Abortion Enthanasia Deathpenal Essay, Research Paper

Abortion, Euthanasia, and the Death Penalty, are three topics in the United States that are always in controversy. What are the Church s views on these three topics? Why do these topics play an important role on our lives as Christians and human beings? Why is something as harsh and unmerciful as killing a defenseless baby legal in the United States? I will try to answer all these questions and more in this report.

Abortion

Abortion is probably the most discussed out of all three of the topics for obvious reasons. First of all what is abortion? The dictionary describes it as an Induced termination of pregnancy and expulsion of an embryo or fetus that is incapable of survival and that s exactly what it is. The killing of an embryo or fetus for a person s own personal reason, but what reason can you possibly think of for killing a baby. One of the reasons that’s often brought up is, What if the mother was raped? Another one commonly used is, What if the mother s life was in danger if she bore the child? The last reason I m going to mention is, What if you knew that the baby would have any abnormalities? These are all reasons used but did you know that the overwhelming majority of all abortions, (95%), are done as a means of birth control. Only 1% are performed because of rape or incest; 1% because the baby has abnormalities; and 3% due to the mother’s health problems. If this is true then these reasons that I mentioned are irrelevant since so little abortions are caused because of them. So then why is it that abortion is legal in the United States at any time during the entire nine months of pregnancy, for any reason whatsoever? One reason for this is even if abortion were illegal it wouldn t stop woman from having illegal abortions. A woman could pay some basement doctor to perform an abortion with unclean tools and unsanitary conditions. This would just make things worse, not only are you killing the baby s life, you re now risking your own too. Even as far back as the 1930 s, there was “an epidemic of criminal abortion” in the United States. The number of births dropped by about half, as women who refused to bring children into a depressed economy resorted to illegal abortion to end their pregnancies. As a result, about 2500 women died each year from abortion complications, accounting for nearly one in four maternal deaths. When exactly did abortion become legal? It was in January 22, 1973 when the Supreme Court, handed down its controversial ruling that legalized abortion in all fifty states. Now you re probably wondering Where does the Catholic Church stand on abortion? Well you ll be pleased to know that the Catholic Church is absolutely against abortion and that s a plus but I can t remember a thing it has done to do something about abortion besides release some document stating that it s against it.

Now I ll get to the point, why do women get abortion even though it kills an innocent life? Basically the reason why is that it s convenient to their life. That s it, that s the reason why millions of babies are killed every year. Women feel that if I m out of work from those months of pregnancy I won t get that promotion or somebody else will get my job. So they say to themselves why sacrifice my career, it s only a baby. It s sad when people kill babies because they won t get that new extension in their house or another car. Society today has really deteriorated and the way I see it, it s only going to get worse.

Euthanasia

Euthanasia is another topic very much under debate. Euthanasia is the act or practice of ending the life of an individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment. In laymen terms it s killing someone out of mercy. In Greek euthanasia means good death. What does all this mean though? Let s say someone is gravely ill with cancer and the person has no chance of recuperating from it, the person has no more than a month to live. A month of excruciating pain, and doctors ask the family in order so that the person may not suffer any more they can end his misery. That s euthanasia, killing someone out of pity and mercy so that the person may die without so much suffering. The Church states that if the person is on life support and there is no way the person can come back it s OK to kill the person out of mercy, I also believe this.

Now there are two types of euthanasia, passive and active. Passive euthanasia is taking away a person s treatment even if the person is going to die. Active euthanasia is assisting the patient who suffers from a terminal illness to die by giving them drugs or injections. There are people that think euthanasia is wrong because a human life is a human life but I think that, Why keep someone living if let s say they re in a vegetative form. Yet here s an interesting fact about this Over a two-year period, 15 out of 18 patients, thought to be in a vegetative form came around. So then should there be a time limit, not necessarily because there is a story of a man following an accident seven years earlier, the health authority had discussed to the courts to remove his feeding, but after those seven years he woke up and was “competent enough to refuse to be interviewed. So why are the sick, old, and elderly killed, it s practically the same reason as abortion. People see the old and sick as just a burden; they re a lump on a log. They are no longer productive and they have no practical use in today s world. Why do people see the elderly in this manner, what ever happened to respecting your elders.

Death Penalty

The Death Penalty is the last of these topics, and also very talked about. The Death Penalty is simply killing someone for something wrong the person committed. As a Christian I believe that the death penalty is wrong no matter what. As a Christian I believe there is always room for forgiveness. Think of Jesus, would he sentence someone who did something wrong to death. Think of the story of the prostitute who was going to be stoned and Jesus stepped in and said, The one without sin throw the first stone. So then why is it that we don t show compassion for people who make a mistake, we all slip up so why should a person pay for it with his life. What right do we have to judge someone for what he s done. I don t have the right to condemn someone to death and neither does anyone else. In my opinion the original reason for capital punishment was to scare people so that they won t commit crimes but that doesn t seem to work since the number of people on death row only seems to increase so the only explanation I can think is that it cost money to keep criminals in a jail and that money comes out of the taxpayers money so the more criminals they kill the more room for more criminals. The cost per day per offender is $53.15. Multiply that by the number of people in jail and that makes up a lot of tax money going into keeping people in jail, this is why As of December 31,1999, the death penalty was authorized by 38 states and the Federal Government. That just goes to show you where morality and Christianity has gone, down the drain.

These are my view and actual statistics on Abortion, Euthanasia, and the Death Penalty. You may agree or disagree with them but that doesn t bother me because if everyone agreed on these topics they wouldn t be so controversial.