The Roman Catholic Church teaches that human life is sacred - Explain how this teaching influences its attitude to abortion and euthanasia, showing that you understand otherpoints of view.

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that human life is sacred. Explain how this teaching influences its attitude to abortion and euthanasia, showing that you understand other points of view.

You should refer to the bible, to thinking/writing of Christians and Roman Catholic tradition to illustrate and support what you say.

Yes it certainly is true that human life is sacred, but who has the right to say that there is human life at the moment of conception or that is over when a person can neither eat or think for themselves.

Abortion is the deliberate and intentional killing of a child during its growth in the womb. It is also a major and widely debated civil rights issue, which is a very sensitive issue in many countries. The Catholic Church not only frowns upon abortion itself and it also condemns the use of contraception i.e. Condoms and “the pill”. Instead the church tries too steering its followers to more natural methods of contraception which involves around the woman’s natural rhythms of the female body. The reason why the church has this view is because it feels that people were given the magnificent gift to give life and to stop this would be a sin and against Catholic teaching.

Another point of view would be that if the church encouraged “artificial” contraception then people having sex would use it without guilt of shame and therefore bring the number of abortions down and stop the rise of abortions. Abortion has not been made legal in Ireland but this is not to say that people that people in Ireland do not have abortions in fact it could be done simply even by young people. A short trip on a boat such as “Sea Cat” will take them to Mainland Britain where abortion is legal and here an abortion may ...

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In my view I think abortion should be allowed up before the 25-27th day, the reason for this being that the heart has not begun beating until this point. Abortion is allowed on the grounds that to carry on with the pregnancy would involve a greater risk to the life or the physical or mental health of the mother or of her existing children, than if she had it terminated. Another would be that if the child were to suffer from serious mental or physical handicap. I cannot agree with the second grounds for abortion as if Stephen Hawkins was killed at birth the world would be at a slower technological advance, as with every baby that is handicapped who is to say he or she wouldn’t have the cure to cancer someday. In a world which is becoming more equal rights conscious you simply can’t decide to kill the foetus or not let them be born at all, I think whoever passed the abortion law had a strong close family link with Hitler. As was once said

“Abortion is the silent holocaust.”

But if you were faced with the possibility of having the rest of your life ruined by something, which hasn’t even got a heartbeat yet, then I think anyone in that situation would cast judgement in their mind.

Although abortion has not been legalised in Ireland that is not to say that they don’t take place in the dark dirty backstreets. These abortions are what are known as ‘back-street’ abortions, between 40,000 and 200,000 took place in Britain every year. This was before 1967 when abortion was passed as a law since then the numbers have went down.

Abortion is allowed to take place up until the 25th week in the womb and despite this babies born prematurely at this time survive and go on to live normal lives with no disabilities. Abortion in many cases is very brutal with one method being that the brain is sucked out of the child, the skull crushed and the baby then removed sometimes by ripping its limbs apart. A proper or respectable burial or incineration would help the cause of those who carry out abortions but this is not the case as babies and their body parts are dumped in bin liners as was once discovered.

Euthanasia like abortion is the intentional killing or taking of human life and is known as ‘mercy killing’. It is also a major civil rights issue especially as the Dutch government has recently passed a law to allow euthanasia to take place legally. Euthanasia is seen as helping the person who is to have their life taken as in most cases they are suffering from painful and incurable diseases. In this case a cure for the disease could be discovered at any point and the person’s life may have been saved instead of them being murdered.

I know the whole basis of this coursework is to argue points on abortion and euthanasia but I think until we ourselves are faced with either of these dilemmas we cannot decide whether it is right or wrong. Regardless of this I will continue to argue my points I just feel I had to state that it is a difficult decision to make for or against either method of taking life.

‘EXIT’ is a group, which feels that a person has the right to take their own life if they feel it, is necessary and are constantly campaigning to have euthanasia legalised. The church on the other hand takes the opposing stance on the argument of euthanasia with one of its commandments being

(Exodus 20:13)

‘Thou shall not kill.’

That is what is to remembered in this piece of coursework that it is human life that is being decided whether to have its life ripped from it prematurely. Or if a person is in the early stages of a terminal illness and asks you to take their life if the pain gets too much or they become a ‘vegetable.’ They may change their mind and not be able to say to the person possibly through loss of speech and may have died unwillingly against their consent.