in matters in which I would not have wished to decide, and in which the well-being of two people is at stake, but which might not be possible to resolve without pain of some sort to one of the parties. The parties of a mother and child, their mutual relationship, in the Christian tradition is very special. Since the earliest times, abortion and deliberate, neglectful exposure of a post-natal child to kill it have been absolutely proscribed.
There are times when I have wondered about, say, nuns being raped and the effects on them, the nightmarish questions it would raise for nuns concerned, should they conceive, when abortifacients might be used, to kill the first beginnings of the physical baby, when presumably no more than a cell or two, or perhaps several - endeavouring to make the best of a bad job, so to speak. However, I've learnt by experience to trust the church's decisions in difficult, spiritual matters, and the church - and I've read recently, scientists - believe life begins at conception. Sometimes grey areas do occur, and then you have to do what your conscience says you must in the circumstances and put your trust more the ever in God's mercy. Even the Apostles had to do their best, but then rely totally on God's mercy, because we're all a bad lot. We've inherited a virus called 'original sin'.
If in the case of those nuns, the Church aid that a nun or perhaps other such women, who took an abortificacient asap after the rape, that it would not lead to their being denied absolution - if that's possible - then that might make sense to this admittedly imperfectly-sighted soul.
Maybe because he knows what backsliders we are, Jesus tended to speak and proscribe in absolutes. I don't think he meant us to pluck our eyes out to make 'custody of the eyes' easier, although strictly speaking he was telling the truth. Better to be blind over a human life-span than to find your consistent choices have amounted to your choosing hell over heaven. So it would be dangerous for me to believe, still less, say, because the zygote is so inchoate, I don't think God will see a moral equivalence.
As regards abortions of formed or partly-formed babies, however, I don't believe there is any question as to its wickedness. And while I can't imagine that sucking, hoovering an embryo or small baby from the womb would have been less than horrific, a kind of 'act of war' by the mother on her own, unknown and innocent child. Wars are blunt instruments, but, given our fallen nature, generally, especially of the most powerful and worldly, they have been unavoidable. Abortions are not. If my wife and I had had a child, and it had been seriously deformed, I can't think of a more horrifying sight - having recently seen at a nuclear accident website, photos of babies deformed by radiation, before I realised and got out of the screen as quickly as I could - turning my eyes away. It wasn't the children of course, but the potential suffering those extremely hideous deformities constituted or would have for them, had they survived. I didn't study if they were aborted or what.
Nevertheless, I remember a young Irish couple on TV with recently born babies with the somewhat less horrendous Siamese twins with conjoined heads. Those parents were, on the face of it, just an ordinary Joe and Jane, but nobody is course, truly ordinary, least of all, those the world considers 'ordinary'. Quiet and humble in their demeanour, they took it all in their stride and were very loving to their two afflicted but happy-seeming children.
However, this live dismemberment of partly-formed and fully-formed babies is quite 'off the dial' for me in its wickedness. As a German 'tankie' said in a cable documentary on the Eastern Front of WWII, there were not many things they were scared of, but falling into the hands of the Russian partisans absolutely terrified them. The reason is very briefly mentioned, skimmed over, really. in a YouTube video, dismembered bodies of such unfortunate German soldiers were found by the side of the roads. However, an elderly German told me that they chopped their arms and legs off and laid the torso in the middle of the road, as a warning. Now, translate that to a mother and her child, as Wordsworth put it: still 'trailing clouds of glory', while that child is at its most vulnerable and needing its mother's love - bearing in mind, mothers often give their own lives to save a child of theirs.
One of the things I have learnt is that those in our church, Francis calls the Pharisees and Pelagians, think that everything is neatly laid out in the catechism and canon law. It has been my experience however that the more seriously you take your faith and develop your interior life of prayer, the more difficult the and perplexing will be the choices you will, on occasions, face: what to do for the best to avoid a greater sin or ill? However, the abortion of a mother's child does not present such a dilemma, with adoption agencies, orphanages and help available from Catholic church organisations. It is one of the great no-nos. And, as I say, I take it on trust that it holds from the moment of conception.
I pray with especial love for women who I knew had had an abortion while they were alive; an 'especial love', because they were very lovable people, and I know never ceased to regret their action on that fateful day. Our prayers are very precious to the souls in purgatory.
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