To the Editor:
—In the Berlin letter (The Journal, June 22, p. 2119), I find a statement to the effect that the Catholic church "does not generally consider abortion during the first eighty days as a penal offense." This statement, if let pass, would, I have reason to believe, be quite misleading to Catholic physicians and the public generally, with rather serious effects.Just what is meant by "penal offense" I do not know. The insinuation is, however, if I judge rightly, that the Catholic church does not consider the destruction of the human embryo within the first eighty days as real abortion or as sinful murder.This may have been true, or at least a matter of dispute, before much was known of the process of generation and the fertilization and growth of the embryo. Now, however, it is universally held by Catholic theologians that the human soul is