Abortion

4 Pages 910 Words

Abortion is murder. That was one of the titles printed on a pamphlet handed out in my 8th grade health class. During the class, my teacher described quite graphically the medical procedure of an abortion, as my fellow students squirmed in their seats. Not once were fallopian pregnancies or incidences of rape or incest mentioned. According to my teacher, there was no justifiable reason to abort a fetus. I think this was, in part, due to the fact I was attending a Catholic school. Strangely, the teacher did not fully explain why the Catholic Church condemns abortion, other than the commandment “Thou shall not kill”. It was not until several years later in a biology class that I learned justifiable grounds on which an abortion can be performed, according to the Canadian Government. After some introspection, I decided that abortions were fine if there were mitigating circumstances such as a threat to the mother’s life. Still, I was intrigued as to why some of my classmates disapproved of abortion. The words “Thou shall not kill” seemed to burst from everyone’s lips when the topic came up. It seemed that blind faith was a popular choice among my peers. I left it at that, and was not aware of other reasons abortions are considered a sin until I began to do research for this paper.
There are recorded instances of abortions as early as 100 AD. In early Roman society, it was not uncommon for a woman to ingest certain types of herbs with the express intention of ending a pregnancy. This continued until the Catholic Church declared that such an act constituted “parricide”, the murder of a kinsman. Parricide was considered the basest form of murder, and was severely punished, in some cases an execution of the woman was carried out. There was much debate over the topic, and supporters of the church explained the reasoning behind this; “Drugs to destroy offspring are associated with lechery. Their use is condemned not merely becaus...