text: (Cont) Most of this is in response to your saying that the Church teaches that the soul is given at conception. While any number of clergy and faithful may be saying that is so,  and thereby giving the impression that it is established truth, it is not an official teaching of the church, and the soul's presence at conception is not part of the Church's official pronouncements and arguments against abortion.  (For whatever it's worth, I also found it odd that the Church was officially agnostic on this matter.) 
  
  I am very much in favor of moral caution, as a general principle. But in this debate, moral caution is widely replaced with an unsanctioned moral certainty,  -- that a zygote is, in fact, already and completely a child. What the Church says, officially, is, first, that it could be, and second, that it might as well be. But admittedly, it's hard to get those nuanced positions onto a protest sign.