However, some people strongly oppose this and believe that abortion is just plain wrong. This is a pro-life viewpoint and is often and in most cases influenced by religion. Christians are but one of the religious groups which oppose the process of abortion along with Muslim’s and Sikh’s for instance. Christians are taught about their religion through teachings from the Bible. They also follow what the Pope and other religious teachers tell them. These teachings help and guide the Christians through life.
Christians are a strong pro-life organization, well a religion. This means that they believe in life and do not believe in the taking of an unborn baby suggesting that it is living. Christians believe that begins at conception, this is what they have been taught. ‘You knit me together in my mother's womb . . . my frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place . . . your eyes saw my unformed body’ (Psalm 139). This Psalm is talking to God and ‘you’ is referred to as God. This quote is suggesting that God created humans the way he wanted them to be.
Christians believe that the abortion of a baby is wrong. However this depends on the individual case. The Church of England said in 1984, ‘The life of a foetus is not absolutely sacrosanct if it endangers the life of the mother’. This means is that if the mother's life is in danger then abortion is acceptable. So, in this case, they are for abortion under certain circumstances. Due to this, you will tend to think that Christians are not a pro-life organization as they do agree with abortion under certain circumstances however this is only under extreme circumstances which consider the lives of others such as the mother. In simpler terms it is better to have an abortion than an unfit mother and an unhappy child. . However the Didache contradicts this point of acceptance by saying, ‘You shall not kill by abortion the fruit of the womb and you shall not murder the infant already born’ this is an early Christian dating back to 200 A.D. It means that to kill a child of any form is absolutely wrong. The quote of Didache is actually right in a Christian point of view as everyone knows it is wrong to kill, especially Christians know this as it is one of their basic rules for life provided to them by their god. One of ‘The Ten Commandments’ is ‘Thou shalt not kill’ this simple rule speaks for itself once again contradicting the point of acceptance for abortion.
Catholics are very strongly against the thought of abortion; they go by the rule of ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and believe that it is actually completely wrong to go through with abortion no matter what the circumstances.
The Catholic Church’s viewpoint is that all human life is sacred and that includes the baby in the womb. The Catholic Church has always been against any form of contraception but I think it feels very strongly towards abortion. Its main view is that all human life is sacred, even the baby in the womb. The Catholic Church takes this view for a number of reasons. In Jeremiah 1:5, it says, ‘Before you were formed in the body of your mother I had knowledge of you, and before your birth I made you holy; I have given you the work of being a prophet to the nations’. This tells us that God had already made us before we are born and this backs up the theory that every human life is unique and that we are practically killing a person by aborting it. In genesis 1:27, we are told that ‘God made man in his image’ which tells us that we don’t have the right to take away a life.
Personally, I agree with the Christians viewpoint again due to religion with being a Muslim however only to a certain extent. I think that abortion is wrong and any sort of taking of a life is wrong but if it endangers the mother’s life or can cause serious problems between families then I think it should be a possibility. I think however people take advantage of it using it practically as a contraception method. As this essay shows, there is a mixed viewpoint towards abortion from Christianity even though they all point to the same conclusion that to most extents abortion is wrong and should not be performed unless in need of desperation.
Zaffer Mahtey, 10cr.
