Ensoulment

Okay, OKAY I'll bite. Roe v. Wade might no longer be with us. This would entail a victory for the Christian Church up to the 19th century (in the West). Then, the Catholic communion must revive that debate about ensoulment. It's not as early as you'd think!

In the European West - looking mainly at France - the early-modern consensus has been that ensoulment happens after the first trimester of pregnancy. The Vatican moved in the 19th century to its present position, based on a reading of the Hebrew Prophets, that G-d conceives life and its potential at the moment the DNA combines. Protestant Europe balked at this; so did laïciste France.

Roe v. Wade doesn't deal with the soul at all, instead focusing on spurious "privacy" so legitimising abortion up to near-infanticide. [PS. Winchell Chung's Twitter supports Charles Stross who - from afar - supports RvW; keep this in mind when considering to donate to the Atomic Rockets patreon. Or when considering to purchase Stross books, which I personally don't, because they're not good books. At least HalfSigma is honest about his eugenics.] But we're not here to debate RvW. RvW itself was outright nonsense and not worth the hassle.

On the basis of science the Vatican here was ahead of its time; which - this post concedes - hasn't always been the case. Here the science in question is information-theory: DNA is the person. Also memory, and the sum of accidents occurring upon the human body over time; but, ultimately, DNA is foremost.