-----"The Church has never made the argument that every unimplanted embryo is a miscarriage....."-----
Defining the beginning of life..... ahhh it seems everyone has an 'opinion'..........the partial birth abortionists say that it begins when the fetus is capable of living on its own apart from the mother,.... yank that 'parasite'(as they call it) out of the mother and if it lives apart from the mother, then you can call it human..... others say varying degrees of development to include the beating heart, etc....
more popular these days(to justify things like the morning after pill and oral contraceptives) is to say that life begins at implantation.
OK..... lets quit all of the semantics and be honest. When the sperm meets the egg and conception occurs..... when the two genetic codes unite and you have a genetically whole organism.... a zygote that is growing and seeking a home within the womb........
THIS IS WHEN LIFE BEGINS.
Yes, I said genetically whole organism. This is what you get at conception. Anyone care to argue this fact?
Bring it on.
I contend that murder is daily taking place and that semantics are a poor cover up....... all will be brought to light when it is too late for some.
I see your line of reasoning, but if this reasoning is to be followed through, then we as Catholics have to stop saying that 1 out of every 3 pregnancies is miscarried in the first trimester and start saying that over 2.5 out of every 3 pregnancies are miscarried in the first trimester because an overwhelming majority of life never develops.
That said, I'm still not sure I agree that a zygote seeking a home = life when 80% of them will not find a home, not implant, not develop past an 8-celled organism. Is a genetically whole zygote that cannot grow because it doesn't implant "life"? I don't have a yes or no answer and I can't just say "life has begun" because a zygote exists. It seems to me that, if a zygote is life, God has created human beings to cause a massive waste of life given the absurdly high percentage that never implant. God is not known for creating waste. So I still have no very good conclusion because I don't find any arguments pro unimplanted zygotes as life to be entirely persuasive.
I'm not saying that on this belief I'm going to go out and shoot myself up with Depo-Provera but I do think the modern Church needs to address head-on and in an unimpeachable philosophical manner the issue of whether all these unimplanted zygotes are "life" and the fact of all these millions of souls who are in heaven without getting past the 8-cells phase. Does that mean that I, an only child, may have 15 siblings? Sometimes I just have to throw up my hands and say "that just doesn't sit right with me" and the argument of all the souls of unimplanted zygotes going to heaven just doesn't sit right with me. Doesn't mean you're not right. Just means I can't really wrap my head around the logic of that.