Abortion
The Catholic Church has always condemned abortion
as a grave evil. Christian writers from the first-century author of the
Didache to Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae
("The Gospel of Life") have maintained that the Bible forbids abortion,
just as it forbids murder. This tract will provide some examples of this
consistent witness from the writings of the Fathers of the Church.
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 [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.
21:22–24).
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 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).
The early Church Fathers agreed. Fortunately, abortion,
like all sins, is forgivable; 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 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).
The Letter of Barnabas
"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone
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]).
"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]).
"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).
"The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties
the man who shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22–24]" (ibid., 37).
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]).
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]).
"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 dies
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.
. . . [I]f it be slain, [it] shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed"
(Apostolic Constitutions 7:3 [A.D. 400]).
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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