SOUL FOOD:

When asked “At what point does a baby get human rights?” Obama answered at the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, “Whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

Maybe, I thought, if the question is beyond your reach, you could employ your famous humility and defer to the wisdom of others — theologians, scientists and the authors of the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” says the Declaration. Government, it says, is to secure these rights.

Long before our modern knowledge of embryology, Christians viewed abortion and infanticide as immoral. In the first and second centuries, the Didache — the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles — condemned both.

Fifth-century bishop and theologian St. Augustine condemned abortion at any stage, as did St. Thomas Aquinas eight centuries later. Aristotle’s fifth-century BC theories came to influence debates about whether abortion at certain early stages was homicide. The human soul, thought Aristotle, developed in the womb over 40 days of gestation for males and 80 days for females.

For a time these theories affected the penalties for abortion reflected in Roman Catholic Church law. Yet they never excluded abortion at any stage from being intrinsically evil.

In the Eastern Church, views on abortion have been consistently aligned with those of Tertullian in the second century and Basil the Great in the fourth.

Wrote Tertullian, “Prevention of birth is precipitation of murder; it does not matter whether one takes away a life when formed, or drive it away while forming. He also is a man who is about to be one. Even every fruit already exists in its seed.”

Basil regarded abortion as premeditated murder.

“She who purposely destroys the fetus shall suffer the punishment of murder,” he wrote.

Soon after, Ernst von Baer discovered the human ovum in 1827, the distinctions between “ensouled” or “unensouled” fetuses were removed from Catholic Church law. “Respect for Unborn Human Life: The Church’s Constant Teaching,” recounts this history on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website, www.usccb.org.

“The Developing Human,” an American human embryology text, states, “Human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to produce a single cell — a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

Yet the U.S. Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, elevated a woman’s right to privacy above the life a fetus and its right to due process.

Since the Saddleback forum, Obama has distanced himself from his remark about the issue being above his pay grade. He has not, though, backed off his ardently pro-Roe position. He defends his vote against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act — even when a neutrality clause affirmed the bill would not impact Roe v. Wade.

Robert P. George is a professor of jurisprudence, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and has served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has co-authored “Embryo: A Defense of Human Life,” based on major scientific works on human embryogenesis and early intrauterine development.

George has called Obama “the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of president.” Like the readers who e-mailed me after reading last week’s column, he finds it hard to grasp how “self-identified pro-life Catholics and Evangelicals” can promote Obama’s candidacy.

Rodger Fignar wrote to say, “I am a Catholic who definitely considers it a sin to vote for a pro-choice candidate.” He referred me to a letter by Father John Corapi, who bluntly writes that any Catholic who does not believe life begins at conception is “a heretic.”

Corapi calls the 48 million abortions since Roe v. Wade “genocide by definition.” He concludes, “No other issue, not all other issues taken together, can constitute a proportionate reason for voting for candidates that intend to preserve and defend this holocaust….”

Cathy Duffy sent a link that led me to “Explaining Ratzinger’s Proportionate Reasons,” by Jimmy Akin. One-time Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI.

Akin is the director of apologetics for “Catholic Answers.” You can read his article at www.catholic .com/thisrock/2004/0411fea4.asp.

He calls abortion “the preeminent moral issue of our time” and concludes, “Presenting any other issues as if they were proportionate to it is nothing but smoke and mirrors.”

Yet as other Catholics have pointed out, neither Obama nor McCain are strict “pro-life” candidates. McCain has said he favors funding for amniotic fluid and adult stem cell research programs. In the last debate, both shunned the idea of a so-called “litmus test” for Supreme Court nominees. On Roe v. Wade, Obama said, “The Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn’t be subject to state referendum.”

McCain countered, “I think decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I’m a federalist.” Both fall short of constitutional protection for unborn lives.

What troubles me most about Obama is this: He supports the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which protects pro-life citizens from paying for abortions on demand through public funding.

He has also said, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.” This federal legislation would guarantee the right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

That would mean, as Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia has written, “a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined ‘health’ reasons.”

In his essay, “Obama’s Abortion Extremism,” George writes, “FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the healthcare industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs.”

That’s everything a lot of voters have worked hard and long to win. I wish Obama would tell me he’s changed his mind about the Hyde Amendment and the FOCA.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.