Is Abortion Immoral?

Is abortion immoral?

Pro-life activists would argue that the taking of a human life is wrong no matter what the circumstances or in which tri-mester it is done. The controversy over abortion has avoided the real issue facing today's woman - her need to grow beyond stereotypes. Whenever an individual or group realizes it has been treated unjustly, the first reaction is anger, but often the anger is first expressed as aggression. People outgrowing oppression have so much stored-up bitterness, so many memories of powerlessness and so little knowledge of how to make themselves heard, that violence toward others is the result. The women's movement has been caught up in the same process. American men and women are among the most fair-minded on earth, but have slowly begun to feel that 4,000 abortions a day is enough. The abortion mentality has encouraged women to think of themselves as victims. Much emphasis is placed on pregnancy as a result of rape, even though the statistics show only about .1% of all rapes actually result in conception. That means that a large majority of pregnancies that resulted in abortion were the result of free-choice. The assumption is that a woman does not have control over her own body until after a male partner is finished with it. Only then does she hear talk of "rights." The term "pro- choice" evokes their sense of fairness, but what is really being considered is the killing of an innocent human life. Women are abandoning the abortion mentality because it weakens their greatest strength - creation. They are looking at responsibilities as well as rights, choosing instead of reacting.

Pro-choice supporters argue that abortion should be viewed as a sometimes necessary choice a woman must make in order to be in charge of her life. Considering pregnancy from a woman's point of view, it can be very dangerous to carry a baby for ninth months with accompanying symptoms such as nausea, skin discoloration, extreme bloating and swelling, insomnia, narcolepsy, hair loss, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, indigestion, and irreversible weight gain. Equal rights is an issue the women's movement has fought for for many years. Denying them the right to free choice would demolish everything they have fought for and all the respect they have gained as individual.

The religious aspect. The Church's judgment on abortion is neither male nor female. It is social. It places the rights of the child in the womb into the hands of the law which sees individual rights as inalienable. The relationship between morality and law, as between Church and society, is surely complex. The historical source of the Catholic teaching on abortion was conviction of the early Christian community that abortion is incompatible with and forbidden by the fundamental Christian norm of love, a norm which forbade the taking of life. By the fifth century, while the condemnation of abortion continued without diminishment, distinctions were on occasion being drawn between abortion and homicide. Both were seen as grave sins, but not necessarily exactly the same sin or to be subject to the same penalty. While theologians of the Eastern Church were apparently the first explicitly to draw a distinction between the "formed" and the "unformed" fetus, there quickly developed a strong tradition against using the distinction to differentiate homicide and abortion.

The substance of the Catholic position can be summed up in the following principles: (1) God alone is the lord of life. (2) Human beings do not have the right to take the lives of other human beings. (3) Human life begins at the moment of conception. (4) Abortion, at whatever the stage of development of the conceptus, is the taking of innocent human life. The conclusion follows: Abortion is wrong.

IV. Can abortion be justified?

There are, indeed, several situations in which abortion would seem necessary. Birth defects, Death, and the Politics of Abortion

Few issues have fostered such controversy as has the topic of abortion. The participants in the abortion debate not only have firmly-fixed beliefs, but each group has a self-designated appellation that clearly reflects what they believe to be the essential issues. On one side, the pro-choice supporters see individual choice as central to the debate: If a woman cannot choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, a condition which affects her body and possibly her entire life, then she has lost one of her most basic human rights. These proponents of abortion believe that while a fetus is a potential life, its life cannot be placed on the same level with that of a woman. On the other side, the pro-life opponents of abortion argue that the fetus is human and therefore given the same human rights as the mother. Stated simply, they believe that when a society legalizes abortion, it is sanctioning murder.

In today's more industrialized societies, technology has simplified the abortion procedure to a few basic and safe methods. Technology, however, has also enhanced society's knowledge of the fetus. Ultrasound, fetal therapy, and amniocentesis graphically reveal complex life before birth, and it is this potential human life that is at the heart of the debate. In order to form an opinion on this matter, we must first question and define several common factors which are numerously debated.

I. When does human life begin?

Scientists identify the first moment of human life as that instant when a sperm cell unites with an ovum or egg cell. The billions of cells that collectively make up a human being are body cells. Unless manipulated, these body cells are and remain what they appear to be: skin, hair, bone, muscle, and so on. Each has some worthy function in life and performs that function until it dies. Other rare cells, known as germ cells, have the power to transform themselves into every other kind of human cell. The sex cells are the sperm cells in the male and the egg cells in the female. It is only in combination that these cells can create a fetus. The merger is complete within twelve hours, at which time the egg is fertilized and becomes known as a "zygote," containing the full set of forty-six chromosomes required to create a new human life. It is at that point that life begins and should be respected with the same laws that apply to us all, whether we are dependent on a womb or not. Conception creates life and makes that life one of a kind.

The opposition would argue otherwise. To be a person, there must be evidence of a personality. Animals contain biological characteristics, but that does not qualify them as a person. It takes more than ten days after the fertilization for the conceptus to