สภาพบุคคลตามกฎหมายกับการทำแท้งตามคำสอนของศาสนาคริสต์

Abstract

The problem of abortion has existed for a very long time in most societies. There is nowadays an ongoing attempt to revise the Criminal Code to add an exception, so that ‘the most necessary’ cases are exempted from this law. It is not a free abortion but a provision to allow abortion with cause. One of the reasons advanced to justify this softening of the law is that the fetus in the womb has not yet become ‘human’ nor does it have legally the ‘status of a complete human’. However, according to the teaching of the Christian morality, all abortions are sinful acts, regardless of whether the act is legal or not. All willing participants in the abortion process are guilty of the sinful act, even if governmental law permits it. The ‘status’ of a person may in governmental law be defined as the beginning of civil rights and duties, and applied only to those who are, in fact, ‘born’, but this does not at all address the issue of whether the unborn child is ‘human’ or not. Furthermore, a ‘human’ is more than a physical body: every human is a ‘soul’/spiritual person whose qualities do not exclusively derive from the human’s parents. A mother cannot use her own personal rights as an excuse to violate the natural right to life of her child by killing the fetus: each human has the right to be born and gain graces/merit.