On Abortion

This is not an issue I would normally throw my hat into the ring on, but today the Pope issued a statement that equated abortion to hiring a hitman.

First off, we need to take the development of the fetus into account here. The heartbeat bills are extreme, and I defer with the situation this then calls into question: a braindead person still has a heartbeat.  Do they have the right to remain on life support indefinitely?

Obviously the more important question here than "does a person have a heartbeat?" is "does this person have self-awareness?" That should be the determining factor for personhood.

The Bible suggests that the soul enters the body when the person takes their first breath, not that I think that it should be upheld as any sort of authority, but it is supposed to be the Pope's guidebook to life and the Universe. I imagine the capacity for self-awareness sets in at the time the fetus becomes capable of living outside the mother's womb.

These decisions are never made lightly, but the most important conversation we should be having here is how to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place through education and freely available contraceptives. The Catholic paradigm of birth control through abstinence as modeled by the celibacy of the priesthood is demonstrably one of the biggest failures on Earth; let's end this antiquated notion of having a virgin tell us all how to have sex.

Let's get this right, people.