Time for a rational debate on when human life begins

When does human life begin? For most of the last millennium the Vatican did not hold that it begins at conception, writes Patsy McGarry

It is 137 years since the Catholic Church adopted its current teaching on abortion. Then, in his 1869 document Apostolicae Sedis, Pope Pius IX enacted the penalty of excommunication for abortion at any stage of pregnancy. For the previous 278 years, and following Pope Gregory XIV's Sedes Apostolica document in 1591, such excommunication only applied where abortion took place after "quickening", ie from those moments when a mother first detected the foetus move.

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