Church of Scotland – the General Assembly’s View on Abortion
 
In 1985 and 1999, the General Assembly reaffirmed its basic 1966 position on abortion, which can be summarised below:

“The foetus is, from the beginning, an independent human being” and therefore it can be threatened “only in the case of threat to maternal life, and that after the exhaustion of all alternatives”. 
 
Alongside this was a recognition that the decisions involved in termination are difficult, and that there was a need for the church to be compassionately supportive.
 
The 1999 G.A. deliverance goes on to elaborate, with a fair amount of information, on recent medical and ethical developments, but stresses that “since neither the changes in the law nor the advances in medical science in this area have any fundamental impact on the underlying Christian attitudes, the Board does not depart from the views expressed in 1988 and elsewhere in General Assembly deliverances”.
 
The GA’s 1988 deliverance also adds the following elements to this position:
 
-          It acknowledges that differences of opinion exist within the church on what might be called “cases of special difficulty”, such as pregnancy resulting from incest or rape, and in cases of foetal abnormality, but that this does not alter the church’s anxiety about abortions which are not carried out on these specific grounds.
 
-         The law should be changed to make clear that abortion is only permitted on grounds where there is genuine risk to the mother, in order to reverse the trend towards virtual abortion on demand.
 
-         The law should reflect the World Health Organisation’s recommendation that the latest age at which a foetus can be aborted should be 20 weeks.
 
-          the church should engage with the medical profession about how to support medical staff who object to abortion as a matter of conscience.