Question:
I heard a pro-abortion atheist argue against the claim that life begins at conception by asking what happens when identical twins are conceived. How would one respond to that?
Answer:
| If I hear a noise in the bushes, am I allowed to shoot if there is a reasonable expectation that the noise in the bushes is a human being and not a deer? Of course not—and so in the case where it is not yet certain that there is a human person present, it is still gravely immoral to kill that life, since there is also a reasonable expectation that it is a human person.And then there is a second reason: there is the basic precept of the natural law that parents seek the conservation of the life of their offspring. A mother conserves the life which is in her and depends on her; she does not destroy it. This is not some kind of imposition by a patriarchal society but a universal norm of all kinds of beings, and most of all human beings.
Here is a passage from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that pertains to the point we are making:
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