“An acceptance of the practice of abortion with Christian beliefs in the sanctity of life but not with attitudes of medical practitioners and some ethical philosophers.” Discuss

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Michael Swift 30570/6130

        “An acceptance of the practice of abortion with Christian beliefs in the sanctity of life but not with attitudes of medical practitioners and some ethical philosophers.” Discuss

Procured abortion is the deliberate termination of a pregnancy as a result of some medical interference. The abortion act 1967 states that abortions can be carried out with the consent of two medical practitioners. A woman can have an abortion up to birth if continuing with the pregnancy presents a risk to the mother’s life and if the child would be born with severe disabilities. The law was altered in 1991 when abortions were only allowed up to 24 weeks, but the other sections of the law remain.

Most Christian churches teach that abortion is wrong as it taking away a life, which God has created in his image. The Catholic Church is the most intangible on their teachings. The Vatican still hold the ideas of St. Augustine’s natural law. Natural law is ‘the binding of moral principles that can be discerned by human reason and understood as analogous to a legal code.’ Natural law holds that sexual intercourse’s only purpose is to reproduce and if a child is conceived as a result of intercourse then to abort the child is to go against God’s will. Because of this, abortion is always wrong. The only exception that Catholic Church teaches is that if the mother develops cervical cancer or the pregnancy is ectopic. This is allowed due to the Doctrine of Double Effect. If the mother develops cervical cancer then a hysterectomy is needed. The purpose of the operation is to save the mother’s life and as a secondary action the foetus will be terminated. This is accepted in the Catholic faith, as the operation was not intended to kill the foetus but to save the mother’s life. Also with an ectopic pregnancy: the purpose of the operation would be to remove the fallopian tube to save the mother’s life and not to abort the pregnancy. However, if the foetus within the fallopian tube is destroyed by laser, then this is not accepted as the operation is intentionally killing the foetus but the ultimate aim is to save the mother’s life.

Most protestant churches take the proportionalist approach. Proportionalism is a midway point between Natural Law (all actions are right or wrong in themselves) and Situation Ethics (context and consequences of an action decides whether it is right or wrong). The proportionalist would keep to moral laws unless there is a proportional reason not to do so. For example, if a twelve-year-old girl is raped and as a result she becomes pregnant, then the most loving thing to do in this situation would be to let the girl have an abortion, even though the action maybe wrong the situation makes it right. Like situation ethics, proportionalists base their judgments for situations on agape, love. The Vatican condemned Proportionalism in 1993, as they believe that it allows to many things to be justified that are against natural law.

All Christian Churches teach that life begins at conception, because at conception a unique genetic code is set for life. The concept of personhood is a big issue in the debate about abortion and various philosophers have written about personhood. The debate basically asks; when does a human become a human, when does a person receive their soul? Ensoulment is the moment or time in which you receive your soul. To believe in ensoulment you have to be a dualist, which means your body and soul are combined and this is what makes you a person. St. Augustine said that the foetus was animated (received their soul) around sixty or eighty days and from this point you are a person. Aquinas also wrote the foetus becomes animated, but he said boys become animated around forty days and girls around ninety days. Aquinas also believed that you receive your soul in three stages, beginning with a vegetative soul, then subsequently an animal soul and finally the foetus receives a human soul and becomes a person. So, does ensoulment occur in an instance or over a period of time? If ensoulment occurs over a period of time, how do we know when this time is? Can it be medically proven?

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The Catholic Church teaches that the soul is immortal and your soul and body is what makes you a person. The body alone cannot make you a person, but after death your soul lives one? So, does this mean that our soul exists before we are conceived? Is being immortal the same as being infinite? If it is then abortion is not an issue, as our souls will be reincarnated into another human or is alive in an after life of some kind and we are not killing a person but only a human form of clothing, as it ...

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