A woman called Julia Jarvis Johnston takes a very unorthodox approach to the issues covered by this question. She claims that the child’s life begins at conception, however it is morally just to kill the child in certain circumstances (e.g./ rape and contraceptive failure). She uses this analogy to portray her point:
“ Walking to the shop one day you are abducted by the Musical Society and they incapacitate you. When you awaken you find yourself attached to a famous violinist and you are told that your liver is substituting for his liver because his is badly damaged. This situation will remain for approximately nine months and if you unattach yourself then the man will die. This, according to Julia Jarvis Johnston, is an analogy of being raped, you never consented to becoming pregnant and you were forced into it. So just like you have the right to unattach yourself from the violinist so does the pregnant woman have the right to ‘unattach’ herself from her child.”
Another analogy she uses is for the failing of contraception:
“At the hospital you have consented to have an operation on your knee. However the doctors at the hospital fail and they believe that you are the person who volunteered to replace the liver of the famous violinist. They give you a general anaesthetic and attach you to the violinist while you are unconscious you awake to find yourself attached to the violinist and are in formed that if you unattach yourself from the violinist that he will die. You have not consented to support the violinist however due to a failing you have ended up supporting the life of the violinist and it is your right unattach yourself.”
The aforementioned question (When does a foetus become a human?) is very important to the Christian Faith because in the Ten Commandments it is said do not murder and to murder they have to be a human. (Some versions say do not kill humans and others say do not kill. Whether murder or kill is said is important because translated from Hebrew murder means killing of the innocent and to kill is to end the life of a living being, not necessarily human. Many of the more modern versions say murder.)
The Roman Catholic basic teaching about abortion can be seen in from this pastoral letter that was written by Cardinal Hume for the 26th of October 1997, in which he said:
“Abortion is a great evil… It is a grave scandal that since 1967 nearly 5 million procured abortions have taken place. As a nation we should hang our heads in shame.”
Hume says that abortion is a great evil because it destroys human life, human life is God given thus it is sacred. Hume says in his letter that he believes that he began to exist at the moment of contraception. It is written in the Evangelium Vitae (N60):
“From the moment the ovum is fertilised a life begins which is neither that of the father or the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with its own growth. It would never be made human if it was not human already.”
Other Christian teachings may take other stances on the matter, for example people from a protestant church may believe at times abortion is a necessary evil and use the “double effect” teaching to argue that sometimes the death of the child is a foreseen but unintended effect of the main action, which is attempting to save the mother. Sometimes protestant Christians (and sometimes others, but stereotypically protestants) argue that it is necessary to kill the child as a form of euthanasia because they had contracted a virus and their life would not be very painful. To be moral in the eyes of a Christian the person who had the abortion would have to be sure that their intentions were for the welfare of the child and not for the welfare of themselves.
