General Knowledge

What is abortion?
• Abortion is the ending of pregnancy by removing a
fetus or embryo before it can survive outside the
uterus.
• Most often performed during the first 28 weeks of
pregnancy
• Abortion is when a pregnancy is ended so that it
doesn't result in the birth of a child.
• Medical abortion : The abortion pill, and surgical
abortion
 Historical Basis
• For over a century, abortion has been criminalized in the
Philippines.
• Abortion was criminalized through the Penal Code of 1870 under
Spanish colonial rule, and the criminal provisions were incorporated
into the Revised Penal Code passed in 1930 under U.S. occupation
of the Philippines.
• In 2008 alone, the Philippines’ criminal abortion ban was estimated
to result in the deaths of at least 1,000 women and complications for
90,000 more.
 Trivias
• Eastern Europe has the highest abortion rate in the world, at 43
abortions per 1,000 per women.
• Approximately 90% of fetuses that are diagnosed with Down
Syndrome in utero are aborted.
• In the U.S., black women are at least 5 times more likely to have an
abortion than white women. Approximately 1,876 black babies are
aborted every day.
• Approximately 51% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all
or most cases. About 43% say it should be illegal all or most of the
time. These figures have remained fairly stable for the past 20
years.
 Moral / Ethical
Concern
• Usually, debates about abortion focus on politics and the law: should
abortion be outlawed and treated like the murder of a human person,
or remain a legal choice available to all women?
• Abortion is always wrong. The object which involves killing the baby is
wrong, and the intention which is to terminate the pregnancy is also
wrong. Therefore, no matter what the circumstance is, abortion is still
killing.
Stand of the Church
 Biblical
Life is sacred to God, and he views even an embryo as a
distinct, living being. About God, King David was inspired
to write: “Your eyes saw even the embryo of me.” (Psalm
139:16) God stated that a person would be called to
account for injuring an unborn child. So, in his eyes,
killing an unborn child is murder. —Exodus 20:13; 21:22
 Encyclical
From the Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus of Pope John Paul II,
1 May 1991

“..Among the most important of these rights, mention must be made of the
right to life, an integral part of which is the right of the child to develop in
the mother's womb from the moment of conception; the right to live in a
united family and in a moral environment conducive to the growth of the
child's personality; the right to develop one's intelligence and freedom in
seeking and knowing the truth; the right to share in the work which makes
wise use of the earth's material resources, and to derive from that work
the means to support oneself and one's dependents; and the right freely
to establish a family, to have and to rear children through the responsible
exercise of one's sexuality. In a certain sense, the source and synthesis of
these rights is religious freedom, understood as the right to live in the truth
of one's faith and in conformity with one's transcendent dignity as a
person.”