When "a long time" isn't long enough

Here's an excerpt from an article entitled Pope Pelosi at the Gate that ran in newspapers over the past few days (i read it in our local Sunday paper, i found it online in Thursday's San Francisco Chronicle):

Citing Barack Obama's recent pass on a similar question - "At what point does a baby get human rights?" - Brokaw asked Pelosi what she would say to Obama were he to ask her advice.

Pelosi didn't finesse her answer, as Obama did when he said the question was above his pay grade, but she may wish she had.

"I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time," Pelosi began. "And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctrines of the church have not been able to make that definition. ... St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on a woman's right to choose. ... I don't think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins."

I'm glad the article included the response of the Catholic Church - the right response, i might add - but i want to add an excerpt from the Epistle of Barnabas, a Church document dating to around 100 B.C, more than two hundred years prior to Augustine...

Do not kill an unborn child through abortion, nor destroy it after birth.

Regardless of the attempts (or lack thereof) to define when "human" life begins, regardless of Pelosi's consistency of being an ardent, practicing Catholic, regardless of her having studied for a long time the issue, it is quite clear she has not studied it enough - or perhaps she has studied only long enough suit her own bias.