to a specific point concerning the health of older women. I note the following from Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2015

Non-emergency Grounds of Abortion

A the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated (Abortion Act, 1967 as amended, section 1(1)(c))

B the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman (section 1(1)(b))

C the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman (section 1(1)(a))

D the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of any existing children of the family of the pregnant woman (section 1(1)(a))

E there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped (section 1(1)(d))​

In 2015, the vast majority (98%; 181,231) of abortions were undertaken under ground C. A further 2% were carried out under ground E (3,213) and a similar proportion (1%: 1,158) under ground D, whilst Grounds A and B together accounted for about a tenth of one per cent of abortions (219). The remaining 3 cases were performed under grounds F or G. The proportion of ground C abortions has risen steadily with a corresponding reduction in ground D cases (Table 3a.ii).

Ground C is the pro-choice "elective" ground.

And? That is not proof of prostitutes using abortion as contraception.

 

[outlawState]

That's really bad math dude.
The main reason that dying in child birth is so rare in the first world is because of abortion. Problems that risk death can be found out early and the pregnancy terminated before the threat becomes mortal.
Take a look at the statistics before abortion technology Pretty horrendous.
Tom

I disagree with everything you say. I think the risk of death is largely avoided by the Cesarean procedure, and general improvements in medical science, not abortion, and many deaths are anyway due to medical negligence. "Abortion technology" has nothing to do with it.

 

[outlawState]

And? That is not proof of prostitutes using abortion as contraception.

I have nothing else to add. As Nelson said at the Battle of Copenhagen when he lifted the telescope to his blind eye, "I really do not see..." It's not my job to make you see what you don't want to. In any case, I wasn't ever talking about professional prostitutes. Presumably they know how to prevent themselves becoming pregnant...

 

[SomeRandom]

I have nothing else to add. As Nelson said at the Battle of Copenhagen when he lifted the telescope to his blind eye, "I really do not see..." It's not my job to make you see what you don't want to. In any case, I wasn't ever talking about professional prostitutes. Presumably they know how to prevent themselves becoming pregnant...

I don't know if that is necessarily true, considering the state of actual sexual education in even the West.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

Abortion is pre-eminently used by prostitutes and women of loose morals to facilitate their life styles, as a method of contraception after the event, in fact.

So the solution is, abstain from prostitution. Is it so unreasonable? "Deu 23:17 No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute."

Any evidence for these claims?

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

I have nothing else to add. As Nelson said at the Battle of Copenhagen when he lifted the telescope to his blind eye, "I really do not see..." It's not my job to make you see what you don't want to. In any case, I wasn't ever talking about professional prostitutes. Presumably they know how to prevent themselves becoming pregnant...

Talk about goal post shifting

edit: the more I think about it, the surer I am that "amateur prostitute" is an inherent contradiction.

 

[David1967]

We disagree on this issue, Dave, but I do appreciate the fact that you do not demonize the women who get abortions, nor would I suspect that such a thing crosses your mind. If any final resolution of this issue ever comes about it will because of people like you on both sides of the issue reaching a fair compromise.

I do my best not to "demonize" anyone. I'm sure each has their reasons for feeling the way they do about this issue. And I'm not of an all or nothing opinion about this extremely sensitive issue. I do think that unfortunately there are some reasons that are valid. But abortion as a form of contraception I do feel is very wrong. Hurling insults back and forth solves nothing. I do think that we can do better than abortion on demand for whatever reason though.

 

[David1967]

the more I think about it, the surer I am that "amateur prostitute" is an inherent contradiction.

So, does "amateur" mean she doesn't get paid?

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

So, does "amateur" mean she doesn't get paid?

Pretty sure that's the practical definition of "amateur".

 

[Sunstone]

So, does "amateur" mean she doesn't get paid?

I quite resent you two talking about me behind my back that way! It's not my fault no one nowadays is willing to pay decrepit old men for sex, thus forcing us into not properly charging what we are so clearly worth! Why, if you think it's so easy peasy, and just as simple as making johnny cakes, then you yourselves should try to get paid when you can't always recall why you flagged her down in the first place!

 

[Vouthon]

Today, Ireland voted in a landslide electoral victory to repeal its constitutional ban on abortion. The Taioseach (Irish PM) now plans to permit termination of pregnancy on demand for up to 12 weeks post-conception.

This result - in a still majority Catholic country with a cultural heritage greatly shaped and influenced by the church - has provoked not a little fascination, interest and buzz from international observers.

Many are pronouncing the demise of faith in Ireland, following years of priestly church abuse scandals and mistreatment of unmarried mothers in the 1920s-50s. I wouldn't be so bold, personally. I read online a comment by a voter in Ireland, who said of the outcome:

"This was a very mature and difficult decision for many people who would view themselves as pro-life to recognize that abortion is a reality, and forcing thousands of women abroad or online and making them feel like criminals is unacceptable in a civilized society."

On a news report, I saw a woman explaining that she was "pro-life but also pro-choice", in lieu of the kind of argument expressed above and her own experience with an ectopic pregnancy.

A poll from March of this year actually discovered that Irish youth are still surprisingly religious by the standards of the rest of Western Europe (it didn't cover Eastern Europe):


https://www.irishtimes.com/news/soc...-among-the-most-religious-in-europe-1.3441046

Irish people between the ages of 16 and 29 rank among the most religious in Europe, alongside Poles and Lithuanians, a new study has found.

Some 54 per cent of Irish people in this age bracket identify as Catholic, 5 per cent as belonging to other Christian denominations, 2 per cent as being part of a non-Christian religion, and 39 per cent saying they had no religion…

The report’s author, Prof Stephen Bullivant, director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St Mary’s University, notes: “In only four countries do more than one-in-ten 16-29 year-olds claim to attend religious services on at least a weekly basis: Poland, Israel, Portugal, and Ireland.

​

Those same Irish youths voted enthusiastically for abortion reform. But many of them are still Catholics - and more religiously inclined than a lot of other Western European countries (sans Italy and Malta, perhaps).

So, while the church hierarchy has done wrong in Ireland and not exactly helped retain its position of moral gravitas with various scandals, we do need to balance this out with the fact that Catholicism isn’t exactly dead in Ireland either - even if the parishioners in question largely reject her teaching authority due to a loss in moral standing.

Yet this raises a more interesting and thought-provoking issue:

There was a long-standing debate in the early and medieval church, (between those espousing an Aristotelian and Pythagorean natural philosophy, respectively), over whether or not an unformed foetus should actually be considered "ensouled".

A number of church fathers, popes and theologians - such as St. Augustine of Hippo, the Apostolic Constitutions of the 4th century, Pope Innocent III, Gregory IX and St. Thomas Aquinas - argued that for a number of weeks post-conception, the foetus wasn't a person and so, while abortion of pre-ensouled foetuses was overwhelmingly viewed as still being a sinful or undesirable practice, it could not be equated with murder until the foetus "quickened" in the womb and became formed; such that excommunications or equivalent ecclesiastical sanctions were for a long time only issued forth against women who aborted 'formed' foetuses after their wombs had quickened, rather than early terminations of unformed foetal tissue.

It was only in the 1860s that the church started to gravitate firmly towards the "conception is point of ensoulement" tenet of belief, due to a reaction against increasing secularization and the decline of Aristotelian science, courtesy of advances in embryology.

But there remains legitimate room for some hard questions in this area, perhaps.

 

[Sunstone]

Today, Ireland voted in a landslide electoral victory to repeal its constitutional ban on abortion. The Taioseach (Irish PM) now plans to permit termination of pregnancy on demand for up to 12 weeks post-conception.

This result - in a still majority Catholic country with a cultural heritage greatly shaped and influenced by the church - has provoked not a little fascination, interest and buzz from international observers.

Many are pronouncing the demise of faith in Ireland, following years of priestly church abuse scandals and mistreatment of unmarried mothers in the 1920s-50s. I wouldn't be so bold, personally. I read online a comment by a voter in Ireland, who said of the outcome:

"This was a very mature and difficult decision for many people who would view themselves as pro-life to recognize that abortion is a reality, and forcing thousands of women abroad or online and making them feel like criminals is unacceptable in a civilized society."

On a news report, I saw a woman explaining that she was "pro-life but also pro-choice", in lieu of the kind of argument expressed above and her own experience with an ectopic pregnancy.

A poll from March of this year actually discovered that Irish youth are still surprisingly religious by the standards of the rest of Western Europe (it didn't cover Eastern Europe):


https://www.irishtimes.com/news/soc...-among-the-most-religious-in-europe-1.3441046

Irish people between the ages of 16 and 29 rank among the most religious in Europe, alongside Poles and Lithuanians, a new study has found.

Some 54 per cent of Irish people in this age bracket identify as Catholic, 5 per cent as belonging to other Christian denominations, 2 per cent as being part of a non-Christian religion, and 39 per cent saying they had no religion…

The report’s author, Prof Stephen Bullivant, director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St Mary’s University, notes: “In only four countries do more than one-in-ten 16-29 year-olds claim to attend religious services on at least a weekly basis: Poland, Israel, Portugal, and Ireland.

​

Those same Irish youths voted enthusiastically for abortion reform. But many of them are still Catholics - and more religiously inclined than a lot of other Western European countries (sans Italy and Malta, perhaps).

So, while the church hierarchy has done wrong in Ireland and not exactly helped retain its position of moral gravitas with various scandals, we do need to balance this out with the fact that Catholicism isn’t exactly dead in Ireland either - even if the parishioners in question largely reject her teaching authority due to a loss in moral standing.

Yet this raises a more interesting and thought-provoking issue:

There was a long-standing debate in the early and medieval church, (between those espousing an Aristotelian and Pythagorean natural philosophy, respectively), over whether or not an unformed foetus should actually be considered "ensouled".

A number of church fathers, popes and theologians - such as St. Augustine of Hippo, the Apostolic Constitutions of the 4th century, Pope Innocent III, Gregory IX and St. Thomas Aquinas - argued that for a number of weeks post-conception, the foetus wasn't a person and so, while abortion was still a sinful or undesirable practice, it could not be equated with murder until the foetus "quickened" in the womb and became formed, such that excommunications or other such sanctions were for a long time only issued forty against women who aborted 'formed' foetuses after their wombs had quickened, rather than early terminations of unformed foetal tissue.

It was only in the 1860s that the church started to gravitate firmly towards the "conception is point of ensoulement" tenet of belief, due to a reaction against increasing secularization and the decline of Aristotelian science courtesy of advances in embryology.

But there is legitimate room for some hard and very difficult questions in this area, perhaps.

As I have come to gratefully respect and even, dare I say it?, insufferably demand of you, Sean, you have once again put key issues into sharp and clear focus here. Thank you sincerely for a very informative and helpful post. And let me be the first to say it! You're awesome! Such a pity though, that's the very first time in your life anyone has said it. Can't explain that, really.

Got a question for you, if I may: What would it take for the Church to return to the old teachings that abortion was permissible for a number of weeks post-conception, say until the foetus quickened? What would be the process, and how much time would it likely consume?

 

[sayak83]

Today, Ireland voted in a landslide electoral victory to repeal its constitutional ban on abortion. The Taioseach (Irish PM) now plans to permit termination of pregnancy on demand for up to 12 weeks post-conception.

This result - in a still majority Catholic country with a cultural heritage greatly shaped and influenced by the church - has provoked not a little fascination, interest and buzz from international observers.

Many are pronouncing the demise of faith in Ireland, following years of priestly church abuse scandals and mistreatment of unmarried mothers in the 1920s-50s. I wouldn't be so bold, personally. I read online a comment by a voter in Ireland, who said of the outcome:

"This was a very mature and difficult decision for many people who would view themselves as pro-life to recognize that abortion is a reality, and forcing thousands of women abroad or online and making them feel like criminals is unacceptable in a civilized society."

On a news report, I saw a woman explaining that she was "pro-life but also pro-choice", in lieu of the kind of argument expressed above and her own experience with an ectopic pregnancy.

A poll from March of this year actually discovered that Irish youth are still surprisingly religious by the standards of the rest of Western Europe (it didn't cover Eastern Europe):


https://www.irishtimes.com/news/soc...-among-the-most-religious-in-europe-1.3441046

Irish people between the ages of 16 and 29 rank among the most religious in Europe, alongside Poles and Lithuanians, a new study has found.

Some 54 per cent of Irish people in this age bracket identify as Catholic, 5 per cent as belonging to other Christian denominations, 2 per cent as being part of a non-Christian religion, and 39 per cent saying they had no religion…

The report’s author, Prof Stephen Bullivant, director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St Mary’s University, notes: “In only four countries do more than one-in-ten 16-29 year-olds claim to attend religious services on at least a weekly basis: Poland, Israel, Portugal, and Ireland.

​

Those same Irish youths voted enthusiastically for abortion reform. But many of them are still Catholics - and more religiously inclined than a lot of other Western European countries (sans Italy and Malta, perhaps).

So, while the church hierarchy has done wrong in Ireland and not exactly helped retain its position of moral gravitas with various scandals, we do need to balance this out with the fact that Catholicism isn’t exactly dead in Ireland either - even if the parishioners in question largely reject her teaching authority due to a loss in moral standing.

Yet this raises a more interesting and thought-provoking issue:

There was a long-standing debate in the early and medieval church, (between those espousing an Aristotelian and Pythagorean natural philosophy, respectively), over whether or not an unformed foetus should actually be considered "ensouled".

A number of church fathers, popes and theologians - such as St. Augustine of Hippo, the Apostolic Constitutions of the 4th century, Pope Innocent III, Gregory IX and St. Thomas Aquinas - argued that for a number of weeks post-conception, the foetus wasn't a person and so, while abortion of pre-ensouled foetuses was overwhelmingly viewed as still being a sinful or undesirable practice, it could not be equated with murder until the foetus "quickened" in the womb and became formed; such that excommunications or equivalent ecclesiastical sanctions were for a long time only issued forth against women who aborted 'formed' foetuses after their wombs had quickened, rather than early terminations of unformed foetal tissue.

It was only in the 1860s that the church started to gravitate firmly towards the "conception is point of ensoulement" tenet of belief, due to a reaction against increasing secularization and the decline of Aristotelian science, courtesy of advances in embryology.

But there remains legitimate room for some hard questions in this area, perhaps.

Much will depend on how the Church reacts to the new and decisive mandate. For now, its an important advancement of women's empowerment in Ireland.

 

[Father Heathen]

As others have said, this referendum has little to do with the case of Savita Halappanavar. The Republic of Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) is understood to have made an out-of-court settlement with the husband of a woman who died in hospital after a miscarriage, so hers was a case of medical negligence, and nothing to do with the law.

Abortion is pre-eminently used by prostitutes and women of loose morals to facilitate their life styles, as a method of contraception after the event, in fact.

So the solution is, abstain from prostitution. Is it so unreasonable? "Deu 23:17 No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute."

Do you have any statistics at all that support your assertion that the majority of women who opt to abort are actually prostitutes and/or are too negligent to use contraceptives? Even so, if you can't trust someone to be responsible enough to use contraceptives, how can you trust them to be responsible enough to be a competent parent?

 

[Vouthon]

Got a question for you, if I may: What would it take for the Church to return to the old teachings

You are too kind @Sunstone, I appreciate your words.

In terms of your question, it is a very good one but naturally also a very uncomfortable fact for many orthodox Catholics to grapple with. It would be a huge change in mindset, since many modern Catholics are so used, after the advent of modern embryology, to equate the moment of conception with the moment of ensoulement.

I suppose, if one wished to resurrect this earlier interpretation, it would need to be substantively proven that the reasons for rejecting the earlier stance were unsound - namely, that the eclipse of Aristotelian science in the 18th century did not mean that the understanding of gestation as one of "delayed hominization" had to be abandoned with it.

Most are simply unaware of the centuries-long predominance of this earlier doctrinal interpretation from circa. 700 - 1869, which was - effectively - rendered the standard position at the Council of Vienne in 1312, when the bishops embraced St. Thomas Aquinas's account of gestation based upon an Aristotelian conception of the soul as the 'form of the body' i.e.


History of Christian thought on abortion - Wikipedia

Several historians have written[53][54][55] that prior to the 19th century most Catholic authors did not regard termination of pregnancy before "quickening" or "ensoulment" as an abortion...

Penitentials in the Middle Ages normally distinguished between the two, imposing heavier penances for late-term abortions and a less severe penance was imposed for the sin of abortion "before [the foetus] has life".[15]

Not only did they not view early abortions as being abortions, but many prominent Catholics saw nothing wrong with compiling lists of known abortifacient herbs and discovering new ones. For example, in her treatises the 12th century abbess and later saint Hildegard of Bingen recommended tansy as an effective abortifacient.[56] In the 13th century physician and cleric Peter of Spain wrote a book called Thesaurus Pauperum (literally Treasure of the Poor) containing a long list of early-stage abortifacients, including rue, pennyroyal, and other mints.[57]:205-211 Peter of Spain became Pope John XXI in 1276...

Augustine believed that an early abortion is not murder because, according to the Aristotelian concept of delayed ensoulment, the soul of a fetus at an early stage is not present, a belief that passed into canon law.[23][24] Nonetheless, he harshly condemned the procedure (De Nube et Concupiscentia 1.17 (15))

Thomas Aquinas, Pope Innocent III, and Pope Gregory XIV also believed that a fetus does not have a soul until "quickening," or when the fetus begins to kick and move, and therefore early abortion was not murder, though later abortion was.[10][23]​

So recognition of this "counter-narrative" alongside the more hardline stance would be a good initial step. It should be noted that some early church fathers, such as St. Basil of Caesaria, condemned the distinction between "unformed" and "formed foetuses", favouring the more hardline stance we know today. However, that position was rejected during the medieval period and really up until 1869 in favour of the more moderate, Aristotelian "delayed hominization/ensoulement".

I would note that under this earlier interpretation the termination of an unformed, inanimate foetus was grudgingly tolerated (a bit like prostitution, say) but as a strongly discouraged and sinful practice yet one that did not amount to homicide and so did not warrant excommunication or any form of punishment or legal penalty:

History of Christian thought on abortion - Wikipedia

Although the Decretum Gratiani, which remained the basis of Catholic canon law until replaced by the 1917 Code of Canon Law, distinguished between early-term and late-term abortions, that canonical distinction was abolished for a period of three years by the bull of Pope Sixtus V, Effraenatam, of 28 October 1588...Sixtus's successor, Pope Gregory XIV, recognizing that the law was not producing the hoped-for effects, withdrew it three years later, limiting the punishments to abortion of a "formed" fetus.[44]

With his 1869 bull Apostolicae Sedis moderationi, Pope Pius IX rescinded Gregory XIV's not-yet-animated fetus exception with regard to the spiritual penalty of excommunication, declaring that those who procured an effective abortion incurred excommunication reserved to bishops or ordinaries.[45] From then on this penalty was incurred automatically through abortion at any stage of pregnancy, which had always been seen as a serious matter.[46]

In another respect Catholic canon law continued even after 1869 to maintain a distinction between abortion of a formed and of an unformed fetus...Pius IX made no ruling in its regard, with the result that the penalty of irregularity was still limited to late-term abortion at the time of the article "Abortion" in the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia.[47] The 1917 Code of Canon Law finally did away with the distinction.[48]

In summary, with the exception of the three-year period 1588-1591, early abortion was not prohibited by Catholic canon law until 1869.​

The position of the church was far more tolerant, therefore, on this point during the middle ages than today but it certainly didn't approve of early term abortions. It just didn't consider the aborted life to be an ensouled human person, meaning that one could 'excuse' people who terminated pregnancies at this stage but not after the foetus had 'quickened' and been infused with an immortal soul by God.

St. Thomas Aquinas summed up the general understanding in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1252):

"This sin, although grave and to be reckoned among misdeeds...is something less than homicide... nor is such to be judged irregular unless one procures the abortion of an already formed fetus."​

The standard account can be read from Gratian's 12th century compendium of canon law, the Decretum (A.D.1140), which was essentially the medieval church's authoritative legal code:

§1. He is not a murderer who brings about abortion before the soul is in the body. (Ibid. c. 8, C. 32, q.[2]). For even if an unformed embryo had, in some as yet unformed way, a soul (and one should not plunge into this great question and give a rash unreflective opinion), the law would not call it murder, because one cannot tell when a body that lacks sensation has a living soul.

(Decretum gratiani, part 5, Case 32, q II, C8)​

And this view was confirmed by Gratian's reference to the Bible in the Septuagint translation (which transliterated a 'formed/unformed' foetal distinction into its rendering of Exodus that was to prove very influential):

Moses related that [cf. Ex. 21:22], ``If one strike a woman with child, and she miscarry, indeed, if it is formed, he shall render life for life, if it is unformed, he shall be answerable for a monetary fine.'' This proves that soul does not exist before there is a form. Thus, as it must be infused in an already formed body, this cannot occur at the conception of the body with the introduction of the seed. For if the soul existed as both seed and soul together, many souls would perish daily, whenever seed was emitted that did not result in a birth.​

Until 1917 (when Gratian's compendium was replaced by a modern one) the official Roman Catholic canon law thus distinguished between the fetus inanimatus (the unformed, inanimate fetus) and the fetus animatus (the formed, animate fetus). However, in 1869 the papal bull Apostolicae Sedis moderationi of 1869, Pope Pius IX, had already abolished the limitation of automatic excommunication to abortion of a formed fetus alone (which had hitherto been the law of the church), so the ground-work was laid for a stricter interpretation more in line with St. Basil.

Officially, therefore, Catholic Christianity traditionally tended to support a doctrine of "mediate" animation, i.e., the fetus was not formed into a true person or soul until some time during pregnancy. The doctrine of "immediate animation" at conception gradually gained support as a consequence of the doctrine of the Virgin Mary's immaculate conception, proclaimed dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854. This doctrine assumed that Mary's soul was unstained in every way from the very moment of conception. The implication of this appeared to be that ordinary souls, even though not immaculate, were persons from conception.

But the older position cannot just be cast aside, ignored or forgotten about IMHO.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Much will depend on how the Church reacts to the new and decisive mandate. For now, its an important advancement of women's empowerment in Ireland.

One wonders why an election was even needed when the public obviously did not support the Eighth Amendment.

 

[Father Heathen]

Sorry, I mean "pro choicers". Yes it would be a smear on pro-lifers,

As for pro choicers, not a smear at all

"The United States pro-choice movement (also known as the United States abortion-rights movement) is a sociopolitical movement in the United States supporting the view that a woman should have the legal right to an elective abortion..."

To presume that most women who've opted for an abortion are promiscuous and habitually rely upon the procedure as a flippant afterthought is indeed a disgusting smear.