Christian Teaching About Abortion
Abortion is the premature expulsion of the foetus from the womb. There
can be a number of reasons why people have abortions, either social or
medical reasons. The social reasons are teenage pregnancies. When
there is no financial support, when pregnancy is inconvient e.g.
somebody is in a good job and could lose it. A family could have too
many children already or not be ready to have children yet. Or the
baby could be a mistake through a failure of contraception. The
medical reasons include, rape, incest, incurable genetic disorder, if
there is a high risk of a handicapped child, if the pregnancy affects
the health of the mother or something goes wrong in pregnancy.
Abortion used to be a crime in the UK but is legal since the abortion
act in 1967. The UK law is that abortion should be carried out up to
the end of 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the pregnancy is going to
affect the health of the mother or continuation of the pregnancy could
affect the unborn child.
However abortion is still an extremely controversial subject and there
are many views for or against abortion.
The traditional Christian view of abortion was that it was wrong.
Traditional Christian teaching places the highest value on human life
therefore condemns abortion.
" You shall not kill by abortion the fruit of the womb." Didache.
Christians believe that God created life so therefore only God has the
right to take life away and also abortion was devaluing human life and
making it disposable.
However today Christian views on abortion vary. This is because
Christians have many influences when making their decisions. They are
influenced by society as well as their faith. Also there is now
increased feminist influence and some denominations do not give clear
teaching on abortion:
" Foetus is to be specially respected and protected. Nonetheless the
life of the foetus is not absolutely sacrosanct if it endangers the
life of the mother." C of E 1984
Abortion laws first developed in the 1820’s within the United States. These laws were forbidding abortion after the fourth month of pregnancy (2). By the 1900’s, the American Medical Association and legislators outlawed the act of abortions and by 1965 abortion was banned in all 50 states(3). In 1973, the permissibility of “abortion” was innate with the proceedings of Texas’s “Roe v. Wade”. [410 U.S. 113 (1973)] which was the most consequential legal juncture on abortion.
During the nineteenth century laws and public opinion started to change. In 1803, there was the first English Act outlawing abortions. In cases where there was an abortion performed after the quickening, the penalty was death. If the procedure was done before the quickening then the punishment was fourteen years of imprisonment. By 1860 abortions were prohibited in almost all of the states.
During the 1950s, hospitals within the country started to decide if doctors should perform abortion by using therapeutic abortion boards, allowed by law only if the mother’s life was in danger. Mortality rates decreased during this time, due to the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s. In 1962, a mother, Sherri Finkbine, traveled to Sweden with her husband, after her request for abortion in the U.S. was denied. In 1967, England ended up loosening its own restrictions on abortion laws that permitted women to have the procedure as long as they had written permission from two physicians.
The Christian view, that we are created in the image of God, formed by Him in the womb making us human upon conception, makes abortion wrong. It shows what abortion truly is, murder. Murder that is the sacrifice of a human life to the ‘god’ of convenience. While abortion may seem to solve immediate problems for some, this act is wrong and has consequences much worse than the consequences, joys, of having and raising a
Sauer (1978) found that some pregnancies in the 19th century were desperately unwanted by woman. Because of this, desperate measures such as baby farming, infanticide and abortion were carried out to discard of the pregnancy. Abortion, which is the termination of a human pregnancy, was made illegal in 1803, but was still carried out in the backstreets of Britain (Knight 1977). However, only a few cases were brought to attention as according to Latham (2002), there was difficulty in detecting abortion, yet Bulwer- Lytton (1833 as cited in Sauer 1978) still believed abortion took place frequently in towns for reasons such as illegitimacy.
This issue of abortion also belongs to larger issues such as religious and ethical. People with the religious background have a set of values based on the Bible and believe that pro-life should be the only stand people take into consideration in order to protect human life and keep the baby alive. The other class is ethical. From this stand people can choose whether or not they believe abortion is the right thing to do and can make their own choice based on their values, regardless of what religion they are. Because abortion is such a widespread issue, it is crucial that we come up with an agreement on what is best and what steps are necessary in getting to that agreement.
Abortion is defined as the termination of a human pregnancy (“Merriam-Webster”). Abortion became legal 43 years ago in the United States on January 22, 1973, after the Roe vs. Wade case. Before 1973, a pre-born baby was protected by law in America, prohibiting any termination unless in a life or death situation. Roe was a Texas women who was not ready for a child. In this case she was unable to terminate her pregnancy by law before her legal dispute was heard in front of the Supreme Court forcing her to have the child, then give the baby up for adoption. In many instances the case would have been thrown out based on the fact that a decision was made but her case was unique in the sense that pregnancies are reoccurring.
The result is legal chaos--which has been the situation with reference to abortion since it was first made illegal in this country. Contrary to popular belief, the legal strictures against abortion are of comparatively recent origin. Until the early nineteenth century--at common law both in England and in the United States--abortion before quickening was not illegal at all. It became so only in the early 1800s. And according to Professor Cyril Means and others who have studied the problem, the reason for the enactment of the laws was not protection of morals or of the "soul" of the fetus, but rather a reflection of the fact that at the time all surgical procedures were highly risky because of the probability of infection (this was before Lister). Abortions were made illegal for this reason except where they were necessary to save the life of the mother; that is, where the great risk of infection which every operation involved was outweighed by the risk of carrying that particular pregnancy to term. The situation is today reversed; abortion under modern hospital conditions is safer than childbirth.
Perhaps the most heated ethical debate of the twenty first century is the debate around abortion. Abortion is a medical or surgical procedure to end a pregnancy. Abortions are currently legal in the United States, although the laws differ from state to state. Abortions have a long history in the United States, and have been being performed here almost since the colonial settlers first arrived from England. For almost a hundred years, beginning in 1880, Abortions were made illegal almost nationwide. During this time, many women performed illegal self abortions that were often dangerous to their health. Many women were hurt or died from these self abortions, and those who sought out a different path suffered from the lack of proper medical care at small clinics. The prohibition of abortion caused nationwide protests, with protesters calling abortion a right a woman should have. By 1970, almost a third of states had reformed or repealed their abortion laws. Finally, in 1973, the Supreme Court struck down all existing laws prohibiting abortion in the Roe V. Wade court case.
Abortion is the termination of a human pregnancy that does not end in birth of a child. There are two types of abortion-medical abortion and surgical abortion. Medical abortion can be done before 49 days of pregnancy by using pharmaceutical drugs. Surgical abortion takes place by using surgical instruments between 6-14 weeks of pregnancy. Both methods are safe. It depends on the size of fetus and week of pregnancy. An abortion, which is the removal of a fetus from a woman’s body, should be allowed because of women’ s freedom, life opportunities and victim protection.
There are many different types of abortion. Abortions date back to 500 B.C. One of the first recorded
Abortion became legal in 1973, because of the court case of Roe vs. Wade. Abortion is a safe medical procedure that ends pregnancy. The procedure that is performed removes the fetus from the uterus. This is a main concern in the United States. The debate to keep it legal or have it illegal is divided
Also, mothers carry the baby in their womb for so long, and getting rid of it is wrong on so many levels. In the mainstream Christianity, abortions are not considered in the bible, but it is not viewed as something good. However, the Catholic and Orthodox Church oppose late-term abortion in almost every situation. Hinduism has many varied views towards it, but the original and traditional text condemns elective abortions. In the Islamic faith, late-term abortion is not permissible because it is over four months of pregnancy.
For many years, the morality of abortion has been questioned by two perspectives: pro-choice and pro-life. While modern culture explains that abortion is a woman’s free choice if she does not want the unborn baby, the Catholic Church teaches the world that from the moment of conception there is a child with a soul within the womb, and to abort it would be to murder an innocent being.
Abortions have always been a very controversial topic. Over the years we continue to fight for or against it. One can say that is one of the most talked and argued topic in the United States. An abortion is when a woman terminates her pregnancy before the fetus is viable using various of methods. Some argue that abortions should be illegal and considered murder, while others, from a religious point of view, say that no one has the right to take away the life of a person, in this case the fetus. However, others insist, that abortions are a basic women’s right.