Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Zeev Hed]

How can one commit one the most heinous crimes (to Christianity and Judaism alike, suicide) and have a deathbed conversion, that is a ludicrous presumption.

When Falwell speaks with such deridation of abortionists ("killing 40 millions babies a year") he simply shows his theological ignorance. Even Aquinas argued strongly that ensoulement cannot occur before the termination of the first trimester of pregnancy. Of Course, Hallachic (Judaic) law is quite clear on that issue, based on Genesis, ensoulement occurs only with the first independent breath of the new born. Thus the Judaic very clear ruling (when there is a question of whose life to save at birth), when one must be sacrificed for the other, the mother or the fetus, the ruling is unequivocal, the mother is alive and thus letting her die will be "taking a life", the fetus is not a life, and thus if a choice must be made, it is always clear.

By the way, Judaism frown on abortion as well, but in Judaism there are "degrees" of sins, taking a life is one of the three sins one does not commit even if the result would be the loss of one owns life (only three such sins in the whole of 613 sins and good deeds dictated in the old testament).

Zeev