Abortion ends a pregnancy. But does an embryo have a soul?

Even after 30 years, it's clear that Roe v. Wade hasn't resolved this fundamental question. And there are others: How much privacy from government should Americans be allowed, for example, or what role should religion play in any new laws that are written? Those questions beget more questions: Should birth control pills be thought of as abortion pills? Should public aid be available to an indigent woman who wants an abortion because she is carrying a fatally deformed fetus? If Roe v. Wade is overturned, will women stop getting abortions? These questions weren't on the ballot this fall, but, according to exit polls and evangelicals, abortion was a subtext in President Bush's victory over his pro-choice opponent. Three decades after Roe v. Wade, abortion is more divisive and perplexing than ever.

Religions don't speak with one voice when they try to provide answers. And people of faith often come up with their own answers, it seems. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive issues, 78 percent of women who have had abortions report a religious affiliation.

While some faiths oppose abortion unreservedly, others do not. Some Jews and some Protestants have declared that abortion, while not to be taken lightly and not to be used as birth control, is not murder. A resolution adopted by an annual convention of American rabbis has concluded that "Jewish legal literature permits therapeutic abortion" and "We oppose all . . . legislation which would abridge or circumscribe this right."

In their official statements, abortion-tolerating religions seem to be saying that a fertilized egg has the potential for human life but does not yet have a human soul within its cells.

Exactly, says Rabbi Tracee Rosen of Congregation Kol Ami. Rabbi Rosen says she doesn't know how people can have a religious debate on abortion without talking about "ensoulment." The current discussion in Judaism, she says, is whether the soul enters the fetus at the time it becomes viable (able to survive outside the mother's body) or at birth.

The Catholic Church believes the soul enters the body at conception. Some people of other faiths, even those who are against abortion, have no opinion about the soul of a fetus.

Pastor Rodger Russell of Holladay Baptist Church didn't want to speak for his entire church, only for himself, when he said abortion should be outlawed. Still, the Rev. Russell says, "we don't talk about a soul" when talking about abortion. Southern Baptists, instead, simply say that "life begins at conception."