An acceptance of the practice of abortion with Christian beliefs

Procured abortion is the deliberate termination of a pregnancy as a result of some medical interference.

The abortion act 19671 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. 2' 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? 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 were, for the soul.

Catholics cannot teach that the soul is immortal as it means it has a beginning and therefore it must have an end but Catholics teach that the soul is only 'infinite' after death. The British Medical Association (BMA) holds that the act of abortion is not right or wrong in itself. The BMA support the Abortion Act of 1967 as a 'practical and humane piece of legalisation3. ' The BMA's advice to its members is to out within the limitations of the law and of their own conscience.Medical practitioners, who support the use of foetal tissue in medical research, seem to accept the practice of abortion as it can be justified on the grounds that it contributes to preserving the lives and health of others. Michael Tooley in his book 'Abortion and Infanticide4' defends both abortion and infanticide.

He argues that a person can only have a right to something he or she wants and since children and babies do not realise they have futures they cannot want to have them and have no right to them.This argument may seem some what barbaric to most people but British law does state that abortions can be carried out until birth if the child will be born seriously handicapped and if the child survives after the abortion and is allowed to die on a table then this is classed as infanticide and Tooley's argument defends this. According to SPUC (Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child) legalised abortion could lead to increasing contempt for newborn babies who are disabled.Infanticide is illegal in the UK, but some doctors have admitted to killing disabled babies by methods including sedating and starving them to death.

This can be classed as compulsory euthanasia and is seen as unethical as the newborn baby's right to life is not given a chance to develop. Feminism has influenced the 'right to choose' movement as child bearing is seen to be at the centre of women's domestic stereotype. If women can move away from this stereotype then the feminist will believe that a woman's oppression can be lifted as she is defying traditional family life.In today's society this argument would be somewhat weak as feminism is not such a big issue due to equal rights. It seems unethical to kill a human, or a potential human, in a response to some women feeling oppressed. Do the rights of the mother matter more than the rights of the foetus? Pro-choice activists say that a woman's body is her own and the foetus is an invader of her body, if she wants to keep the invader then it is up to her and if she wants to expel it from her body then it is up to her also.

The idea of the invader comes from the ethical philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson who is believes strongly that the woman has the right to choose, as it is her body. If the foetus has rights we cannot take those rights away, as we have not got the authority and if the foetus is a person then no one human life is greater than the other. Peter Singer says that we should 'accord the life of a foetus no greater value than the life of a nonhuman animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel.' Singer holds that, like Tooley, the foetus maybe seen as human but cannot be called a person as being a person and being human are not the same thing, and like Tooley, Singer says that 'since no foetus is a person, no foetus has the same claim to life as a person. 6' There is one similarity that I can see between Tooley and Singer's argument; Singer only holds this argument until birth whereas Tooley's argument extends beyond birth and defends infanticide.

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that tries to solve moral dilemmas like abortion.It's most basic fundamental principle is the right action is that which produces the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure for the greatest number of people (utility calculus). Generally utilitarians are divided into two groups, rule and act utilitarians. Act utilitarians would except that abortion would be wrong if the unborn child holds a gene that can help cure AIDS, even though as a consequence of the birth the mother would die.

In a 'normal' situation if the mother was going to die then most people would except that abortion would be the right thing to do.But as the birth of the child would benefit millions of people worldwide, the amount of pain experienced by the grieving family is insignificant compared to the happiness experienced by the people who will be cured. However, rule utilitarians believe that if you destroy life in one situation then life everywhere is threatened and that the greater good is achieved by giving all life a chance to develop and to fulfil it's potential. Once life is devalued at one particular point then all life is under threat.

Even though the Catholic Church condemns both types utilitarianism as it does not present any action as morally right or wrong, Pope John Paul II in the Gospel of life number twenty7 writes that committing a sin like abortion and euthanasia threatens freedom everywhere as governments pass laws that allow abortion to seem morally right, "I tell you the truth, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin" (Jn8: 34). This view is quite similar to rule utilitarianism, yet it is condemned by the Vatican who seem to stand on the same picket line.Some countries like China and Sweden have used abortion campaigns to either help increase or decrease abortions. China has a pro-abortion policy, as China is extremely over-populated, whereas Sweden has taken the anti-abortion approach as it has a sparsely populated country. Abortion here is used as a way of controlling population.

In some African countries, abortion is legalised because, like in China, overpopulation is causing many deaths due to famine, poverty and natural hazards.From a utilitarian point of view, this can be justified as the amount of pain suffered by the millions in poverty or suffering from starvation exceeds the amount of pain caused by aborting a baby. In Britain abortion could help solve the problem of unwanted and abandoned children in homes, awaiting adoption. However, adoption is used, as an argument against abortion as it proves there is always another choice rather than terminating the foetus. Betty Friedan extends to the unwanted child the right to be aborted, 'the value of life.

.. the life of the right of the child to be wanted in life. 'So assuming that the foetus is a person, he or she has the right to be aborted if there is a certainty that they will not feel needed. This is a weak argument as the foetus cannot tell us whether it wants to be aborted or not, so we are still deciding whether to take the life away or not. Also, if the foetus could tell us that it wanted to be aborted, would this be classed as euthanasia and does this help justify euthanasia? However, Friedan does bring up the question of human rights.

If the foetus has rights like you and I then it has the right to a life of dignity.If the foetus knows it's quality of life will be poor then it can decide whether it wants to live and this is obviously an argument for euthanasia. Consider this, a woman has three young children and her husband dies in a car crash. After the funeral she finds out that she is pregnant. She works in a local supermarket and her wage is not enough to clothe, feed and house her three children and herself at the moment.

Having the baby would cause tension in the family and cause even more money troubles, as she would have to quit her job to look after her children.How would various ethical theories judge whether abortion in this circumstance is morally right or wrong? Would British law allow an abortion? Most Christian Church would not allow abortion as the mother's life is not in danger and the foetus is a person and murder is wrong, "You shall not murder" (Ex20: 13). Act utilitarians would allow abortion as the pain caused by the birth of the child due to an over crowded house and lack of money, which may lead to bullying in school for the children, poor health and social deprivation is of less importance if the unborn child were to be aborted.Utilitarianism can be criticised at three points, the first being that it relies on the predictive value of situations.

How are we to know that the unborn child will go on to become a world-class brain surgeon and help thousands of people to live? Secondly, how do you quantify pain or pleasure? Can it be measured in chronological years? Is the pain I feel greater than anybody else's? Finally, what counts as pain or pleasure? Is the pain caused in the above scenario as important as the pain the woman felt when her husband died, and if so what is the greatest pain or pleasure you can experience.Pro-choice activists would allow the mother to choose what to do as it is her body and she has the right to do whatever she likes to it or with it. Situation Ethics states that the only the way you judge an action is upon the consequence and the only criterion that allows you to judge whether the action is morally right or wrong is agape. The most loving thing to do in the situation above is to allow the woman to have an abortion.