SOR Oral
Good morning Ms Neehouse and year eleven. Today I will be evaluating the basis for the Christian stance on abortion. I will also refer to certain biblical references. Firstly, I will tell you what abortion is.
An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by the removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the uterus, resulting in or caused by its death. An abortion can occur spontaneously due to complications during pregnancy or can be induced. Abortion as a term most commonly refers to the induced abortion of a human pregnancy, while spontaneous abortions are usually termed miscarriages.
The Roman Catholic Church says that deliberately causing an abortion is a grave moral wrong. It bases this doctrine on natural law and on the written word of God. The Church says that human life begins when the woman’s egg is fertilised. From that moment a unique life begins, independent of the life of the mother and father. The features that distinguish us from our parents - the colour of our eyes, the shape of our face - are all laid down in the genetic code that comes into existence then. Each new life that begins at this point is not a potential human being but a human being with potential. Since the sixteenth century, causing or having an abortion led to automatic excommunication. This is stated in the Code of Canon Law: “A person who actually procures an abortion incurs automatic excommunication.” The Church condemned abortion as early as the 2nd century CE: a document called the Didache, written in the 2nd century, states: “You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.”
The Christian belief in the holiness of life is based on the teachings of famous Christians and on what they read in the bible, the teachings of Jesus. A quote from Psalm 139:13 -16, which seems to support the view that abortion is wrong is, “You created every part of me; you put me together in my mother's womb, when my bones were being...