Comparing Buddhism And Catholicism's Views On Abortion

The Catholic Church views abortion as an unacceptable action on moral grounds. Japanese Buddhists demonstrate a tacit acceptance to abortion through their development and practice of the Mizuko Kuyo ritual, translated as fetus memorial service, for women who have had an abortion. These different conclusions regarding the acceptance of abortion are reached from the starting positions that life begins at conception and that taking a life is a prohibited action, agreed upon in both traditions. The two traditions' differing stances on abortion are explained by differences between karmic consequence and God as the origin of moral law. It is important to note that abortion has been practiced since ancient times and is recorded in human history. The ethical question of the willful termination of a pregnancy has been considered by these religious traditions and their scholars. Buddhism and Catholicism prohibit the taking of human life. In Buddhism the first of the five precepts is to abstain from taking life. One translation is “As the Buddha refrained from killing until the end of his life, so I will too refrain from taking life until the end of

In the doctrine of the Catholic Church life begins when the soul and body become joined. Drawing on the Immaculate Conception the moment when body and soul are joined is the conception of the child. (Augustine and Aquinas, catechism). The Buddha taught that life is reincarnated when intercourse occurs; in modern commentaries with current medical understanding this is now understood to be the moment of conception (Religious perspectives 524). These definitions of when life begins are such that there is no possibility of the fetus being on a gradual progression from non-life to life throughout the pregnancy; both traditions hold the view that these concepts are binary in nature. The progress of the pregnancy is inconsequential to the moral consequence of taking the child's