The Admiral

Did not Catholic doctrine at one time state that a male fetus became a person at the 40th day after conception and the female at 80 days?

Toto

The question was one of "ensoulment."

link

The difference between male and female fetus' goes back to Aristotle, and was incorporated in Christian thinking. Link.

Modern anti-abortion Catholics have no good doctrinal basis for their belief that human life begins at conception.

Malachi151

Additionally, the Bible implies that one receives one's soul when God "breaths the breath of life into them," which of course only happens at birth.

Chili

Life begins at conception and human life is an illusion and always will be an illusion for the simple reason that our humanity is a condition of being that is added to the being . . . but is wherein we rational to make us the rational animal man.

Our soul is prior to us becoming rational and is wherein we are non-rational but it is ours from the moment of conception. It is wherein we are the continuity of God inside the Thousand Year Reign that is incarnatly ours as representations of our lineage wherefore it can be said that life itself is not recognized until we become the rational appropriator of that life. We call this the "fall of man" because henceforth we will be divided between life itself wherein we are eternal as the continuity of God, and life temporal as the left brain usurper of that life equiped with a blank slate to redirect each generation anew.

The upshot here is that "personhood" is built on the blank slate status of the imposter who will seek human rights to reinforce and defend the unstable position held by this usurper lest he be dethroned before Gods own time wherein he is natures own insurrectionist.

Looking at it this way there is no theological reason that can even accept abortion as an available option.

spamandham

Life began long before conception evolved. The sperm and egg that go into a new fetus are in every sense of the word 'alive'.

Huon

The egg and the hen ...

EssEff

Skin cells are also "alive." The question of whether a collection of cells is a person (with the attendant rights) is what's being discussed here.

The question I have is whether the fetus can be called "innocent," as anti-abortion idiots say. If there's "original sin," then the fetus is evil and it's not taking the life of an "innocent" to have an abortion.

Huon

Simplified excerpts from the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908).

Generationism
Generationism applies to the materialistic doctrine according to which the soul of the offspring originates from the parental soul in some mysterious way analogous to that in which the organism originates from the parent's organism.
The general attitude of the Roman Church is certainly opposed to Generationism.

Traducianism
Traducianism (tradux, a shoot or sprout, and more specifically a vine branch made to take root so as to propagate the vine), in general the materialistic doctrine that, in the process of generation, the human spiritual soul is transmitted to the offspring by the parents.
Traducianism is heretical because it goes directly against the spirituality of the soul.

Creationism
The doctrine that the individual human soul is the immediate effect of God's creative act. It is opposed to Traducianism.

The traditional philosophy of the Church holds that the rational soul is created at the moment when it is infused into the new organism. St. Thomas, following Aristotle's embryology, taught that the human foetus passes through progressive stages of formation wherein it is successively animated by the vegetative, sensitive, and rational principles, each succeeding form summing up virtually the potencies of its predecessor.

Accordingly, the rational soul is created when the antecedent principles of life have rendered the foetus an appropriate organism for rational life, though some time is required after birth before the sensory organs are sufficiently developed to assist in the functions of intelligence.

Whether the rational soul is infused into the organism at conception, as the modern opinion holds, or some weeks subsequently, as the Scholastics suppose (St. Thomas, Q. i a. 2, ad 2), is an open question with theologians (Kleutgen, Phil. d. Vorzeit, II, 657).

original sin :

Leo IX (1050), in the symbol presented to the Bishop Peter for subscription, lays down: "I believe and profess that the soul is not a part of God, but is created out of nothing, and that, without baptism, it is in original sin" (Denzinger, Enchir., n. 296).

limbo :

In theological usage the name "limbo" is applied to :
(a) the temporary place or state of the souls of the just who, although purified from sin, were excluded from the beatific vision until Christ's triumphant ascension into Heaven (the "limbus patrum");
or (b) to the permanent place or state of those unbaptized children and others who, dying without grievous personal sin, are excluded from the beatific vision on account of original sin alone (the "limbus infantium" or "puerorum").


[end Catholic Encyclopedia]

You will note that Generationism and Traducianism are "materialistic doctrines" concerning the (immaterial) "soul"...

There is no explanation "how" the soul is "infused" into the organism at conception. Where is God, coming before or after the dick of dad, into the vagina of mom ? Thorny question.

About limbo, more recent infos :

On April 22, 2007, the advisory body known as the International Theological Commission released a document, originally commissioned by Pope John Paul II, entitled "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized."
Pope Benedict XVI authorized publication of this document, which is not an official expression of the Church's teaching. [one sharp turn left, one sharp turn right]

Roger Pearse

"Crucify that slave!" says the wife. "But what crime worthy of death has he committed? " asks the husband; "where are the witnesses? who informed against him? Give him a hearing at least; no delay can be too long when a man's life is at stake!" "What, you numskull? You call a slave a man, do you? He has done no wrong, you say? Be it so; but this is my will and my command: let my will be the voucher for the deed."

Juvenal, 6th Satire.

Chili

Sure, but conception does not evolve and the sperm and eg do not go into a new fetus. The fetus is formed after conception takes place wherein the ovum receives life from the sperm that was created by conjecture in the conscious mind of the male. To be alive denies possession of that life and is therefore not the same as to have life in the art of godmanship wherin life has a mind of its own.