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.
Tagged: Medicine and anatomy Buddhist Catholic Hindu Jewish
Abortion as a medical technology is the subject of more tradition-documents than any other entry in this register, and the register’s discipline matters most here: each stance is recorded in the tradition’s own terms, with its own premises — ensoulment, personhood, pikuach nefesh, karuṇā — left visible rather than translated into a single vocabulary.
The Stance Register
Each stance is recorded with its rationale in the tradition's own terms and its sources. Where a tradition argues with itself, the register says so.
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)
See this register as a side-by-side comparison
References
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Procured Abortion (1974)
- Didache, ch. 2 (1st–2nd century)
Related Across the Site
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- Twentieth Century Science Era — Relativity, quantum theory, and a priest’s Big Bang; war made science a state enterprise and the scientist’s conscience a public problem; creation-evolution litigation defined the American quarrel while genetics under Lysenko showed the cost of policing conclusions.
- Evolution by natural selection Technology — The mechanism that reorganized biology: embraced, adapted, and fought over — usually inside traditions rather than between them, from Asa Gray’s theistic evolution to today’s divided evangelical house.
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- Organ transplantation Technology — A near-consensus on the gift and commerce refused — and a live, published disagreement about the definition of death that transplantation forced every tradition to state.