Compare Traditions on One Technology
Choose a technology and read the traditions' recorded stances side by side — each with its rationale in its own terms. The comparison is the section's method in one view: the differences are in the reasons.
Surgical and medical abortion
The register’s most documented case: refused absolutely by Rome and by the evangelical mainstream, governed by ensoulment in the classical fiqh, divided in the responsa by stage and by the mother’s priority, grave in Buddhist and Hindu ethics — each in its own premises, left standing. The full register entry
Buddhist
Condemned
Abortion breaks the first precept and is a grave act in Buddhist ethics (the monastic code makes procuring it an offense entailing expulsion); in Buddhist-majority societies it is simultaneously a common practice, and teachers discuss the gap openly in the language of compassion for the women concerned — the register records both the doctrine and the tension.
- Damien Keown, Buddhism and Bioethics (1995)
Catholic
Condemned
Direct abortion is refused absolutely: the embryo is a human life from conception, ‘you shall not murder a child by abortion’ (Didache 2) is the tradition’s oldest sentence on the subject, and Evangelium vitae (§§58–63) states the position in its fullest form. Indirect effects under double-effect reasoning (treatment of ectopic pregnancy by salpingectomy and like cases) are distinguished and permitted.
- John Paul II, Evangelium vitae (1995), §§58–63
Evangelical
Condemned
The evangelical mainstream since the 1970s holds the person-from-conception premise and refuses abortion except (in most formulations) to save the mother’s life; the movement’s own history records a more permissive evangelical consensus before Roe — the 1968 Christianity Today symposium and the Southern Baptist resolutions of 1971–74 — which its historians do not hide.
- Randall Balmer, The Making of Evangelicalism (2010)
Hindu
Condemned
Hindu texts condemn abortion (garbhahatyā) and classical dharma literature lists it among grave sins, while the tradition’s modern engagement concentrates on sex selection — condemned by religious authority and Indian law together (PCPNDT Act, 1994) — and on the maternal-health exceptions most contemporary Hindu ethicists accept.
- S. Cromwell Crawford, Hindu Bioethics for the Twenty-first Century (2003)
Islamic
Contested within the tradition
The classical fiqh ties protection to ensoulment (commonly 120 days): abortion after ensoulment is forbidden except to save the mother; before it, the schools divide (Hanafi latitude under excuse, Maliki strictness), and contemporary councils restate these positions with modern indications added case by case.
- Abdul-Rahim Omran, Family Planning in the Legacy of Islam (1992)
Jewish
Contested within the tradition
Jewish law forbids abortion as a matter of course and permits it under pikuach nefesh, with the authorities dividing by stage and indication: the fetus is not a full nefesh before birth in the classical sources (Exodus 21:22–23), the mother’s life takes absolute priority, and Orthodox rulings range from near-total refusal to permission for grave fetal disease, with Conservative and Reform positions progressively more permissive.
- Fred Rosner, Modern Medicine and Jewish Ethics (1986)
- Mishnah Oholot 7:6
Mainline Protestant
Regulated
Mainline bodies generally treat abortion as a grave moral decision that law should nonetheless leave, under regulation, to the woman and her conscience — the position of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal statements in various forms — and the tradition’s internal pro-life minorities dissent in print.
- Presbyterian Church (USA) and United Methodist statements on abortion (various years)