The author is a Jesuit preparing for ordination, and a physician. Crucial point about people dissenting from Catholic/Christian teachings, without being able to explain the teaching!
On Faith: Guest Voices: A Jesuit's Perspective on Abortion
... A further note on killing the other person: As a practicing physician licensed to care for pregnant women, I believe that abortions kill a living human being in the earliest stages of development. The moral question at hand is not if we are killing; it is whether the victims have any claims as persons or not. While the U.S. legal balance is at present skewed towards the denial of rights for the unborn, Catholics and many Evangelical Christians argue that both the mother and the unborn have rights. On a spiritual level, a woman seeking an abortion should recognize that exercising her “choice” will kill a vulnerable and defenseless human being. There is no doubt about this. There is also no doubt that an action can be legal and at the same time be wrong.
Final point, we kill the Church when, in ignorance, we hold it up to ridicule. Last Spring, I asked several medical students in a seminar whether they rejected Catholic teachings regarding reproduction and artificial contraception. Several raised their hands. I prompted them to articulate the position and to give their critique of it. Conversation languished for some while. None in that group of graduating physicians had an answer, yet these well-educated role models were willing to publicly disagree with an argument they could not explain. At a recent Christmas party, a gentlemen identifying himself as a Catholic biologist was railing for research that would result in the death of frozen human embryos. He justified the exploitation, “because they are just sitting there.” I advised him that the Church’s reverence for the protected status of a human person is not based on level of activity but on an intrinsic dignity. He agreed to consider that.
In conversations about abortion we can turn away from the purpose of our being when we entertain malicious thoughts. We kill when we speak unholy words, or physically attack the other person. We kill our children when we abort, terminate, or “get rid of” them. We can kill the Church if we dissent in ignorance from the teachings of its experts and legitimate authorities. Following a reflection such as this upon our failings, it is good to look at the way in which we turn towards God. In this case it shall be to consider how we appropriately love ourselves, the other person and the Church. ...
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