Dear Łukasz Kaczmarek

This is a really difficult question. My thoughts.

Such a medical operation as artificial termination of pregnancy (abortion) has existed since ancient times. Women tried to get rid of unwanted pregnancy in different ways, sometimes dangerous for both the child and the mother - various recipes for herbal infusions (the so-called "moon tea"), hot baths, etc. In primitive, as well as pagan societies, abortion was treated without much censure. With the development of human society, the transition to monotheism, the attitude towards abortion became sharply negative - abortion was sharply condemned, its conduct entailed punishment. During the High Middle Ages in Europe, a failed mother could be excommunicated from Church Sacraments, and a midwife or doctor who performed the operation could go to the fire of the Inquisition on charges of witchcraft. The negative attitude of religion (their overwhelming majority) to abortion is based on the dogma of the Creator's Will - human life is God's Gift, and a person has no right to arbitrarily deprive another person of this Gift, even if the child has not yet been born.

an ongoing debate about the moral and legal status of induced abortion. Participants in these debates are divided into two main camps, which call themselves proponents of choice, or the prochois movement (emphasizing the woman's right to decide to terminate pregnancy), and the pro-life movement, or prolife (emphasizing the right of an embryo or fetus to be carried and born). Both of these names are considered provocative, and some media outlets recommend the more neutral terms “abortion movement” and “anti-abortion movement”. Both movements are represented in different countries, striving to influence public opinion and achieve a reflection of their positions in legislation.

For many people, the problem of abortion is primarily a moral issue related to questions about the beginning of human life, the rights of the fetus, the woman's right to self-determination and whether other people have the right to make decisions about her body. The controversy surrounding the problem of abortion in many countries is conducted at the level of public policy: opponents of abortion are fighting to adopt, maintain and expand restrictions or prohibitions on abortion, while supporters of the right to abortion are fighting for the abolition or mitigation of such laws.

Abortion - both legal and illegal, dangerous and safe - remains the subject of heated debate.

Theryn Hodgson of Cape Town-based Christian Action Network is of the opinion:

“Firstly, abortion is never safe, especially for a child who is simply being killed. Legal or illegal, abortion is always unsafe for a child. It cannot be completely safe for a woman either. According to statistics from the Elliott Institute, more than 60 percent of women decided to terminate their pregnancies under duress. "

According to her, parents, husbands and partners are forcing women to get rid of their child. Meanwhile, after such an operation, women often plunge into depression and have nightmares. Hodgson also points out that authorizing abortion does not help reduce maternal mortality:

“Maternal mortality can be reduced through proper nutrition, quality health care and professional health care throughout pregnancy, during childbirth and after childbirth.”

This primarily applies to African countries with an underdeveloped health care system. As for a woman's right to control her own body, she says the following: “The question is not whether she can decide what to do with her body. This is a child, not a choice. It is necessary to seriously tackle the problem of the rights of the child, which appear from the moment of conception. "

Abortion has been legal in South Africa since 1997. However, according to Hodgson, since then the number of clandestine abortions has only increased in the country, as the government does not take adequate measures to combat this practice. Moreover, nowadays medical abortion pills can be bought by hand at virtually every corner.

Hodgson is convinced that abortion should be completely banned, since cases in which the mother's life is in danger are in fact extremely rare. If, however, the danger for the woman does exist, the doctor, in her opinion, must try to save both lives, without having the right to decide who should live and who should die.

The Elliott Institute mentioned by Hodgson is located in Springfield, Illinois. Its staff believe that the most effective way to fight abortion is to appeal to compassion and remind you that the well-being of a woman and her child is closely linked.

Regards, Pushkin Sergey Viktorovich

The legislative consolidation of the beginning of life is closely related to medicine, since it is this branch of knowledge that establishes the very phenomenon of birth. In modern society, the following groups of states can be distinguished in their attitude towards abortion and at the time of the beginning of life:

1) the states where abortion is completely prohibited, there are no

exceptions (Malta, Nicaragua, Chile, Philippines, Vatican). In this case, 2 approaches stand out: liberal and absolutist. According to the liberal position, the human embryo has no value and no right to life. The embryo (fetus) is part of the mother and cannot be recognized

sovereign bearer of rights. In turn, the supporters of the absolutist approach associate the moment of the beginning of human life with the moment of conception: the embryo from this moment already has the right to life and cannot be deprived of it.

2) a state where abortion is allowed in exceptional cases, namely, to save the mother's life. In other cases, abortion is considered a crime against intrauterine life and is equivalent to murder.

(Afghanistan, Venezuela, Libya, UAE, Syria). Legislator in

The countries mentioned above assume that the fetus has the right to birth and life only after a certain number of weeks of pregnancy.

3) states where abortion is permissible both for medical reasons and in other exceptional cases: in cases of rape, serious fetal abnormalities and a serious risk posed by pregnancy for the physical or mental health of a woman (Argentina, Brazil, Israel, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland). Scientists who share this approach came to the conclusion that an embryo in which brain nerve impulses are fully formed or which has reached full vitality.

4) states where abortion is permissible for medical and socio-economic reasons (India, Iceland, Luxembourg, Finland, Japan). This group of countries advocates freedom of abortion.

There is also the problem of liberalizing modern norms. Elderly people are more conservative about family attitudes than middle-aged people (35-45 years old). According to statistics, it is women of this age who are more likely to have abortions. Another problem is that Every year around the world from complications during pregnancy and childbirth, 30 thousand adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 die. The mortality rate among children born to teenage mothers is 30% higher than among babies born to older mothers. Thus, for prevention of infant mortality or complications during childbirth is important; quality medical supervision and care is important

Regards, Pushkin Sergey Viktorovich

The problem of the status of the human embryo is fundamental in the complex of problems associated with the artificial termination of pregnancy, as well as a number of ethical problems that have arisen in connection with the use of the latest biomedical technologies and based on manipulations with human embryos.

Whether to treat the embryo as “already a person” or as “not yet human” is a question to which there is no unambiguous answer at the level of public consciousness. The contradictory opinions are mainly due to the latest research by scientists in the field of embryology, microgenetics, neonatology, in the course of which new data were obtained on the features of human intrauterine development, including at its earliest stages.

A human being, developing, goes through a number of stages - from a fertilized egg to a person. From what moment does a human embryo become a person with the right to life? At what point does a human being become a moral subject? The answers to these questions vary depending on the historical and cultural setting and the level of development of biomedical sciences. The recognition of abortion as a morally permissible or unacceptable act depends on these answers. The embryo is not a human, which means that abortion is permissible and is a simple medical operation, the embryo is a human (potential human), therefore, abortion is a crime (murder).

According to the ancient oriental tradition, a person's age is counted from the moment of conception. For Western civilization, the opinion is characteristic that a person's life begins from the moment the child is physically separated from the mother's body, i.e. physical birth. For a long time, doctors associated the beginning of fetal life with the first "wiggle". In the Catholic Church since the late Middle Ages, thanks to the works of Thomas Aquinas, the Aristotelian concept of "animation" has been recognized, according to which a person's life begins from the moment the soul "settles" into the embryo (40 days after conception in men and 80 days in women) ...

In the field of modern sciences, investigating various aspects of the biological processes of the origin and development of human life, a large amount of data has been obtained that allow us to consider the problem of the status of the human embryo from new positions.

In the field of embryology, it is customary to distinguish between the concepts of "pre-embryo", "embryo" and "embryo". The term "pre-embryo" refers to the mass of undifferentiated cells that exist from the moment the unicellular zygote appears until the formation of the primary streak in the third week of pregnancy. Isolation in a special period of development of the first two weeks is fundamentally important, since it was the age of the embryo of 14 days that became the deadline for various manipulations with embryos for research purposes and in the process of applying modern reproductive technologies.

The stage of "pre-embryo" is considered by a number of representatives of Christian ethics as a process of human animation, which begins at the moment of fertilization and ends with the formation of a "primary strip" of cells of a new organism. From this it follows that only by the end of the second week after fertilization a new human life and a unique human soul appear, which means that during these two weeks everything can be done with the developing embryo: used for research and therapeutic purposes, abortion, etc. The representative of the Orthodox Church in America I. Breck writes that the recognition of the difference between the embryo and the pre-embryo “both in medicine and ethics will further mean that the pre-embryo is the carrier of potential, not real human life, and therefore, unlike an embryo, cannot count to the benefits in the form of rights and guarantees provided by society to a full-fledged human individual, or personality ”

.The natural-scientific or physiological position regarding the "beginning" of human life differs from the religious one in the fundamental absence of a single solution even in the space of modern culture. Different physiological approaches differ only in the preference for one or another system, with the beginning of the work of which the beginning of life is associated - heartbeat, pulmonary or brain activity. For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, biology associated the beginning of human life with the 4th month of his intrauterine development, because "An embryo up to 6 weeks is the simplest tissue, up to 2.5 months is a mammal of a lower order, and it is from 4 months that the appearance of fetal brain tissue is recorded, which indicates the emergence of a reflectively perceiving being."

At the end of the 20th century, it was found that the electrophysiological activity of the brain stem is recorded in a 6-week-old fetus. A fetus at the age of 5-6 weeks feels pain, feels the approach of something dangerous for him and tries to move away from the instrument approaching him at the time of an artificial abortion, by the end of 7 weeks has a fully formed nervous system. At 9 weeks, the human embryo has a face, fingers, intracerebral activity and other indicators of vital activity as an independent organism. It is noteworthy that the disappearance of these brain impulses in a person is a modern legal basis for ascertaining his death. If we transfer the modern criterion of human death - “brain death” - to the level of the problem of determining the criterion for the beginning of life, then, keeping the logic, it is these 6 weeks - the beginning of the activity of the brain stem - that must be taken as the time of the beginning of life. But the fullness of brain activity is associated with consciousness and speech. And consciousness and language, as signs of personality, appear only in the 2nd year of a child's life. The recognition of this time of life as the moment of the beginning of human life is absurd and, therefore, generally casts doubt on the option associated with the "brain" criterion.

Another distinguished physiological boundary of the emergence of human life is the first heartbeat (4 weeks). At the same time, the formation of the pulmonary system (20 weeks) is fundamental for many, which indicates the emerging "viability" of the fetus, i.e. his ability to survive outside the mother's body.

Modern research in the field of microbiology, embryology and microgenetics makes it possible to introduce new criteria for the beginning of life of the human body. There are two main approaches to solving this fundamental issue.

According to the first, the individual itself - a unique and indivisible integrity - is formed within the 2nd week after conception, as a result of the complete loss of the ability of the parental cells to exist independently.

Regards, Pushkin Sergey Viktorovich

Good question

Very bad thing that should be strictly prohnited

This is a highly disputed topic but in my opinion, anamolous fetus should be terminated after taking the couple in confidence and thorough counseling. They should also contact the groups where parents are taking care of the anamolous children to know the consequences of giving birth to such a baby. I firmly believe, "NEVER SAVE AN ANOMOLOUS BABY."