You never know what newsroom professionals will decide is a “holiday” story, of one kind or another.

For example, major publications have through the years run a wide variety of bizarre and even offensive stories that were, somehow, supposed to be linked to Easter. That season is problematic since it is so explicitly Christian, as in the faith’s most important holy day.

Christmas is a different matter, since the season is a cultural steamroller at the level of pop culture, big business and church-state warfare (a drag queens and you are on A1, for sure). Toss in the need for valid year-end features and lots of staff taking vacations and things can get pretty complex for editors.

All of that was an introduction to what I think was a totally valid Christmas-Yearender feature that ran at The New York Times with this big-issue headline: “When does life begin? The question at the heart of America’s abortion debate is the most elemental — and the most complicated.”

Talk about a complex, yet absolutely essential, topic to address after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and it’s absolutely essential that the editors assigned this one to the religion desk. That made sense because it’s impossible to draw a bright red line between the spiritual and legal issues in this debate. As if that isn’t enough, a reporter then has to deal with valid debates on this issue among scientists, and religious leaders (think popes) commenting on those debates.

Thus, this is a story that will draw few cheers from activists on either side of America’s abortion wars. That’s a compliment, with this kind of story. Here is a large chunk of its summary-thesis material:

When does life begin?

In the months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it has become unavoidable, as activists and politicians try to squeeze concrete answers from an eternal question of human existence.

Lawmakers and judges from Arizona to South Carolina have been reviewing exactly which week of development during pregnancy the procedure should be allowed. Some states draw the line at conception, or six weeks or 15 or around 40. Many others point to viability, the time when a fetus can survive outside the uterus. The implication is that after the determined time, the developing embryo or fetus is a human being with rights worth protecting.

Over the summer, when lawmakers in Indiana fought over passing a law banning most all abortions from conception, Republicans argued at length that a fertilized egg was a human life, at times citing their Christian principles — that “human life begins at conception” and “God our creator says you shall not murder.” A Democrat pointed to another answer found in Title 35-31.5-2-160 of the Indiana code: “‘Human being’ means an individual who has been born and is alive.” A disagreement over abortion policy became a fight over what it means to be human, the tension between conception and birth, church and state.

Like I said, that’s just the start. There is no way to stop reading, at that point:

Yet the question goes far beyond politics, law and science into the heart of human experience. The creation of children, the essence of the human person and the survival of the species can pull at the most sacred parts of our lives, wrapping together love and death, hope and grief. Amid the societal upheaval, women continue to become pregnant, have miscarriages and give birth. They feel first kicks and see detailed sonograms. A pregnant woman uses her own nutrients and blood to grow offspring, breathing for it until birth. The growing fetus transforms the woman’s body, and can even threaten her life.

Public opinion reflects the range and complexity of belief. Most Americans support the right to an abortion, but within limits, and they disagree on what exactly those limits should be. But almost uniformly across gender, politics and religion, they believe that how long a woman has been pregnant should matter in determining whether the procedure is legal. More than half of American adults say the statement “human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights” describes their views at least somewhat well, according to the Pew Research Center.

The question of when life begins has been so politicized it can be hard to thoughtfully engage. Even the question can be confusingly broad in what it is asking. In biological terms, when is an organism an organism? Or philosophically, what makes a human a person? And spiritually, what is the relationship between the body and the soul?

The key is a reality that GetReligion has been stressing for months, when it became clear that Roe might fall. By sending this decision back to the states, the Supreme Court put the spotlight on one of the most important realities in American politics — the vanishing middle ground in public life.

Here’s now I put that last weekend in my “On Religion” column:

… (J)ournalists in the Religion News Association named the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as the year's top American religion-news story. Now churches — left and right face — face the challenge of proclaiming certainties while many states seek compromise.

As the Times story notes, accurately, Americans want compromise on this issue — yet it is almost impossible to articulate the legal reasons for any given compromise. Meanwhile, leaders in religious traditions on left and right cannot agree (#DUH).

I appreciated the tensions between these two passages in the Times report, noting the interaction between religious leaders and scientists (through the centuries):

Even Pope Francis, leader of one of the most prominent forces opposing abortion, acknowledges the complexity.

“In any book of embryology, it is said that shortly before one month after conception the organs and the DNA are already delineated in the tiny fetus, before the mother even becomes aware,” he said in a recent interview with the magazine America. “Therefore, there is a living human being. I do not say a person, because this is debated, but a living human being.”

Now, combine that with this information:

Scientific consensus around conception emerged in the 1870s, when a German scientist watched through a microscope as the nuclei of sea urchin sperm and egg fused. It was during this period of scientific advancement and social conflict that Pope Pius IX shifted ensoulment to conception.

Ah, “ensoulment.” Talk about a subject when reporters have to accurately describe serious, life-and-death debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

“Ensoulment” is a theological term, yet it is also a way of stating the obvious questions that face legislators — when is an unborn child a “person” with political rights that limit or even trump those of the mother?

Near the end of the feature — there is no way to deal with all of the valid twists and turns therein — there is another pair of essential quotations that point to the political realities at the heart of the state-by-state debates. I have placed the key phrase in bold type:

Dr. Brendan B. Mitchell is an obstetrician-gynecologist and the longtime medical director for Advice and Aid Pregnancy Centers in Overland Park, Kan., which opposes abortion and provides some support for pregnant women.

He struggles with what he feels is inconsistency in how society values premature babies versus developing fetuses. Doctors work hard to save babies born at 23 or 24 weeks, and people spend millions of dollars to help patients born prematurely, he said, but in some places it is legal to terminate a pregnancy at that time.

“That point of viability is getting constantly pushed back,” he said. “What defines that person as a person or a life — is it what their parents think?”

There’s the reality. How do lawmakers in a secular republic vote to place a limitation on the rights of an adult that, for whatever reason, has decided that a pregnancy must end? The quote from Mitchell collides with another from Elselijn Kingma, a professor at the King’s College London.

The question of when human life begins is a difficult one, but Dr. Kingma believes society should turn its attention to what she feels is the larger, even harder question: “What kind of entitlement on the body of another does a human have?”

Well, for starters, the unborn child cannot vote in an election, testify in a congressional hearing or make contributions to political campaigns.

As I said earlier, there is no way for open-minded news consumers to read this story without feeling frustration. I am sure that some readers will have valid criticisms of this piece. For example, the word “adoption” is never mentioned.

But it’s a must-read story and, yes, this needed to be handled by a religion-beat professional or, at the very least, with major input from one. Times editors made that call and made the right choice.

FIRST IMAGE: The “star child” image from the classic movie “2002: A Space Odyssey.”