In doing research for an Our
Sunday Visitor column (my regular Q and A column), I found it necessary to comb
through some of the early Church sources regarding the teaching against
abortion. I thought it might be helpful here, by way of a resource, to post some
of those teachings here. While I have seen a quote here and there, I was
actually quite pleased to find several quotes I had not seen or read before on
the question of abortion and to assemble in one place a good number of
quotes.
I also ask your help
in adding to the list I have assembled here. For the sake of some scope
I have limited the quotes to generally no later than the 4th Century. While you
can feel free to add from later periods as well, I find the early centuries to
be of particular value, due to their antiquity.
As with many quotes
from the ancient world, some of the quotes herein are perhaps quite harsh,
and some may be critiqued at their focus essentially on the women who
procure abortion, with little mention of the men involved. In our own time the
Church is more careful to articulate and understand that abortion often occurs
when women are under duress, or on account of family crisis, poverty and other
social factors. Hence, we who speak against abortion must be ready and able, as
I think the Church admirably is, to assist women and families in crisis to give
birth. Yet the churchmen who are quoted below were men of their times, and, as
my father was often heard to say of the “old days” Things were tough all
over.
Whatever the tone, the
teaching is not at all unclear, and for this we can be grateful.
A couple of years ago a
former Speaker of the House, whose name need not be mentioned here at all,
showed herself an amateur theologian lacking in even basic knowledge by claiming
(on what she called Jesuitical authority) that the Church teaching on abortion
was no older than the 1950s. The usually cautious American Bishops lost no time
in issuing vigorous correction. And rightly so, of course, as quotes like these
will show.
Here then are some of the
quotes:
The Didache (“The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles”) ca 110 AD. Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion. (2:2)…The
Way of Death is filled with people who are…murderers of children and
abortionists of God’s creatures. (5:1-2)
Letter of Barnabas, circa 125: You shall not
kill either the fetus by abortion or the new born
Athenagoras the Athenian (To Marcus Aurelius), ca
150 AD: “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…, [For we]
regard the very fœtus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of
God’s care… (# 35).
Clement of Alexandria: (circa 150 – 215 AD)
Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain
dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various
means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of
divine providence; for these women who, if order to hide their immorality, use
abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time
their own human feelings. Paedagogus, 2
Tertullian circa 160-240 AD: For us, we may
not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives
blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is
merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter when 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 the seed. Apology 9:6
Tertullian (circa 160 – 240 AD): …we are not
permitted, since murder has been prohibited to us once and for all, even to
destroy …the fetus in the womb. It makes no difference whether one destroys a
life that has already been born or one that is in the process of birth.
Apology (9:7-8)
Tertullian circa 160-240 AD: [John the
Baptist and Jesus] were both alive while still in the womb. Elizabeth rejoiced
as the infant leaped in her womb; Mary glorifies the Lord because Christ within
inspired her. Each mother recognizes her child and is known by her child who is
alive, being not merely souls but also spirits. De Aninta 26:4
Hippolytus (circa 170-236 AD): Whence certain
women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility and
to gird themselves round, so as to expel what was conceived on account of their
not wanting to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the
sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how great impiety that
lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same
time. From “Refutation of all Heresies” 9:7
Minucius Felix (180 – 225 AD): Some women
take medicines to destroy the germ of future life in their own bodies. They
commit infanticide before they have given birth to the infant (Octavious
(30, 2))
St. Basil the Great (330 – 379 AD): The woman
who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no
nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed. In this case it is not only the
being about to be born who is vindicated, but the woman in her attack upon
herself; because in most cases women who make such attempts die. The destruction
of the embryo is an additional crime, a second murder, at all events if we
regard it as done with intent. The punishment, however, of these women should
not be for life, but for the term of ten years. And let their treatment depend
not on mere lapse of time, but on the character of their repentance. Letter
188:2
St. Ambrose: (339 to 397 AD) The poor expose
their children, the rich kill the fruit of their own bodies in the womb, lest
their property be divided up, and they destroy their own children in the womb
with murderous poisons. and before life has been passed on, it is
annihilated. Hexaemeron”, (5, 18, 58)
St. John Chrysostom (circa 340 – 407 AD): 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 you do not
even let the harlot remain a mere harlot, but make her a murderer also. You see
how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or
rather something even worse than murder. For I have no real name to give it,
since it does not destroy the thing born but prevents its being born. Why then
do you abuse the gift of God and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a
curse as if a blessing, and make the place of procreation a chamber for murder,
and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? Homily 24
on Romans
St. Jerome (circa 342-420 AD): 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. Letter 22:13
The Synod of Elvira, 306 AD: If a woman
becomes pregnant by committing adultery, while her husband is absent, and after
the act she destroys the child, it is proper to keep her from communion until
death, because she has doubled her crime. Canon 63.
The Synod of Ancyra, 314 AD, 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).
Council of
Trullo (692 AD): Those who give drugs for procuring abortion, and
those who receive poisons to kill the fœtus, are subjected to the penalty of
murder. (Canon 91)
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