http://www.religiousconsultation.org/FAQ_(Sacred_Choices).htm
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Does Sacred Choices advocate abortion?
A. Sacred Choices advocates contraception, including emergency contraception, with abortion as an option when necessary. The project demonstrates the open-mindedness on the issue of abortion and contraception in the world's religions. Sacred Choices opens the door to a more objective examination of the issues and precedents in religious cultures. It encourages the individual to seek the answers to family planning that best suits her situation and inner needs.
Q. Does Sacred Choices oppose conservative religious thinking?
A. The scholars in the Sacred Choices Initiative concede that there is a conservative view on contraception and on abortion in many religions. Their point is that this restrictive view is not the only legitimate and orthodox view on the subject. Due to various things throughout history, freedom of choice was suppressed. However, it remains an integral part of these religious traditions. The scholars of Sacred Choices object to calling the most conservative views on these issues the only acceptable ones.
They also vigorously object to governments imposing the most conservative and restrictive view on a whole population. When governments do this, they are taking sides in a religious debate and they are violating religious and human rights. It is not "conservative" to ban abortions. It is an invasion of the consciences of religious people, since both the conservative and the liberals views on abortion are religiously grounded.
Q. Isn't abortion anti-Christian?
A. Many Christians throughout history have supported abortion. Even a Catholic saint, St. Antoninus, was pro-choice on early abortions when necessary to save the life of a woman. This was a huge category at that time and thus the saintly bishop was justifying a great number of abortions. One early church writer Tertullian approved of what we would call a late term emergency abortion, calling it a "necessary cruelty." A dominant tradition in Christianity is the theory of delayed animation or ensoulment, which teaches that the spiritual human soul does not arrive until three months or later in the pregnancy. Prior to that time, whatever life was there was not yet personal. Neither the pro-choice or the no-choice position can claim to be more Catholic or more authentic than the other since both co-existed, with equal standing, in the tradition.
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