Throughout the semester I had the opportunity to learn about different religions and the cultures that our society here and around the world experience and live in. Although I do not consider myself a religious person who goes to church every Sunday, reads the bible, or abides by each and every step of my religion I do believe in God and I have a lot of faith in him and many of the aspects that follow the religion I do. My family is Catholic and I was born into that religion. Because Roman Catholicism is a part of Christianity I decided to choose the topic of abortion and how it is viewed in that specific religion, but I did also want to compare it to another religion, so I chose Islam.
Abortion is very common today and people decide to lean towards that idea for many reasons they all depend on the lifestyle you live, the family you have and you’re upbringing have a lot of influence in it as well. Planned Parent Hood which is a well-known facility where abortions are concluded suggests that millions of people around the world face unplanned pregnancies yearly and about 4 out of 10 women decide to get abortions. Even though abortions are thought to be done because the female isn’t ready or the pregnancy was unplanned many women actually choose to get them as well for health or safety reasons. Studies suggest that at least 1 in 4 women will have had at least 1 abortion by the time they reach the age of 45 years old. There are 3 types of classifications that abortions are divided into; surgical abortion, medical abortion, and chemical abortion. Surgical abortions are known as being invasive because they include physical aspiration of the fetus whether it is through a vacuum, cutting, or scraping the fetus out of the uterine. Medical abortions are known as the ones that encompass the administration of a drug that is intended to terminate the child. These drugs block the hormones that develop the lining of the uterus or attack and break down the baby's growing cells. Lastly, we have chemical abortions which are known as contraceptives that work to keep the female from actually becoming pregnant and those vary anywhere from pills, rings injections, or the most commonly used, Plan B which is the emergency contraceptive a woman uses to prevent ovulation or fertilization from happening with the sperm. Most decisions tend to be simple because the female already knows exactly what she wants and because it is a personal decision, but there are those who have much more of a difficult time deciding which way to go. The reasons why some women can’t have kids or don’t want to have an abortion can vary anywhere from not being in the correct relationship with someone or maybe because the father of the child isn’t ready for the child or refuses to be a part of their life. The mother can also be working a full-time schedule that doesn’t allow her enough time to take care of the child to just try to finish their career in school. Younger mothers also have to deal with what their parents have to say and if they are allowed to stay home once the reality comes to light. Mothers-to-be are also scared of what friends will think. Sadly another common factor of getting pregnant and not wanting to keep the child might have to do with being in an abusive relationship where they fear for their or their child’s life to even simply having been sexually assaulted and pregnancy was the consequence of a horrible night.
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Deciding to have an abortion isn’t a negative thing nor does it mean you don’t want or love children. In fact, Planned Parenthood researchers say that “6 out of 10 people who get abortions already have kids and many of them decide to end their pregnancies so they can focus on the children they already have.” Even though abortion is a personal decision many families and religions do tend to interfere in those decisions because of specific beliefs that they have.
In the 1960s and 1970s abortion was illegal and Christians or Roman Catholics were opposed to abortion laws because it was believed to be bioethical. But then in 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, where states have constructed a framework of abortion law, codifying, regulating, and limiting whether, when, and under what circumstances a woman may obtain an abortion, and through the years made it much easier for women to actually have abortions instead of limiting their choices by states. According to Boyle in Abortion and Christian Bioethics: The Continuing Ethical Importance of Abortion suggests that “Something that was illegal and widely rejected morally as recently as forty years ago and is so contrary to important human sentiments—still needs justification, and continues to draw the criticism of Christian moralists, and their casuistry to deal with the hard cases.” Christians believe that the conviction of abortion is seriously wrong and this dates back to apostolic times. Throughout Christian history, there have been a variety of views on the exact status of the embryo and fetus. Only in very recent times have those differences been thought of by Christians as having any tendency to remove the severe sinfulness of abortion.
Dating back to 450 abortion was considered a sin itself and was often associated with lechery, sometimes with marriage. The usual method of accomplishing abortion was by drugs, many times it involved magic, which brought high risks to the woman having the procedures. “All the writers agreed that abortion was a violation of the love owed to one’s neighbor. Some saw it as a special failure of maternal love. Many saw it as a failure to have reverence for God the Creator. The culture had accepted abortion. The Christians, men of this Greco-Roman world, and the Gospel condemned it. Ancient authorities and contemporary moralists had approved, hesitated, made exceptions; the Christian rule was certain.” (Noonan, 1970, p. 18) Rejecting abortion, therefore, was closely connected to central concerns of Christian life, and in a society where permissive abortion was tolerated, this rejection displayed a distinctive, and proudly announced, attitude of the Christian community. There are three known controversy about whether embryos are human beings that has taken on new life; second; whether human individuals as such are persons with moral status; and lastly, the responsibility of the mother for her unaccepted fetus.
The importance of settling questions about the ontological and moral status of embryos and fetuses is further suggested by Chris Tollefsen’s arguments about dualism. Lee’s “animalism” avoids the manifold illogicality of dualism. But as long as the person I am is something distinct from the human-animal I am, dualism and its problems persist. More importantly, perhaps, one must wonder whether a dualistic conception of the human person is compatible with the Christian conception of the human body, including its sexual morality, and its ideas about the resurrection of the dead and of bodily union in Christ.
Just like the religion of Christianity believes that abortions are not right we do have many people who still agree with abortion being the woman’s personal decision regardless of their religion. A minister in the Presbyterian Church and the professor of religious studies at Elon University, Rebecca Todd Peters wrote a book specific to that issue and in her book, she justifies why abortion is morally unacceptable by default because it is an immoral choice. Peter suggests that “The necessity of justification permeates the very language of the debate itself,” and she writes “Pro-choice arguments seek to justify women’s right to abortion, while pro-life arguments seek to limit and even eliminate acceptable justifications.” She goes on to explain that a quarter of abortions in the United States are justified because of prenatal health, incest, saving the mother's life, or sexual assault.
Another religion that argues against abortion is Islam, also known as Muslims. One of the main considerations in the Islamic discourse on abortion has to do with the concept of ensoulment which is the moment at which a human being gains a soul. Some religions say that a soul is newly created within a developing child and others, especially in religions that believe in reincarnation, that the soul is pre-existing and added at a particular stage of development. The Islamic religion under the Qur’an, the religion condemns the killing of children under any circumstance as it is a great sin. Although Muslims regard abortion as forbidden they do accept it in specific cases.
According to J Med Ethics, Therapeutic abortion in Islam all schools of Muslim law accept that abortion is permitted only if the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, which is the only reason accepted for abortion after 120 days of the pregnancy. Since all schools hold different laws some of them permit Muslim law abortion in the first 16 weeks of pregnancy, while others only permit it in the first 7 weeks. The Islamic view is based on the very high priority the faith gives to the sanctity of life. The Qur'an states: “Whosoever has spared the life of a soul, it is as though he has spared the life of all people. Whosoever has killed a soul, it is as though he has murdered all of mankind.” But Islam is also a religion of compassion, and if there are serious problems, God sometimes doesn't require his creatures to practice his law. So under some conditions--such as parents' poverty or overpopulation--then abortion is allowed, some scholars state that abortion where the mother is the victim of a rape or incest is permissible in the first 120 days of the pregnancy. The laws in many Muslim-majority countries are prohibitive and disciplinary views on abortion are claimed to be associated with religion. In addition, some evidence has shown unsafe abortions are common and fatal in many Muslim-majority countries (Hessini 2008). Maternal mortality rates were shown to be twice as high in Muslim countries, than in any other. Though many Muslim countries are currently under significant pressure to liberalize their abortion policy there is a gap in explaining how such a policy would actually consider an Islamic perspective and may be sympathetically and successfully achieved.
Works Cited
- Connery, J. R. SJ. (1977).. Abortion: The development of the Roman Catholic perspective, Chicago: Loyola University Press.
- Noonan, J. T. Jr. (1970). “An almost absolute value in history”. In The morality of abortion: Legal and historical perspectives, Edited by: Noonan, J. T. Jr. (1–59). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- George, Robert P. and Christopher Tollefsen. Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. New York, NY: Doubleday, 2008. 242 pp
- “Abortion Methods.” American Life League, https://www.all.org/learn/abortion/abortion-methods/.
- John T, https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/noonan.htm.
- Arif Abdul Hussain (2005) Ensoulment and the prohibition of abortion in Islam, Islam, and Christian–Muslim Relations, 16:3, 239-250, DOI: 10.1080/09596410500142999
- “Muslim.” Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, https://rcrc.org/muslim/.
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