Joan, let me add a couple things relevant to your post.
In the US, 88% of abortions are in the first 12 weeks. That from agi-usa.org , which has many other interesting factoids on the subject. I'd guess that the first trimester proportion would be higher if the subject wasn't so stigmatized; it's not like it's an enjoyable thing to wait and do it later.
On the topic of the official Catholic position, it's a fairly recent phenomena. I believe that wrt abortion, until the 19th century the official position was that life begins at quickening. There's a new book by Garry Wills out on the general topic of papal pronouncements that sounds quite interesting, it apparently covers the related and somewhat more recent "every sperm is sacred" area in some depth. From nytimes.com , a review of "Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit", by Garry WIlls
In the last two parts of the book -- The Honesty Issue'' and ''The
Splendor of Truth'' -- Wills writes about his heroes: Lord Acton,
Cardinal Newman and St. Augustine. He offers them as exemplars to
whom the church might turn in order to escape from the Orwellian
''structures of deceit'' currently built into papal practice.
In 1864, Pius IX denounced those who dared assert that ''the Roman
Pontiff can and should reconcile himself to, and come to terms with,
progress, liberalism and modern civilization.'' Lord Acton -- like Wills,
both a distinguished historian and a scholar quite able to meet the
Vatican's theologians on their own ground -- realized that Pius was
making Catholicism look ridiculous. So Acton did everything he could to
persuade the First Vatican Council not to give Pius what he most wanted
-- ratification of the doctrine of papal infallibility. Acton lost that fight, but
only after Pius had used every trick in the book to whip the conciliar
fathers into line.
Pius IX is, Wills says, ''a presence in the Vatican to this day.''
Present-day papal deceitfulness and arrogance are, for Wills, most
vividly illustrated by Paul VI's taking the question of birth control out of
the hands of the Second Vatican Council. Paul, he says, was terrified that
the fathers would repudiate the anticontraception pronouncements of Pius
XI, who in 1930 had announced what Monty Python called the ''every
sperm is sacred'' view. (''The Divine Majesty,'' Pius XI wrote, ''regards
with greatest detestation this horrible crime,'' that is, spilling one's seed
upon the ground, or into a condom.) So Paul decided that it would be
better to make life miserable for further generations of Catholics than to
allow the Council to admit that a predecessor had goofed. Wills says that
''Humanae Vitae,'' Paul's 1968 encyclical reaffirming the ban on
contraception, ''is not really about sex. It is about authority. Paul decided
the issue on that ground alone.''
A historical aside that you're probably aware of: I read elsewhere that Lord Acton's famous "Power corrupts" quote comes from the context of the debate on papal infallibility. On a personal note, while attending Newman High School, we read Hans Kung on papal infallibility, but that was a somewhat mellower time for the mother church, when Vatican II and John XXIII were more than distant memories. Near as I can tell Old JPII has turned back the clock, dealt with Hans Kung appropriately, and stuffed the hierarchy with revanchists. Sort of a pity, but that's life.
Cheers, Dan. |
