Abortion

   As the early Christian writer Tertullian pointed out, the Law of Moses
   ordered strict penalties for causing an abortion.
   
   We read: "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives
   birth prematurely [literally in Hebrew, "so that her child comes out"]
   but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever
   the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is
   serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for
   tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Ex. 21:22
   
   This applies the lex talionis or "law of retribution" to abortion. The
   lex talionis establishes the just punishment for an injury (eye for
   eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, compared to the much greater
   retributions that had been common before, such as life for eye, life
   for tooth, lives of the offender's family for one life).
   
   The lex talionis would already have been applied to a woman who was
   injured in a fight. The distinguishing point in this passage is that a
   pregnant woman is hurt "so that her child comes out"; the child is the
   focus of the lex talionis in this passage. Aborted babies must have
   justice, too.
   
   This is because they, like older children, have souls, even though
   marred by original sin. David tells us: "Surely I was sinful at birth,
   sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:5, NIV). Since
   sinfulness is a spiritual rather than a physical condition, David must
   have had a spiritual nature--or soul--from the time of conception.
   
   The same is shown in James 2:26, which tells us that "the body without
   the spirit is dead": The soul is the life-principle of the human body.
   Since from the time of conception the child's body is alive (as shown
   by the fact it is growing), the child's body must already have its
   spirit.
   
   Thus, in 1995 Pope John Paul II declared that the Church's teaching on
   abortion "is unchanged and unchangeable. Therefore, by the authority
   which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors . . . I declare
   that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a
   means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the
   deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based
   upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted
   by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal
   Magisterium. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever
   make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary
   to the law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by
   reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church" (Evangelium Vitae 62).
   
   This vigorous defense of the rights of the unborn child is nothing
   new. As the following quotes from the early Church Fathers show,
   Christians have always been adamant defenders of the lives of unborn
   children.
   
   Fortunately, abortion, like all sins, is a forgivable one, and
   forgiveness is as close as the nearest confessional.
   
   
   
    The Didache
    
   "The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You
   shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not
   commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic.
   You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor
   destroy a newborn child" (Didache 2:1
   
   
   
    The Letter of Barnabas
    
   "The way of light, then, is as follows. If any one desires to travel
   to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The
   knowledge, therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking
   in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by
   procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is
   born" (Letter of Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).
   
   
   
    The Apocalypse of Peter
    
   "And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and there sat
   women . . . And over against them many children who were born to them
   out of due time sat crying. And there came forth from them rays of
   fire and smote the women in the eyes. And these were the accursed who
   conceived and caused abortion" (The Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D.
   137]).
   
   
   
    Athenagoras
    
   "What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our
   character, that we are murderers? . . . [W]hen we say that those women
   who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to
   give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we
   commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the
   very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of
   God's care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to
   expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with
   child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to
   destroy it" (A Plea for the Christians 35 [A.D. 177]).
   
   
   
    Tertullian
    
   "In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not
   destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being
   derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To
   hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter
   whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is
   coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the
   fruit already in its seed" (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).
   
   
   
    Tertullian
    
   "Among surgeons' tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed
   with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of
   all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular
   blade, by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are
   dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being
   a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by
   a violent delivery.
   
   "There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or
   spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of
   life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of
   embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of
   course was alive. . . .
   "[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a
   living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless
   infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being
   tortured alive" (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).
   
   
   
    Tertullian
    
   "Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that
   the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at
   the same moment and place that the soul does" (ibid. 27).
   
   
   
    Tertullian
    
   "The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who
   shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22
   
   
   
    Minucius Felix
    
   "There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical preparations,
   extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels and thus
   commit a parricide before they bring forth. And these things assuredly
   come down from the teaching of your [false] gods. . . . To us
   [Christians] it is not lawful either to see or hear of homicide"
   (Octavius 30 [A.D. 226]).
   
   
   
    Hippolytus
    
   "Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render
   themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what
   was being conceived, since they would not, on account of relatives and
   excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant
   person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has
   proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!"
   (Refutation of All Heresies [A.D. 228]).
   
   
   
    Lactantius
    
   "When God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits us from open
   violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but he warns
   us against the commission of those things which are esteemed lawful
   among men.. Therefore, let no one imagine that even this is allowed,
   to strangle newly-born children, which is the greatest impiety; for
   God breathes into their souls for life, and not for death. But men,
   that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their
   hands, deprive [unborn] souls as yet innocent and simple of the light
   which they themselves have not given.
   "Can anyone, indeed, expect that they would abstain from the blood of
   others who do not abstain even from their own? But these are, without
   any controversy, wicked and unjust" (Divine Institutes 6:20 [A.D.
   307]).
   
   
   
    Council of Ancyra
    
   "Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they
   have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a
   former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some
   have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater
   lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance],
   according to the prescribed degrees" (canon 21 [A.D. 314]).
   
   
   
    Basil the Great
    
   "Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years' penance, whether
   the embryo were perfectly formed, or not" (First Canonical Letter,
   canon 2 [A.D. 374]).
   
   
   
    Basil the Great
    
   "He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife
   and kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone
   at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a
   rod, or scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own
   defense, when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is
   a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it die upon
   it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are
   they who kill on the highway, and rapparees" (ibid., canon 8).
   
   
   
    John Chrysostom
    
   "Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication . . . Why sow where the
   ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?--where there are many
   efforts at abortion?--where there is murder before the birth? For even
   the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a
   murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution,
   prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something
   even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does
   not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do
   thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after
   what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation
   a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for
   childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by
   being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she
   is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire.
   For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine"
   (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).
   
   
   
    Jerome
    
   "I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and
   are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother . . . Some go so far
   as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder
   human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find
   themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure
   abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring,
   they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery
   against Christ but also of suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13
   [A.D. 396]).
   
   
   
    The Apostolic Constitutions
    
   "Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for He says,
   'You shall not suffer a witch to live' [Ex. 22:18]. Thou shall not
   slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten;
   for "everything that is shaped, and has received a soul from God, if
   it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed."
   (Apostolic Constitutions 7:3 [A.D. 400]).
   
   
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      Last modified May 25, 1996.