Abortion and Euthanasia

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he Roman Catholic Church believes in the sanctity of life. With love at the centre of its teachings, they value each and every individual life given by God himself thus believing that all life is special and by no means must we, as humans, end this gift given to us by the Lord himself.

     However, in society today, people do sometimes opt for an alternative to this. Some of the most controversial issues today are the moral dilemmas of Abortion and Euthanasia, where life is ended to suit the needs of the person. Although as far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, life at all costs should be protected as mentioned by Pope Paul VI in the Humanae Vitae of 1968 “Human life is sacred…. All men must recognise that fact.”

     In medical terms the word abortion means the termination of a pregnancy before the baby is born. This covers two natures of abortion though, spontaneous and induced:

Spontaneous abortion, otherwise known as a miscarriage is when a foetus dies of natural causes inside the mother’s womb but the definition of induced abortion is “the deliberate killing of the foetus”

      However, for anyone to begin to tackle the subject of ‘induced’ abortion one must look to one central and crucial question – when does life begin? One may really never know when exactly human life begins as there are diverse opinions concerning this, adopted by various religions and secular people which in turn influence their attitudes towards ‘induced’ abortion.

      For instance, certain Christian churches such as the Anglican and Methodist both deem that life does not commence until the baby can survive independently of its mother. Each holds a strong opposition towards abortion, but recognises that compassion should be shown unto the mother if the birth were to harm her physical or mental well-being, if her pregnancy were the result of a rape or if the child were to suffer great handicap.

      The Islamic faith also agrees that abortion is prohibited unless the mother’s life were in grave danger “Abortion is legal in one case only, when the retention of the foetus in the uterus threatens the mother’s life” (Sheikh Muhammad Mahdi Shamsuddin) Islam regards a fertilized ovum attached to the womb from that point as a living being. 

      Hinduism holds the belief that the human soul (atman) is divine and passes from one life to the next at conception. Thus there is no time when the human foetus is not en-souled and is therefore sacred. This means that the foetus must be treated with respect and should not be treated as simply just a piece of flesh. Another resistance to abortion is that it goes against the Hindu teaching of ahimsa (non-violence). Ahimsa prevents Hindus from taking life in any form. Other religious and secular views include, life beginning at eight weeks when the foetus resembles a human being and at the moment of birth.

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      According to the Roman Catholic Church our life begins long before we are born and interrupting the baby’s life by unnatural means destructs its fundamental right to grow someday into a healthy man or woman. They believe that a life is created at the exact moment of conception, that we are not merely “embryos” or “cells” during the first few weeks of growth, but actual human beings, deserving of love. Nonetheless there are no direct references in the bible to “conception” as such, for this notion of fertilization had yet still to be discovered by medical science ...

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