Sunday, April 7, 2013

The Catholic Church's Views on Abortion

Abortion is a pretty controversial topic in our world today. People are particularly adamant in their beliefs regarding the topic, and there really is no middle ground (by abortion's very nature). In your days of college you may have even heard of people getting abortions, or experienced one yourself. Your beliefs regarding abortion may be holding you back from committing fully to the Catholic Church. Let's go ahead and clear up exactly why the Catholic Church believes what it believes.

The Catholic Church is against all forms of abortion, and here's why. The Church teaches that life begins at conception. The Church also teaches that each person is made in the image of God, and therefore has inviolable dignity. Therefore, any attempt to kill a fetus is directly infringing on that person's dignity (not to mention their autonomy). It's also just plain killing, which is addressed in the Ten Commandments.

I realize that a lot of this argument rests on the teaching that life begins at conception. You may want a secular argument for why a tiny clump of cells is indeed life.  First, a weaker but still legitimate argument: that tiny clump of cells WILL be a walking, talking human. Even if you do not think it is life, by that logic it will be life one day, and you are killing that person. But that argument is not even necessary. The cells that make up a fetus are living, human cells, all working together to support the fetus. This IS a human life.

Catholics are all about freedom so long as that freedom does not infringe on the freedom of others (which is also the goal of the Constitution, so a secular world can still relate). The right to have an abortion infringes on that small human's right to life, and is thus not ok in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

-Shoe

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