Catholic Church and Issue of Abortion

At the core of the abortion controversy is whether or not the fetus is a viable human being. Pro-life advocates contend that the fetus possesses personhood from the moment of conception. Therefore, abortion is considered murder. Pro-choice supporters believe otherwise, some even describing the fetus as "uterine material." A number of pro-life Catholics, however, unsure of the human status of the fetus, oppose abortion strictly on moral grounds. As one writer puts it, "I don't need to believe the zygote-embryo-fetus is a human being to believe that abortion kills something alive and precious" (Guentert and McGowan 6).

Feminists claim that only recently has the Catholic Church taught that fetal life begins at conception. The early Catholics taught the doctrine of ensoulment, the moment at which God breathed spiritual life into the fetus: "The point at which ensoulment was said to occur varied, but most typically it was marked by quickening, when fetal movement began" (Cloyes 121). Not until the late nineteenth century did the Catholic Church align its doctrine with "modern science" regarding the viability of the fetus.

Not only do modern Christian pro-life activists believe that the fetus is human, th

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single motherhood still carries a stigma, even in a permissive society like the United States. Recently, considerable debate surrounded the television pregnancy of fictional character Murphy Brown, an unwed career woman. Then Vice-President Dan Quayle singled out this incident as indicative of the moral decay of society. Critics of abortion contend that the underlying issue behind Roe v. Wade was the validation of unrestricted freedom for single, career women: "Both feminist ideologues and committed career women wanted more: namely, the approval of society for their lifestyle and philosophy. With Roe, they achieved that" (Cunningham 45). Poor access to and information about pregnancy and birth control is another factor that contributes to the number of abortions. Feminists argue that in such cases, the woman should not be held morally culpable for the resulting pregnancy: "A social policy that pressures the sexually ill-informed child or young woman into unintended or unaware motherhood would be morally dubious indeed" (Cloyes 124). Even informed women who make proper use of contraceptives run the risk of pregnancy because no birth control method, besides abstinence, is 100 percent effective. In addition, contraceptiv
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