Has the Church Really Changed Its Teaching on Abortion?

As I was recently scrolling through social media, eager to see people’s reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I came across a thread by a Catholic who claimed that the Catholic Church has hardly been consistent in its teachings on abortion. This Catholic also asserted that the Church allowed for abortions prior to ensoulment—i.e., the moment a human embryo receives a human soul. Anxious to see the evidence for such claims, I clicked on an article the Catholic referenced. Unfortunately, it was an example of the bait-and-switch tactic, which is all too common among pro-choice Catholics.

Before engaging this article, let’s lay out the Church’s teaching on abortion. In Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, published in 1995, the pope puts the last nail in the coffin of those who wish to be pro-choice Catholics. The pope states:

Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors, and in communion with the bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

According to the paragraph above, the Church’s teaching against abortion is irreformable by three separate means: first by Sacred Scripture, second by the ordinary and universal magisterium, and third by an ex cathedra teaching, since the paragraph above meets the criteria for an exercise of papal infallibility outlined by the First Vatican Council in Pastor Aeternus. In other words, there is no possible way to reverse this teaching, and if we dissent from it, then we might as well admit we do not believe, as all Catholics are required, that the Church is infallibly guided by the Holy Spirit in its teachings on faith and morals.

Having considered the Catholic Church’s position on abortion, we are now ready to examine the article referenced above, titled “The history of Catholic teaching on abortion isn’t as clear cut as you think.” Notice that the title asserts that the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion has been inconsistent. As the saying goes, keep your eye on the ball, which is the claim that the Church has changed its teachings on abortion and also once allowed for abortions at a certain stage in pregnancy. I say this because everything in the article is entirely irrelevant to these two claims—hence the bait and switch.

For one, the article claims that many saints, including St. Brigid of Kildare, performed miraculous abortions! As evidence, the author of the article provides the following quote, without any reference to its source:

A certain woman who had taken the vow of chastity fell, through youthful desire of pleasure and her womb swelled with child. Brigid, exercising the most potent strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, causing the child to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain.

But the claim that Brigid caused the pregnant nun’s child to disappear is without merit. First, this account was written two centuries after the time of Brigid, by a hagiographer who was more influenced by legends than historical data, according to Dr. Paul Byrne, a lecturer on early Irish history at University College Dublin. And there’s no doubting that abortion in Brigid’s era was a sin, since contemporary penitential lists in Ireland, such as the Penitential of Finnian, show that a penance was assigned to abortion at that time, regardless of the stage of pregnancy. The other saints mentioned by the author suffer from the same historiographical problems as the story of St. Brigid, so the criticisms above apply equally to them.

The author also raises the debate over delayed hominization in Catholic history to support the article’s claims. Delayed hominization is the belief that the human soul enters the human fetus at some point after conception. This is contrasted with the Catholic Church’s current position that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception. However, delayed hominization was never taught by the Church’s teaching authority, nor does this concept mean that abortions before ensoulment were permitted. These are two assumptions the author makes, yet neither of them is warranted. After all, the position of individual Catholics in some periods of history does not amount to Church teaching, and it can still be true that abortion in any stage of pregnancy is evil even if delayed hominization is true. Fr. John Connery, S.J. confirms this, saying:

Whatever one would want to hold about the time of animation, or when the fetus became a human being in the strict sense of the term, abortion from the time of conception was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked upon as a moral dividing line between permissible and immoral abortion.

This is further confirmed by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.:

The exact time when the fetus becomes “animated” has no practical significance as far as the morality of abortion is concerned. By any theory of “animation,” abortion is gravely wrong. Why so? Because every direct abortion is a sin of murder by intent. It is, to say the least, probable that every developing fetus is a human being. To deliberately kill what is probably human is murder.

Lastly, the most shocking aspect to the article appeals to conscience to defend abortion—and quotes the Catechism!

When navigating complex moral questions, a person must first look to their own conscience to find the correct answer—not Church leaders. . . . For some, the primacy of conscience gives sufficient room within the Catholic Church for individuals to make up their own minds on abortion.

The author here relies on a partial quote from CCC 1790, which says, “Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.”

Unmentioned is the paragraph in the Catechism that says a person’s conscience must be properly formed by Church teaching (1783). The author also fails to reference CCC 1791, which says a person who does not properly form his conscience is morally culpable for his faulty conscience. Thus, the Catechism in no way, shape, or form allows a person to pit his conscience against Church teaching.

As I noted at the beginning, keep your eye on the ball. Nothing provided in the Outline article shows that abortion was ever morally permissible or taught by the teaching authority of the Church. For this reason, Catholics trying to be pro-choice should be more careful in the assumptions they make and should examine themselves in light of the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion to determine if they are truly Catholic.