Explain Christian Ethical Teachings on Bioethics with a Focus on the Topic of Abortion

According to Macquarie Dictionary, ethics is the justification for and formal reasoning behind human moral behaviour. It is a "system" of moral principles by which human actions may be judged to be good or bad or right or wrong. Christian ethics are views held by followers of the tradition and shape the way a person lives their life through the influence of their decision making. Bioethics are those which relate to science, medicine, human life and religion intertwined and encompass abortion, as it is the act of using medicine to end the life of an unborn child. Christians are generally against the procedure of abortion as they believe life begins at conception, therefore making abortion an act of murder.

Christians draw their ethical teachings from sources of authority such as the scriptures, tradition, personal experience and logic; therefore, their views on bioethics consider the main aspects of Christian life. Scripture refers to The Bible which contains divine revelations from both God (Old Testament) and Jesus (New Testament), Tradition describes views and attitudes which have been long held by the church and views of people in authority such as the pope and bishops who lead the Christian or (more specifically in this case) Catholic church. The authority of experience and logic are determined by the individual unlike scripture and tradition which are common between Christians. They describe a person's own conscience and feelings about the issue through their own education and wisdom. There is a belief by the Christian church of objective moral truth or "ethical realism". This means that some moral truths are true for everybody despite religion, culture etc. (e.g. rape is always wrong). This opposes the postmodern view of subjective or relative moral truth which states that there are only personal moral preferences and what is true for one person may not be true for another. Bioethics being a part of Christian ethical teachings is therefore substantiated from the four main sources of authority and abortion seen as an objective moral truth.

The views of abortion as part of bioethics are determined by the same sources of authority as described above. Bioethics is the application of morals to science/medicine which concerns biology in terms of life and reproduction. Because science and medicine is continually progressing, through new developments and technology, the issue of bioethics is continuously raised and the Christian view on bioethics challenged when science enters into anything new which, becomes controversial. For example with the issue of stem cell research, Christians believe that embryonic stem cell research is wrong because it prevents a life occurring even if stem cells could save other lives. Also Christians oppose suicide because they see human life as belonging to God, therefore, taking it away is not only ending life but stealing from God and thus breaking the commandments "thou