So Dean Barnett is now writing in the Boston Globe. See how many doors open when you work with Hugh Hewitt:)

The wisdom of the headline about the fish is well taken.

The piece misses the conection between religion and the right to life. The humanity of the unborn is not derived from revelation or faith, but from science and metaphysics. Indeed, religiously-based ethics once fumbled about with "ensoulment" issues much as Barnett does above.

It is the modern science of reproduction which settles the issue. Embryology and genetics have told us the facts, moral theology only remind us what the facts mean. We know now that a unique, complete human being exists from the moment of conception. We know now that, unless acted upon by an outside force, this unique human being will grow into a thinking, talking, walking about person, like any of us.

This is definitely not a religious matter, such as the doctrine of the Trinity, or a ritual matter, such as what kind of bread and wine are to be used in devine services. It is only confused with such because the baby-murderers so twist the arguement.

It is true that religious institutions, behind the leadership of the Church of Rome, have been in the forefront of progressive thinking about the right to life, but that has ever been their role. We should be reminded that the Kindermord is a profoundly reactionary phenonema--a throwback to pagan times, of a piece with human sacrifice and slavery.

To the contrary, it's only a religious matter. If we aren't Created then life has no intrinsic value.

The fact that "life" never really "begins" or "ends" ... but does morph from form to form ... tends to complicate the debate.

Life morphed from the Creator to the created, what's complicated about that?

Even the pagans and neo-pagans who would reinstitute human sacrifice if they dared, pay lip sevice to the right to life out of deference to the law written in our hearts.

The contemporary pro-death position pretends that everything science has taught us about human reproduction never took place, and that we are as ill-informed as the ancients or the early Scholastics, making guesses about "ensoulment" and "quickening."

Of course, this is all a cynical lie. We now know very well what happens at the microscopic level at the time of fertilization, and we know about DNA. There is no longer any serious question about when human life begins.

If not at conception, when?

Like the author, I'm pro-life, but not religious. By that I mean I don't profess to any religion although I'm keeping my options open that there is a supreme being who set everything in place. How, why and who? I haven't a clue.

I'll let people far smarter than I figure it out.

erp:

Although it's kind of a clunky formulation, the way I figure it is that it's clearly nonsense to say you were once a sperm or an egg by itself, while it obviously makes sense to say you were once a fertilized egg cell. It doesn't make much sense to me to say life might or could begin at some other point -- there's no one characteristic to use as a guide other than conception.