Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Ethical principles used in abortion
Christian perspective towards abortion
Ethical principles used in abortion
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Ethical principles used in abortion
Abortion: A Religious Issue
One of the toughest issues to debate in our world today is abortion. Abortion is the induced termination of pregnancy before the fetus can survive. Nowadays, abortion affects all people, not just the mother and the baby. There are moral, ethical, health-related, political, and religious aspects that affect how people feel towards abortion. By looking at religion and its views, one can see just how hard it would be to argue in the pro-choice position of this debate.
First of all, I must start with the truth…the Bible does not directly say anything about abortion. The actual word is not mentioned at all. During biblical times, abortion was an unthinkable act and “there was no need to mention it in the criminal code” (Anderson 1). “Children were viewed as a gift or heritage from the Lord… the Scriptures state…that God opens and closes the womb and is sovereign over conception” (Anderson 1). In this sense, “childlessness was seen as a curse” (Anderson 1). Passages taken from the Bible are used as supporting details because they state indirectly how God feels towards the issue.
Before Christ was born, however, opinions differed towards abortion. Unwanted children were destroyed through abortion and infanticide because the Romans and Greeks thought human life was neither sacred nor inviolate (Ayd 48). In fact, Aristole claimed “that all babies beyond a legally defined quota should be sentenced to death by exposure” (Ayd 48). However, there were some people who objected this inhumanity.
“Hippocrates declared that physicians should not perform or enable a women to procure an abortion” (Ayd 48). Even though there were laws against the act, people ignored them and continued to perform the procedure as if it was nothing.
Then God became man, and man was created in God’s image. The Bible says that man is not the owner of his life and body, and the uses he can make of these are limited and governed by divine law (Ayd 48). The entire will of God is for man to come to know Him in a personal relationship so that he may spend eternity in Heaven. This is why there is life on Earth. If one can go through the trials and temptations of life and stay on the side of the Lord, then he is deemed worthy to go to Heaven. By following through with an abortion, the u...
... middle of paper ...
...holic Churches will continue to teach that the Bible and God are against abortion. There will also be many people who will oppose this teaching because of their own opinions and beliefs. No matter how people feel towards the issue of abortion, we must remember that the entire procedure is between the mother and the fetus. Both need to be taken into consideration when making a decision, and it is not hard to see where one might be led once reading the Bible.
There is just one thing I do not understand. Whatever happened to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? As Dr. Irvine Page says, “ Life has a way of taking revenge on those who destroy it” (Ayd 51).
Works Cited
Anderson, Kerby. “Arguments Against Abortion.” 2000: 19 February 2001
<http://www.christiani…1183,PTID1000/CHID74/CIID164304,00.html>.
Ayd, Frank J., M.D. “Abortion: The Catholic Viewpoint.” Abortion: Changing Views
And Practice. Ed. R. Bruce Sloane, M.D. New York: Grune and Stratton, Inc, 1971. 48-52.
Bible- New International Version
Scwarz, Stephen D. The Moral Question of Abortion. Chicago: Loyola University Press,
1990.
America is synonymous with freedom. The pursuit of freedom is a journey that we as American’s find ourselves challenged by with each growing generation. Ideological challenges such as the issue of abortion define today’s journey as Americans. There are different issues that come up when the subject abortion is mentioned. the arguments of being “pro-life” vs “pro-choice”. Before reviewing the main debates on abortion, one should understand the accepted definition by both sides of the debate. Abortion is the act of the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus. Pro-choice is favoring or supporting the legal right of women and girls to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy to term. Pro-life is supporting the right to life of the unborn or against abortion. The debate of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” has clearly become more complex within the last 30 to 40 years. When examining the issues on abortion, one has to look at its history and main issues that surround the subject matters of abortion, whether religion is a factor and if the government should have a say in a woman’s choice.
Although the Hebrews were influenced by many of the laws of their Assyrian, Sumerian, and Babylonian neighbors, all of which forbade abortion, the Hebrew scriptures had no laws forbidding abortion, not a single one. This was chiefly because the Hebrews placed a higher value on women than did their neighbors. There are, however, some references to the termination of pregnancy. Exod. 21:22-25 says that if a pregnant woman has a miscarriage as a result of injuries she receives during a fight between two men, the penalty for the loss of the fetus is a fine; if the woman is killed, the penalty is "life for life." It is obvious from this passage that men whose fighting had caused a woman to miscarry were not regarded as murderers because they had not killed the woman. The woman, undeniably, had greater moral and religious worth than did the fetus, which was nothing more than a worthless glob of tissue, a meaningless, lifeless conglomeration of cells - contrary to antichoice people who consider it "human life."
Abortion has been a political, social, and personal topic for many years now. The woman’s right to choose has become a law that is still debated, argued and fought over, even though it has been passed. This paper will examine a specific example where abortion is encouraged, identify the Christian world views beliefs and resolution as well as the consequences of such, and compare them with another option.
In conclusion, Plato and Aristotle present two different conceptions of the soul. By examination of their formulations, and the structure and genre they used, Aristotle's perception of the soul is more convincing. I am more convinced by facts than I am ideals. But his views should not be thrown away, for Aristotle's focus upon the organism as a whole as the proper object of study is a successful approach to the question of the nature of and relationship between mind, body, and soul.
Abortion, which is defined as a deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, is one of the most controversial issues in society. Many people believe that abortion is unethical and morally wrong, while others believe that it is a woman’s right to decide what to do with her body. According to www.census.gov, “the number of abortions performed annually in the U.S. has leveled off at 1.2 million a year” (1). This statistic supports how many women are choosing abortion. Although abortion is legal in the United States, many people continue to voice their opinions on how it is a human rights violation and should be illegal everywhere.
American Sign Language is not universal! ASL is independent from other signed languages around the world. It is also not highly pictorial or iconic. Many signs have no simple equivalent or translation in English. Some people believe that ASL is primitive because glosses or word for word transcription may lead reader with the impression there are only verbs in the present tense and few nouns in ASL. For example, ASL will have one sign for some words when English will have several.
Thou shalt not kill; one-tenth of what may arguably be the most famous guidelines of morality in the western culture, and also the main driving force for pro-life advocates. The argument supporting their beliefs typically starts with the premises that a fetus is a person, and to destroy or to kill a person is unethical. Therefore abortion, the premeditated destruction of a human being, is murder, and consequently unethical. I deny the fact that the fetus, what I will refer to as an embryo up to 22 weeks old, has the right to live. The opposing argument is invalid because a fetus, although perhaps a part of human species, is not formally a person. This leaves it simply to be a part of the woman?s body, whose fate lies solely in the hands of the pregnant woman alone, no different from a tumor she might have. By proving this, the abortion debate then becomes an issue of women?s rights, something that is most controversial indeed. Furthermore, it is fair to question the credibility of many people against abortion because of obvious contradictions in the logic of their belief systems. The fact that this debate is relevant in modern society is ludicrous since there is a simple and plausible solution to this problem that could potentially end the debate for good, leaving both sides satisfied.
In our society, there are many ethical dilemmas that we are faced with that are virtually impossible to solve. One of the most difficult and controversial issues that we are faced with is abortion. There are many strong arguments both for and against the right to have an abortion which are so complicated that it becomes impossible to resolve. The complexity of this issue lies in the different aspects of the argument. The essence of a person, rights, and who is entitled to these rights, are a few of the many aspects which are very difficult to define. There are also issues of what circumstances would justify abortion. Because the issue of abortion is virtually impossible to solve, all one can hope to do is understand the different aspects of the argument so that if he or she is faced with that issue in their own lives, they would be able to make educated and thoughtful decisions in dealing with it.
In part two the book is about the view of American Sign Language and the way people have naturally created grammar and the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language from basically nothing. He demonstrates that this languag...
...evil. To treat pregnancy as a disease that can be “cured” with methods of contraception and abortion is morally wrong. All people are specially made in the image and likeness of God from the moment of conception. The arguments defending pro-choice all describe how there are certain circumstances when an abortion must occur. However, unless the mother’s life is absolutely threatened, abortion is a sin that ends the life of a child of God.
It is almost unanimously agreed upon that the right to life is the most important and sacred right possessed by human beings. With this being said, it comes as no surprise that there are few issues that are more contentious than abortion. Some consider the process of abortion as immoral and consisting of the deprivation of one’s right to life. Others, on the opposite end of the spectrum, see abortion as a liberty and a simple exercise of the right to the freedom of choice.
...ence of the cognitive feature of the animal. For Aristotle the body and soul are not two separate elements, but they are of one thing. A body and a soul make a person. If a person has no soul, then that person is dead and it would only be a person by name. A thing that has a soul and is complete must be able to move and change. The soul dies with the body, and without the soul, the person is no more a person, but another inanimate object. One cannot exist without the other. With this concept of one not existing without the other, Aristotle leaves no room for there to be a possibility of immortality. Aristotle’s ideas of the soul and the body really formulate and combine both psychology and biology together, even though today many of his ideas have been proven wrong, for his time, they were very advanced with the research and materials that he was able to come by.
One of the most controversial issues in this day and age is the stance people take on abortion. The two main positions that people take are either of pro-choice or pro-life; both sides, although polar opposites, tend to refer to both the issue of morality and logical rationale. The pro-life side of the debate believes that abortion is an utterly immoral practice that should be abolished. On the contrary, abortion should remain a legal procedure because it is a reproductive right; its eradication would not only take away the pregnant person’s autonomy, but would also put more children in financially unstable homes and the adoption system, and would cause an increase in potentially fatal, unsafe abortions.
In addition, the Bible doesn’t mention anything that explicitly condemns abortion. Abortion will not stop. Limiting female access to legal procedures or adequate public health service, will only cause death of females. If abortion becomes illegal or is restriction, it may result in back-alley abortions or unsafe procedures will then, not only threatens the mother 's life, but also her unborn child. Unwanted children are severely abused and often are abandoned, which then will cause a strain on society as a hold. Mishell, Jr., MD, say that, before abortion was legalized in the 1970’s, women would frequently try to induce abortions by using coat hangers, knitting needles, or radiator flush. By restricting proper abortion procedures, put women in
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.