Abortion: A Religious Issue
One of the toughest issues to debate in our world today is abortion. Abortion is the induced termination of pregnancy before the fetus can survive. Nowadays, abortion affects all people, not just the mother and the baby. There are moral, ethical, health-related, political, and religious aspects that affect how people feel towards abortion. By looking at religion and its views, one can see just how hard it would be to argue in the pro-choice position of this debate.
First of all, I must start with the truth…the Bible does not directly say anything about abortion. The actual word is not mentioned at all. During biblical times, abortion was an unthinkable act and “there was no need to mention it in the criminal code” (Anderson 1). “Children were viewed as a gift or heritage from the Lord… the Scriptures state…that God opens and closes the womb and is sovereign over conception” (Anderson 1). In this sense, “childlessness was seen as a curse” (Anderson 1). Passages taken from the Bible are used as supporting details because they state indirectly how God feels towards the issue.
Before Christ was born, however, opinions differed towards abortion. Unwanted children were destroyed through abortion and infanticide because the Romans and Greeks thought human life was neither sacred nor inviolate (Ayd 48). In fact, Aristole claimed “that all babies beyond a legally defined quota should be sentenced to death by exposure” (Ayd 48). However, there were some people who objected this inhumanity.
“Hippocrates declared that physicians should not perform or enable a women to procure an abortion” (Ayd 48). Even though there were laws against the act, people ignored them and continued to perform the procedure as if it was nothing.
Then God became man, and man was created in God’s image. The Bible says that man is not the owner of his life and body, and the uses he can make of these are limited and governed by divine law (Ayd 48). The entire will of God is for man to come to know Him in a personal relationship so that he may spend eternity in Heaven. This is why there is life on Earth. If one can go through the trials and temptations of life and stay on the side of the Lord, then he is deemed worthy to go to Heaven. By following through with an abortion, the u...
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...holic Churches will continue to teach that the Bible and God are against abortion. There will also be many people who will oppose this teaching because of their own opinions and beliefs. No matter how people feel towards the issue of abortion, we must remember that the entire procedure is between the mother and the fetus. Both need to be taken into consideration when making a decision, and it is not hard to see where one might be led once reading the Bible.
There is just one thing I do not understand. Whatever happened to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? As Dr. Irvine Page says, “ Life has a way of taking revenge on those who destroy it” (Ayd 51).
Works Cited
Anderson, Kerby. “Arguments Against Abortion.” 2000: 19 February 2001
<http://www.christiani…1183,PTID1000/CHID74/CIID164304,00.html>.
Ayd, Frank J., M.D. “Abortion: The Catholic Viewpoint.” Abortion: Changing Views
And Practice. Ed. R. Bruce Sloane, M.D. New York: Grune and Stratton, Inc, 1971. 48-52.
Bible- New International Version
Scwarz, Stephen D. The Moral Question of Abortion. Chicago: Loyola University Press,
1990.
Parker. He continued to expand upon John M. Glass’ ideas of professionalism. Parker became Chief of Police in 1950. “The chief mandate for reformed police departments was ‘crime control’, and Chief William Parker’s Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in the 1950’s was a progenitor of the new model for urban police departments: a crime-control technocracy.” (Sekhon, 2011) Chief parker was known for his reliability, and his ability to lead. William Parker, before becoming the chief of police for the Los Angeles Police Department, developed the first Bureau of Internal Affairs. The main function of this was to examine charges of police misconduct. This was a fundamental component toward professionalism because it gave them the opportunity to discern which officers were corrupt and who took bribes. According to the Los Angeles Police Department website, Chief Parker required civil service practices amongst his department and eliminated wasteful spending. He also established civil rights enforcement. “Congress and governments throughout the world sought is expertise, and his honors were legion. For many, he remains the prototype of the ideal chief.” (LAPD website) He unexpectedly died from a heart attack in
Grammar in a signed language is completely different then a spoken language so they have to use what they have and what they have is the ability to display words through facial movements and mouth morphemes. Mouth morphemes mostly occur with a manual sign and usually with one sign (Bickford). These small changes can make a sign that originally meant one thing and turn it on its head to form a completely different sign. When executing these mouth morphemes one has to pay attention to what one is really trying to get across to the receiver. In American Sign Language 101 they teach the basic mouth morphemes that have to do with size, such as cha for something that is large, but there is much more that are taught at the upper levels and give the language more depth and
For as long as there has been recorded history, there have been recordings of the procedure now known as abortion. The Bible appears to be silent on the topic, which is of no support to Christian groups, especially Catholics, who believe that abortion is a mortal sin. In his book, “The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives,” John T. Noonan (1970) states that “The Old Testament has nothing to say on abortion” (6). John Connery (1977) agrees with Noonan in his book “Abortion: The development of the Roman Catholic Perspective” where he writes, “If anyone expects to find an explicit condemnation of abortion in the New Testament, he will be disappointed. The silence of the New Testament regarding abortion surpasses even that of the Old Testament” (34). This is a difficult silence to understand when one considers the fact that abortions were widely practiced during the New Testament era in the Middle East. There were few recorded legal prohibitions against abortion in antiquity, and even fewer ancient laws protecting the practice (Gilbert 1).
The differences of mind and soul have intrigued mankind since the dawn of time, Rene Descartes, Thomas Nagel, and Plato have addressed the differences between mind and matter. Does the soul remain despite the demise of its material extension? Is the soul immaterial? Are bodies, but a mere extension of forms in the physical world? Descartes, Nagel, and Plato agree that the immaterial soul and the physical body are distinct entities.
America is synonymous with freedom. The pursuit of freedom is a journey that we as American’s find ourselves challenged by with each growing generation. Ideological challenges such as the issue of abortion define today’s journey as Americans. There are different issues that come up when the subject abortion is mentioned. the arguments of being “pro-life” vs “pro-choice”. Before reviewing the main debates on abortion, one should understand the accepted definition by both sides of the debate. Abortion is the act of the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus. Pro-choice is favoring or supporting the legal right of women and girls to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy to term. Pro-life is supporting the right to life of the unborn or against abortion. The debate of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” has clearly become more complex within the last 30 to 40 years. When examining the issues on abortion, one has to look at its history and main issues that surround the subject matters of abortion, whether religion is a factor and if the government should have a say in a woman’s choice.
In general, sign language—as defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as “any means of communication through bodily movements … used when spoken communication is impossible or not desirable”—has been used by dozens of cultures for ages, but American Sign Language (ASL) is fairly new. The Native Americans hold one of the earliest records of sign language with their ancient system of communication using signs to converse and break “language barriers” between tribes who spoke different dialects (American). Because many of their cultures were so intertwined with various “shared elements,” the Indians were able to devise “common symbols” to communicate with each other without the use of formal interpreters (American). Across the sea, Juan Pablo de Bonet of Spain was conducting his own research of sign language for the deaf and published the first documentation of a manual alphabet in 1620 (Butterworth). Before ...
Sign language is a method of communication for people who have hearing or speech impairments. Sign language is a language that is made up of gestures using the hands and some facial expressions which classifies it as a visual language. There are two different versions of sign language for english, American Sign Language (ASL) and Pidgin Signed English (PSE). Both are widely used across the world, but the signer who uses the versions and the syntax will be different, while the signs and the actual use will be the same.
“I think life is sacred, whether it’s abortion or the death penalty”- Tim Kaine. One of the most talked about ethical dilemmas is abortion. It seems everyone (and every faith) has a different opinion on the subject. Some people feel that abortion should be legalized, while others think that abortion should not be legalized. Judaism supports “pro choice” (meaning that the mother can make the choice of whether or not to have an abortion) but only in certain conditions. Judaism, unlike religions such as Christianity (which strictly forbids abortion), feels that abortion can be done however only for extenuating circumstances.
For Descartes, these are mind and body, and for Plato they are body and soul. Aristotle, in contrast, believes in a singular being where both body and soul are connected. For myself, a Christian who believes in the existence of a life after death, Aristotle 's theory creates an obvious negation. While I could agree with the levels of the soul argument, I cannot agree with the body and soul being one and the same for the simple reason that I do not believe that when the body dies, everything dies. I believe something is left over. What that something is, where it goes and what its purpose is, I may not know for certain, but to believe otherwise would not create a better life for me. Believing the soul lives on beyond the body creates an inner desire to seek morality and goodness, and it is in that endeavor that one creates a “better” life. Similarly, it is intuition that leads me to reject Descartes ' argument because my best judgment would tell me not to believe that everything I know, all that I sense, is a figment of my mind. I cannot know if such a thing is true or false, but far too many questions are raised by such an explanation. For myself, neither Aristotle nor Descartes provide an adequate understanding into the nature of the
Abortion is defined as a procedure that is done to remove an embryo or fetus from the uterus of its mother in order to prevent its birth (Roth, 2005). Abortion is categorized as a bioethical issue because it relates to the morals of biomedical advances, policies and research. Abortion is a difficult subject that can involve personal morals and beliefs, legality and religious values. The issue is often viewed from either the side of pro-life, which places emphasis on the fetus and its right to life or pro-choice, which emphasizes the rights of the mother to decide the appropriate action (Roth, 2005). This brings the ethical question of should the government have the right to outlaw abortion into debate. The two viewpoints of pro-life and pro-choice explore the two main moral issues concerning abortion (Roth, 2005).
The soul can be defined as a perennial enigma that one may never understand. But many people rose to the challenge of effectively explaining just what the soul is about, along with outlining its desires. Three of these people are Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine. Even though all three had distinctive views, the similarities between their views are strikingly vivid. The soul indeed is an enigma to mankind and the only rational explanation of its being is yet to come and may never arrive.
Aristotle's Theory of the Soul in the De Anima centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. He holds that the soul is the form, or essence of any living thing; that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in; that it is the possession of soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. Aristotle uses his familiar matter/form distinction to answer the question “What is soul?” he says that there are three sorts of substance which are matter, form and the compound of the matter and form. Aristotle is interested in compounds that are alive. These - plants and animals - are the things that have souls. Their souls are what make them living things. Aristotle also argues that the mind is immaterial, able to exist without the body, and immortal by “Saying that something has a soul just means that it is alive”
The topic of abortion has been extremely controversial for years. It has raised the questions if it should be legal or illegal and if it is right or wrong? But the idea of abortion cannot simply be broken down into yes or no, right or wrong and so forth, as life itself cannot be broken down into that. Every individual will have their own opinion on the matter, as their lives, culture, and religion have shaped their view. While the debate about abortion has created divisions between people in society, it has two major groups, those who are Pro-Life and Pro-Choice. In this paper, I will examine both groups in depth and their strong positions on abortion.
One of the most debated subjects throughout the world is abortion. Abortion is the premature termination of pregnancy by spontaneous or induced expulsion of a nonviable fetus from the uterus (Dictionary). In certain circumstances, abortion could be beneficial for the mother with factors such as: age, rape, financial stability, and complications that could long-term harm the potential mother and child. Women of all ages are entitled to their right to abort regardless of how morally right or wrong it may be. Some people believe abortion goes against their religious and cultural backgrounds. However, other people believe because it is the woman’s body they should be liable to do as they please. Whatever the situation
Aristotle argued and disagreed with Plato’s views of the self and soul being a separate from the body. Aristotle’s view is that all humans have a soul, yet they cannot be separate from the body in which they reside. To him, there are four sections of the soul; the desiderative and vegetative parts on the irrational side are used to help one find what they are needing and the calculative and scientific parts on the rational side are