Evangelium Vitae

Evangelium Vitae is the name of the encyclical written by Pope John Paul II which expresses the position of the Catholic Church regarding the value and inviolability of human life. The Pope issued the encyclical on March 25, 1995.

The Vatican website is a tad obtuse but here is the link to John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae(Gospel of Life)

The Main Arguments For Abortion

1. it is a woman's right to choose.

2. It is a woman's body

3. It(meaning the baby at different stages of development)is nothing but a blob of cells

4. It is not viable

The arguments don't hold water.1. A woman always has the right to choose. We get up every single day making choices.From the very sublime to the most important. We can decide to call in sick to work or go.We can choose to have a bowl of cereal or fry a couple eggs. We can choose to run a stop sign because we're in a rush.We can choose to obey all the traffic signals and signs.We can choose to work overtime or clock out early. We can choose to eat lunch or skip it. We can choose to get married,take a job,buy a new home,get a new car,change schools,go to college,not go to college.

The point is we are always free to make choices and whatever they are they have consequences. Some more than others,some hardly at all.Nobody is trying to take away a woman's right to choose. While we can choose to take a life we simply don't have the right (except in cases of self defense). Nobody would ever say we have the right to murder. We could say we can choose to murder, but we can never say we have the right to murder.

2.It is the woman's body. Yep. That is undeniable. The point of abortion is not the woman's body however.The point of abortion is whether to permit a human life to be terminated. Abortion only terminates 1 life. The woman should have the best care available to make sure her pregnancy is safe for her and the baby;that she and baby remain healthy throughout the pregnancy. Nobody denies that it's the woman's body but that's not in question.

3. The blob of cells argument doesn't hold up at all. Everyone is made up of cells. The person who argues for abortion because the baby is just a blob of cells is also made up of cells.

4.First,we will define viability. It means that the fetus having reached such a stage of development is capable of living, under normal conditions, outside the uterus.The argument is that if the fetus is not viable then there's no reason to oppose it being aborted. Here we're avoiding the main question.Is this a human life or not? Whether the fetus is viable is a non issue. If there is a problem it may by nature be miscarried. Short of that, it's a human life whether its able to live outside the uterus or not. None of us are capable of living on our own for very long. There are people who survive for long periods totally isolated but if we were completely and totally isolated from other human beings we probably wouldn't last very long. In a matter of speaking none of us are viable. We depend on our mothers for life from the very beginning;from the stage of a fetus who cannot live outside the uterus until the day we are born and then some.

The main problem with avoiding the real question of whether it's a human life or not is that when the question of termination of pregnancy(which it is)becomes a matter of opinion different people pick different times when THEY deem it acceptable. Some will say x amount of weeks. Others will say only before it's viable. Others will say up until the time of live birth.

So what did Roe V Wade decide about the matter: the Court rejected Roe's trimester framework. It affirmed Roe's central holding that a person has a right to abortion until viability. The Roe decision defined "viable" as being "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid", adding that viability "is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."

So did Roe V Wade really place any restrictions on when an abortion can be performed? Obviously not-again it was a matter of opinion(albeit the court's)on when a human life could be terminated.It's been up for grabs ever since.The abortionist decides when he would be able to perform an abortion. Some go right up to the 28 weeks. All the law did was take the abortionist out of the back alley,gave him a place up front called a 'clinic' and made it a both a 'respectable' and very lucrative business.Planned Parenthood(an oxymoron if there ever was one)has a vested interest in the abortion industry.