Essay About Pregnant Woman And Human Life

Is There a Moral Right to Abortion?
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Is There a Moral Right to Abortion?
The tragedy of an unwanted pregnancy that threatens a womans life or health
existed in the ancient world as it does today. At the time the Bible was written,
abortion was widely practiced in spite of heavy penalties. The Hebrew
scriptures had no laws forbidding abortion. This was chiefly because the
Hebrews placed a higher value on women than did their neighbors. There are,
however, some references to the termination of pregnancy. Exod. 21:22-25
says that if a pregnant woman has a miscarriage as a result of injuries she
receives during a fight between two men, the penalty for the loss of the fetus is
a fine; if the woman is killed, the penalty is “life for life.” It is obvious from this
passage that men whose fighting had caused a woman to miscarry were not
regarded as murderers because they had not killed the woman. The woman,
undeniably, had greater moral and religious worth than did the fetus. A
reference in the Mosaic law which is found in, Num. 5:11-31 indicates that if a
husband suspects his wife is pregnant by another man, the “husband shall bring
his wife to the priest,” who shall mix a drink intended to make her confess or be
threatened with termination of her pregnancy if she has been unfaithful to her
husband. Aside from these passages, the Bible does not deal with the subject
of abortion. Although both Testaments generally criticize the practices of the
Hebrews neighbors, such as idol worship and prostitution, as well as various
immoral acts committed in their own land, there is no condemnation or
prohibition of abortion anywhere in the Bible in spite of the fact that techniques
for inducing abortion had been developed and were widely used by the time of
the New Testament. A key question in the abortion controversy is, “When does
human life begin? The Bibles clear answer is that human life begins at birth,
with the first breath. In Gen. 2:7, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life and man became a living being” (in some translations, “a living soul”). The
Hebrew word for human being or living person is nephesh, which is also the
word for “breathing.” Nephesh occurs hundreds of times in the Bible as the
identifying factor in human life. This is consistent with the opinion of modem
medical science. A group of 167 distinguished scientists and physicians told the
Supreme Court in 1989 that “the most important determinant of viability is lung
development,” and that viability is not achieved significantly earlier than at
twenty-four weeks of gestation because critical organs, “particularly the lungs
and kidneys, do not mature before that time.”(1) In the scriptures the
Incarnation, or “the Word made flesh,” was celebrated at the time of Jesus
birth, not at a speculative time of conception. We follow the biblical tradition
today by counting age from the date of birth rather than from conception, a
date people do not know or seek to estimate. The state issues birth certificates,
not conception certificates. Fifty-one percent of all abortions in the United
States occur before the 8th week of pregnancy; more than 91 percent occur
before the 12th week (in the first trimester); and more than 99 percent occur
before 20 weeks, which is about 4 weeks before the time of viability (when 10
to 15 percent of fetuses can be saved by intensive care). In such cases of early
abortion there is no fetal neocortex, and hence no pain. However, every
termination of potential human life presents a moral problem and can be
justified only by the damage to living persons that may result from an
unacceptable pregnancy. Contraception (birth control), the practice of which
can greatly reduce the number of abortions, involves the prevention of
conception, ovulation, or implantation in the uterus. The Vaticans position that
all sexual activity must allow the possibility of procreation has led the
antiabortion movement to be silent about contraception as a way to prevent the
need for abortion. Those who claim that a human being exists at conception are
guilty of prolepsis, a term defined in Websters Dictionary as “an anticipating,
especially the describing of an event as if it had already happened.”(2) This
type of anticipation is being practiced by those who speak of the few cells that
after conception, or a fetus in the early trimesters as “a baby” or “an unbom
child.” Some years ago at a meeting of the American Society of Christian
Ethics, a workshop was confronted with the case of a 3-year-old