Agreed and how about this excerpt from Pubmed.gov below. I've been researching fundamental Catholic doctrine this morning. I think we have to realize that the majority of the Court, our President and many of the Senators including Manchin are Catholics. How did this happen? Catholics are not allowed to hang their religious hat at the door when they enter public life, yet in the US we are supposed to have separation of church and state.
Below the history of the abortion policy of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Church has consistently opposed abortion as evidence of sexual sin but has not always regarded it as homicide because Church teaching has never been definitive about the nature of the fetus.
In addition, the prohibition of abortion has never been declared an infallible teaching. The chronology starts with a sketch of events in the first six Christian centuries when Christians sought ways to distinguish themselves from pagans who accepted contraception and abortion. During this period, Christians also decided that sexual pleasure was evil. Early Church leaders began the debate about when a fetus acquired a rational soul, and St. Augustine declared that abortion is not homicide but was a sin if it was intended to conceal fornication or adultery.
During the period of 600-1500, illicit intercourse was deemed by the Irish Canons to be a greater sin than abortion, Church leaders considered a woman's situation when judging abortion, and abortion was listed in Church canons as homicide only when the fetus was formed. St. Thomas Aquinas declared that a fetus first has a vegetative soul, then an animal soul, and finally a rational soul when the body was developed. The next period, 1500-1750, found anyone who resorted to contraception or abortion subject to excommunication (1588), saw these rules relaxed in 1591, and banned abortion even for those who would be murdered because of a pregnancy (1679). From 1750 to the present, excommunication was the punishment for all abortions (1869). This punishment was extended to medical personnel in 1917, but the penalty had exceptions if the woman was young, ignorant, or operating under duress or fear.
In 1930, therapeutic abortions were condemned, and, in 1965, abortion was condemned as the taking of life rather than as a sexual sin. By 1974, the right to life argument had taken hold and became part of a theory of a "seamless garment" representing a consistent ethic of life. The current Pope recognizes that the moment of ensoulment is unknown but condemns abortion in all cases (except as the unintentional byproduct of another medical procedure).
According to this any practicing Catholic - ergo Supreme Court Justices and Congress people and Presidents will be ex-communicated if they don't follow Catholic doctrine!
