The entertaining Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is not yet running for Pope, but this has not prevent her from correcting Catholic theologians when they fall short of modern perceptions.

The Catholic Church's doctrine on abortion began to take form in the first century. To be sure, doctrine, as Cardinal Henry Newman insists (see "On The Development of Christian Doctrine"), does admit of development; which is to say, the doctrine, as it encounters different obstacles in its course through history, does change somewhat to meet new contingencies.

But there is a world of difference between development and categorical change. During the birth cycle, developmental changes occur in the fetus, but there is no radical change - in the absence of an abortion - such that the human being that is the end product in the process changes, shall we say, into a fish or a head of lettuce.

Well, Christian doctrine is a little bit like that.

http://donpesci.blogspot.com/2008/08/pope-pelosi-on-abortion.html