Abortion: Is It Morally Wrong?

ABORTION: IS IT MORALLY WRONG?

INTRODUCTION

Abortion is the intentional termination of a pregnancy after conception. It allows women to put an end to their pregnancies, but involves killing the undeveloped embryo or fetus. For this reason, it is a very controversial subject.

ABORTION Supporters of abortion rights argue that the embryo or fetus is not a person, or at least that the government has no right to ban abortion unless it can prove that an embryo or fetus is a person. I believe that the embryo or fetus is a person and that killing it is committing murder. My beliefs are that the fertilized egg is a full human being and should be protected as a living soul. Many years ago, it was thought that an embryo was only a blob of blood and that it had not developed into a human being by the ninth week of the pregnancy. Scientists later learned that this finding was not true. From a biological standpoint, life begins at conception. According to biology, a living being grows, takes in nutrients, and expels metabolic waste. The ovum does that immediately after conception, so it can be considered a living organism.
From a medical standpoint, life begins either 5 weeks post-conception or 10 weeks post conception, depending on who you're talking to. According to medicine, a living being has a beating heart and a working brain. Well, the heart beats at 5 weeks and the brain works at 10 weeks, so an embryo definitely qualifies by 10 weeks, which is when most women first realize they're pregnant. Other medical professionals will say that life begins when the fetus is viable - that is, when it can survive outside the womb.
Many people put other dates on when life begins: when baby looks like a baby (12 weeks), when you can tell gender on an ultrasound (15 weeks), or when it officially becomes a fetus (12 weeks).
Legally speaking, life doesn't begin until birth, which is why some people are against banning late-term abortions. What they fail to mention is that the mother has a very high risk of serious medical complications - everything from becoming sterile to serious infection to uterine rupture to death. Science can tell us that the processes that start with a sperm and ovum and end up with a newborn baby. But it cannot tell us: does the fetus have a soul? My religious beliefs lead me to believe that the fetus is a soul from the beginning of conception. The human ovum (egg) is already clearly alive when it enters the fallopian tubes, many hours or days before it has the opportunity to be fertilized. Women release one about each month between puberty and menopause - a few hundred in a lifetime. Almost all of these are destined to die and be ejected from the body.