This can be applied to humans, animals or micro-organisms; for instance, in religions that practice Ahimsa, both are seen as holy and worthy of life[clarification needed].
Due to the treatment of a foetus as a part of the mother, but not as a separate human being, this is often cited to permit abortion by Jewish people.
After ensoulment, all schools of Islam allow abortion to save the life of the mother, and in the case of an intrauterine death (miscarriage), but on little other grounds.
[15] The inability to provide for a foetus is generally dismissed as an acceptable reason, but some schools of thought are more lenient on the matter.
[13][14] In Western thought, sanctity of life is usually applied solely to the human species (anthropocentrism, sometimes called dominionism), in marked contrast to many schools of Eastern philosophy, which often hold that all animal life is sacred―in some cases to such a degree that, for example, practitioners of Jainism carry brushes with which to sweep insects from their path, lest they inadvertently tread upon them.