Introduction
Historic, orthodox Christianity has stood firmly against abortion through the centuries. Of course it would: the Christian faith is a faith affirming the sanctity of life and that all humans, not just those viable on their own, are created in the image of God and worthy of care and protection. Yet the Church has often had to advocate for life against cultures of death, whether in ancient times or today.
Reasons such cultures give to kill the
vulnerable, whether the unborn, children, elderly, or sick change, but the fact
remains: such ethics of death are antithetical to the Christian faith. Of
course, some aberrations of Christianity, reflecting the culture at large,
have, from time to time, advocated for abortion. A document in the early
1980s in the United Presbyterian Church (USA), e.g., tried to relate covenant
theology--of all things--to allowing abortion! The human mind knows no
bounds to its ability to find reasons, even theology, to justify its sinful
practices. But these are aberrations from orthodoxy. The Church has
always opposed this horrific practice.
The following collection of quotations from extra-Biblical,
primary sources on the issue of abortion shows how Christians followed Jews in their
reading of Scripture. Some understanding
of the context for early Christians is given through non-Christian Jewish and
Graeco-Roman sources. The majority of
quotations that follow these are early Christian. This is not an
exhaustive study, although it is indicative of the primary source evidence.
Many thanks to those who have worked on this issue before me to collect
the relevant texts.
JEWISH SOURCES (Non-Christian)
Josephus, Against
Apion 2:202 (1st century):
The law,
moreover, enjoins us to bring up all our offspring, and forbids women to cause
abortion of what is begotten, or to kill it afterward; and if any woman appears
to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child, by killing a living
creature, and diminishing human kind; if anyone, therefore, proceeds to such
fornication or murder, he cannot be clean.
Philo, Special
Laws 3:108-109, 117 (1st century):
But if any one has a contest with a woman who is
pregnant, and strike her a blow on her belly, and she miscarry, if the child
which was conceived within her is still unfashioned and unformed, he shall be
punished by a fine, both for the assault which he committed and also because he
has prevented nature, who was fashioning and preparing that most excellent of
all creatures, a human being, from bringing him into existence. But if the
child which was conceived had assumed a distinct shape [Exodus 21:22 LXX] in
all its parts, having received all its proper connective and distinctive
qualities, he shall die; 109
for such a creature as that is a man, whom he has slain while still in the
workshop of nature, who had not thought it as yet a proper time to produce him
to the light, but had kept him like a statue lying in a sculptor's workshop,
requiring nothing more than to be released and sent out into the
world…. 117 Therefore, Moses has utterly prohibited the exposure of children,
by a tacit prohibition, when he condemns to death, as I have said before, those
who are the causes of a miscarriage to a woman whose child conceived within her
is already formed.
GRAECO-ROMAN SOURCES (Non-Christian)
Aristotle, Politics 7.14.10.1335b: [1]
As to exposing
or rearing the children born, let there be a law that no deformed child shall
be reared; but on the ground of number of children, if the regular customs
hinder any of those born being exposed, there must be a limit fixed to the
procreation of offspring, and if any people have a child as a result of
intercourse in contravention of these regulations, abortion must be practised
on it before it has developed sensation and life; for the line between lawful
and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive.
Aristotle, Historia
Animalium, Book IX (VII), 7.3.583b:[2]
Now in the case
of males, their movement tends to take place … at about forty days, that of
females … at about ninety days.
Ovid (43 BC - AD 65) De Nuce, lines 22-23:
Of what avail to
fair woman to rest free from the burdens of war [i.e. pregnancy], nor choose
with shield in arm to march in the fierce array, if, free from peril of battle,
she suffer wounds from weapons of her own, and arm her unforeseeing hands to
her own undoing?
She who first
plucked forth the tender life deserved to die in the warfare she began. Can it
be that, to spare your bosom the reproach of lines, you would scatter the
tragic sands of deadly combat? (Cf. Amores 2.13)
Juvenal Satire 6.592-601
(c.57/67-127)
Poor
women…endure the perils of childbirth, and all the troubles of nursing to which
their lot condemns them; but how often does a gilded bed contain a woman that
is lying in it? So great is the skill, so powerful the drugs, of the
abortionist, paid to murder mankind within the womb
Musonius Rufus, Fragment 15a:
[In reference to
Augustinian legislation of 28 BC and 9 AD]
The lawgivers,
who had the same task of searching out and finding what was good for the city
and what bad, and what helped or harmed it, did not they also consider that it
was most beneficial to their cities to fill the houses of the citizens, and
most harmful to deplete them? They considered that childlessness, or small
families, of citizens was unprofitable, while to have children, and in fact
many children, was profitable. Therefore, they forbade the women to abort and
attached a penalty to those who disobeyed; secondly they forbade them to use
contraceptives on themselves and to prevent pregnancy; finally they established
honors for both men and women who had many children and made childlessness
punishable.
Following Graeco-Roman context quotes are from: M. J., Elsakkers, Reading Between the Lines: Old Germanic and
early Christian Views on Abortion.[3]
Visigoth Laws
VI.3.2. Old law
(reflecting Exodus 21): If a free man causes a free woman to abort. If anyone
strikes a pregnant woman by any blow whatever or through any circumstance
causes a free woman to abort, and from this she dies, let him be punished for
homicide. If, however, only the fetus is destroyed, and the woman is in no way
debilitated, and a free man is recognized as having inflicted this to a free
woman, if he has destroyed a developed [formed] fetus, let him pay 150 solidi;
if it is actually an undeveloped [unformed] fetus, let him pay 100 solidi in
restitution for the deed.[4]
VI.3.7. King
Chindasvind (642-53). Concerning those who kill their own children, either
already having been born or in utero. There is nothing worse than the depravity
of those who, disregarding piety, become murderers of their own children. In as
much as it is said that the crime of these has grown to such a degree
throughout the provinces of our land that men as well as women are found to be
the performers of this heinous action, we therefore, forbidding this
dissoluteness, decree that, if a free woman or a female slave murders a son or
a daughter which has been born, or, while having it still in utero, either
takes a potion to induce abortion, or by any other means whatsoever presumes to
destroy her own fetus, after the judge of the province or of the territory
learns of such a deed, let him not only sentence the performer of this crime to
public execution, or if he wishes to preserve her life, let him not hesitate to
destroy the vision of her eyes, but also, if it is evident that the woman’s
husband ordered or permitted such things, let him not be reluctant to subject
the same to a similar punishment.
Alamans (German)[5]
Alamannic law
88.1. If anyone causes an abortion in a pregnant woman so that you can
immediately recognize whether [it] would have been a boy or a girl: if it was
to be a boy, let him compensate with twelve solidi; however, if a girl, [let
him compensate] with twenty-four.
88.2. If whether
[the fetus is male or female] cannot be immediately recognized, and [the fetus]
was not formed in [its] bodily features let him compensate with twelve solidi.
If he seeks more, let him clear himself with oathtakers.
Bavaria (German)[6]
8.19. Various
cases of abortion. If anyone causes an abortion in a woman through any blow, if
the woman dies, let it be considered the same as a homicide. However, if the
child alone is killed, let him compensate twenty solidi if the child does not
come forth alive. If, however, it was living [at the time of the abortion], let
him pay the wergeld.
Old English[7]
Alfred’s Law 9.
If anyone slays a woman with child, while the child is in her womb, he shall
pay the full wergeld for the woman, and half the wergeld for the child, [which
shall be] in accordance with the wergeld of the father’s kindred.
EARLY CHRISTIAN SOURCES[8]
Didache 2 (late 1st c.):
And the second
commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit
adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you
shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice
witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is
born. You shall not covet the things of your neighbor, you shall not swear, you
shall not bear false witness, you shall not speak evil, you shall bear no
grudge….[9]
The Apocalypse of Peter (ca. 135)
"I saw a
gorge in which the discharge and excrement of the tortured ran down and became
like a lake. There sat women, and the discharge came up to their throats; and
opposite them sat many children, who were born prematurely, weeping. And from
them went forth rays of fire and smote the women on the eyes. These were those
who produced children outside of marriage and who procured abortions." 2:26
"Those
who slew the unborn children will be tortured forever, for God wills it to
so." 2:64
The Letter of Barnabas (2nd c.)
"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
St. Clement of Alexandria (2nd c.)
Paedagogus (2.10.96):
“Women who resort to some sort of deadly abortion drug kill not only the
embryo, but along with it, all human kindness.”
Athenagoras (d.177), Legatio Pro Christianis (or Apology):
What reason
would we have to commit murder when we say that women who induce abortions are
murderers, and will have to give account of it to God? For the same person
would not regard the fetus in the womb as a living thing and therefore and
object of God's care [and then kill it]….But we are altogether consistent in
our conduct. We obey reason and do not override it (35).
How, then, when
we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put
people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on
abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God s for the
abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to
the same person to regard the very foetus 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. But we are in all things always alike and the same, submitting ourselves to
reason, and not ruling over it (35.4).
Tertullian (c. 160 - 240) De Anima 25.5 – 6:
That the
unborn child is alive:
How are they
dead unless they were first alive? But still in the womb an infant by necessary
cruelty is killed when lying twisted at the womb's mouth he prevents birth and
is a matricide unless he dies. Therefore there is among the arms of physicians
an instrument by which with a rotary movement the genital parts are first
opened, then with a cervical instrument the interior members are slaughtered
with careful judgment by a blunt barb, so that the whole criminal deed is extracted
with a violent delivery. There is also the bronze needle by which the throat -
cutting is carried out by a robbery in the dark; this instrument is called and
embryo knife from its function of infanticide, as it is deadly for the living
infant.
This Hippocrates
taught, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus and Herophilus, the dissector of
adults, and the milder Soranos himself, - all of them certain that a living
being had been conceived and so deploring the most unhappy infancy of one of
this kind who had first to be killed lest a live woman be rent apart. Of this
necessity of crime, Hicesius, I believe did not doubt, as he added souls to
those being born from blows of cold air, because the word itself for
"soul" among the Greek relates to such a cooling.
Tertullian De
Anima 26.4:
They [John
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 each is known by her child
who is alive, being not merely souls but also spirits.
Tertullian De
Anima 26.5:
Thus, you
read the word of God, spoken to Jeremias: "Before I formed thee in the
womb, I knew thee." If God forms us in the womb, He also breathes on us as
He did in the beginning: "And God formed man and breathed into him the
breath of life." Nor could God have known man in the womb unless he were a
whole man. "And before thou camest forth from the womb, I sanctified
thee." Was it, then, a dead body at that stage? Surely it was not, for
"God is the God of the living and not the dead."
Tertullian Apologia,
cap 25, line 42:
It is not
permissible for us to destroy the seed by means of illicit manslaughter once it
has been conceived in the womb, so long as blood remains in the person.
Tertullian Apologia
9.1:
To the
governors of Roman provinces and to the Emperor Septimus Severus, defending
Christianity against various charges:
'That I may
refute more thoroughly these charges ['we are accused of observing a holy rite
in which we kill a little child and then eat it', Apologia7.1], I will
show that in part openly, in part secretly, practices prevail among you which
have led you perhaps to credit similar things about us.
Tertullian, Apologia 25:
In our
case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the foetus
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 whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one
that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the
fruit already in the seed.
Tertullian, Apologia 197:
In our case,
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 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 the birth. Apologia 197
Tertullian, De
Anima 25:
Give us your
testimony, then, ye mothers, whether yet pregnant, or after delivery (let
barren women and men keep silence), - the truth of your own nature is in
question, the reality of your own suffering is the point to be decided. (Tell
us, then,) whether you feel in the embryo within you any vital force other than
your own, with which your bowels tremble, your sides shake, your entire womb
throbs, and the burden which oppresses you constantly changes its position?
Are these
movements a joy to you, and a positive removal of anxiety, as making you
confident that your infant both possesses vitality and enjoys it? Or, should
his restlessness cease, your first fear would be for him; and he would be aware
of it within you, since he is disturbed at the novel sound; and you would crave
for injurious diet, or would even loathe your food - all on his account; and
then you and he, (in the closeness of your sympathy,) would share together your
common ailments - so far that with your contusions and bruises would he
actually become marked, - whilst within you, and even on the selfsame parts of
the body, taking to himself thus peremptorily the injuries of his mother!
Now, whenever a
livid hue and redness are incidents of the blood, the blood will not be without
the vital principle, or soul; or when disease attacks the soul or vitality, (it
becomes a proof of its real existence, since) there is no disease where there
is no soul or principle of life. Again, inasmuch as sustenance by food, and the
want thereof, growth and decay, fear and motion, are conditions of the soul or
life, he who experiences them must be alive. And, so, he at last ceases to
live, who ceases to experience them. And thus by and by infants are still -
born; but how so, unless they had life? For how could any die, who had not
previously lived? But sometimes by a cruel necessity, whilst yet in the womb,
an infant is put to death, when lying awry in the orifice of the womb he
impedes parturition, and kills his mother, if he is not to die himself.
Accordingly,
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 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 ….., the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive.
Such apparatus
was possessed both by Hippocrates, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus, and
Herophilus, that dissector of even adults, and the milder Soranus himself, who
all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and pitied this
most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being
tortured alive.
Of the necessity
of such harsh treatment I have no doubt even Hicesius was convinced, although
he imported their soul into infants after birth from the stroke of the frigid
air, because the very term for soul, forsooth, in Greek answered to such a
refrigeration! Well, then, have the barbarian and Roman nations received souls
by some other process, (I wonder) for they have called the soul by another name
than ….? How many nations are there who commence life under the broiling sun of
the torrid zone, scorching their skin into its swarthy hue? Whence do they get
their souls, with no frosty air to help them? I say not a word of those well -
warmed bed - rooms, and all that apparatus of heat which ladies in childbirth
so greatly need, when a breath of cold air might endanger their life. But in the
very bath almost a babe will slip into life, and at once his cry is heard! If,
however, a good frosty air is to the soul so indispensable a treasure, then
beyond the German and the Scythian tribes, and the Alpine and the Arguan
heights, nobody ought ever to be born!
But the fact
really is, that population is greater within the temperate regions of the East
and the West, and men's minds are sharper; whilst there is not a Sarmatian
whose wits are not dull and humdrum. The minds of men, too, would grow keener
by reason of the cold, if their souls came into being amidst nipping frosts;
for as the substance is, so must be its active power. Now, after these
preliminary statements, we may also refer to the case of those who, having been
cut out of their mother's womb, have breathed and retained life - your
Bacchuses and Scipios.
If, however,
there be any one who, like Plato, supposes that two souls cannot, more than two
bodies could, co - exist in the same individual, I, on the contrary, could show
him not merely the co-existence of two souls in one person, as also of two
bodies in the same womb, but likewise the combination of many other things in
natural connection with the soul - for instance, of demoniacal possession; and that not
of one only, as in the case of Socrates' own demon; but of seven spirits as in
the case of the Magdalene; and of a legion in number, as in the Gadarene.
Now one soul is
naturally more susceptible of conjunction with another soul, by reason of the
identity of their substance, than an evil spirit is, owing to their diverse
natures. But when the same philosopher, in the sixth book of The Laws,
warns us to beware lest a vitiation of seed should infuse a soil into both body
and soul from an illicit or debased concubinage, I hardly know whether he is
more inconsistent with himself in respect of one of his previous statements, or
of that which he had just made. For he here shows us that the soul proceeds
from human seed (and warns us to be on our guard about it), not, (as he had
said before,) from the first breath of the new - born child.
Pray, whence
comes it that from similarity of soul we resemble our parents in disposition,
according to the testimony of Cleanthes, if we are not produced from this seed
of the soul? Why, too, used the old astrologers to cast a man's nativity from
his first conception, if his soul also draws not its origin from that moment?
To this (nativity) likewise belongs the inbreathing of the soul, whatever that
is.
Tertullian, De
Anima 27:
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.
Tertullian, De
Anima 37:
The Law of
Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion [Ex
21:22-24].
Hippolytus (170-235 AD), Refutation of All Heresies 9.7
"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!" ([A.D. 228])
Minucius Felix (3rd Century AD), Octavius 30:
There are some
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 done from the teaching of your gods.
Council of Elvira (c. 305)
Canon 68: If a
catechumen should conceive by an adulterer, and should procure the death of the
child, she can be baptized only at the end of her life.
Council of Ancyra (314)
Canon 21: Women
who prostitute themselves, and who kill the child thus begotten, or who try to
destroy them when in their wombs, are by ancient law excommunicated to the end
of their lives. We, however, have softened their punishment and condemned them
to the various appointed degrees of penance for ten years.
Basil (c. 329-379)
To Anfilochius,
Bishop of Iconia:
She who has
intentionally destroyed [the fetus] is subject to the penalty corresponding to
a homicide. For us, there is no scrutinizing between the formed and unformed
[fetus]; here truly justice is made not only for the unborn but also with
reference to the person who is attentive only to himself/herself since so many
women generally die for this very reason.
First Letter 2
Canon II.
Let her that
procures abortion undergo ten years' penance, whether the embryo were perfectly
formed, or not.
Basil, First Canonical Epistle to Amphilochius, Bishop
of Iconium 8:
…those who
give the abortifacients and those who take the poisons are guilty of homicide.
Ambrose (c.340-397) Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, lib. 10, line 252 [private translation]:
Indeed there are
those women who cut off the word prematurely born/aborted, before they give
birth, there are those who have Christ in the womb but they will not yet have
formed (him), to whom it is said: my children, whom I desire to bring forth
again and again until Christ be formed in you.
Ambrose, Expositio
evangelii secundum Lucam, lib. 10 [private
translation]:
But why the eye
or the hand, since the aborted child has both a hand and an eye which has
already been formed? , line 283
Ambrose, De bono
mortis, cap 2, par. 4, line 11:
And elsewhere
the same Ecclesiastes, being an old man, guarded him better whom his mother had
cast out by abortion, because he did not see these bad things which they make
in this world, he neither came into these shadows nor walked in vanity, and for
that reason he who did not come into this life will have more of a rest than he
who came.
Ambrose, Hexameron V.18.58 [private translation]:
The poor get rid
of their small children by exposure and denying them when they are discovered.
But the rich also, so that their wealth will not be more divided, deny their
children [when they are] in the womb and with all the force of parricide, they
kill the beings of their wombs [while they are] in the same fruitful womb. In
this way life is taken away from them before it has been given.
Jerome (347-420), Epistula 22:
You may see many
women widows before wedded, who try to conceal their miserable fall by a lying
garb. Unless they are betrayed by swelling wombs or by the crying of their
infants, they walk abroad with tripping feet and heads in the air. 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.
John Chrysostom (347-407), Homily 24 on Romans:
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 thou
dost not let continue a mere harlot, but makest 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 name to give it, since
it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then dost
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. Hence too come idolatries, since many, with a view to become
acceptable, devise incantations, and libations, and love potions, and countless
other plans. Yet still after such great unseemliness, after slaughters, after
idolatries, the thing [fornication] seems to belong to things indifferent, aye,
and to many that have wives, too.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), De Nube et Concupiscentia 1.17 (15):
Sometimes,
indeed, this lustful cruelty, or if you please, cruel lust, resorts to such
extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if
unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to
birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive
vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain
before it was born.
Augustine of Hippo, Enchiridion 23.85.4:
On the
undeveloped fetus:
Hence in the
first place arises a question about abortive conceptions, which have indeed
been born in the mother's womb, but not so born that they could be born again.
For if we shall decide that these are to rise again, we cannot object to any
conclusion that may be drawn in regard to those which are fully formed. Now who
is there that is not rather disposed to think that unformed abortions perish,
like seeds that have never fructified? But who will dare to deny, though he may
not dare to affirm, that at the resurrection every defect in the form shall be
supplied, and that thus the perfection which time would have brought shall not
be wanting, any more than the blemishes which time did bring shall be present:
so that the nature shall neither want anything suitable and in harmony with it
that length of days would have added, nor be debased by the presence of
anything of an opposite kind that length of days has added; but that what is
not yet complete shall be completed, just as what has been injured shall be
renewed.
Augustine of Hippo, Enchiridion 23.86
On therapeutic
abortion:
And therefore
the following question may be very carefully inquired into and discussed by learned
men, though I do not know whether it is in man's power to resolve it: At what
time the infant begins to live in the womb: whether life exists in a latent
form before it manifests itself in the motions of the living being. To deny
that the young who are cut out limb by limb from the womb, lest if they were
left there dead the mother should die too, have never been alive, seems too
audacious. Now, from the time that a man begins to live, from that time it is
possible for him to die. And if he die, wheresoever death may overtake him, I
cannot discover on what principle he can be denied an interest in the
resurrection of the dead.
Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 126, line 12:
Therefore
brothers, you see how perverse they are and hastening wickedness, who are
immature, they seek abortion of the conception before the birth; they are those
who tell us, "I do not see that which you say must be believed."
Augustine of Hippo, Excerpt from a sermon of St. Caesarius (470-543):
No woman should
take drugs for purposes of abortion, nor should she kill her children that have
been conceived or are already born. If anyone does this, she should know that
before Christ’s tribunal she will have to plead her case in the presence of
those she has killed. Moreover, women should not take diabolical draughts with
the purpose of not being able to conceive children. A woman who does this ought
to realize that she will be guilty of as many murders as the number of children
she might have borne. I would like to know whether a woman of nobility who
takes deadly drugs to prevent conception wants her maids or tenants to do so.
Just as every woman wants slaves born for her so that they may serve her, so
she herself should nurse all the children she conceives, or entrust them to
others for rearing. Otherwise, she may refuse to conceive children or, what is
more serious, be willing to kill souls which might have been good Christians.
Now, with what kind of a conscience does she desire slaves to be born of her
servants, when she herself refuses to bear children who might become
Christians?
Theodorus Priscianus (c.4th -5th century AD), Euporiston III, VI, 23:
It is never
licit to give something that will cause an abortion. As Hippocrates points out,
it is not fitting that the innocent office of a doctor be stained by complicity
in such a serious offense. But if they attempt to avoid the birth on account of
either a defect in their womb or the difficulties associated with their age,
they greatly risk their lives to earn their health just as one risks killing
the tree by applying something to the branches or boats which are tossed about
by a storm must throw away their cargo.
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.
Justinian (527-565), Digest 47.11:
Why a woman who
procured an abortion would be punished:
-Because
"it might appear scandalous that she should be able to deprive her husband
of children without being punished".
Justinian (527-565), Digest 48.19.38.5:
Because the
thing is a bad example, lower-class people who give a drink to cause an
abortion or to excite passion (although they do not do it deceitfully), are to
be condemned to the mines, and more distinguished persons to be relegated to an
island and deprived of a part of their wealth. If by this drink a woman or a man
has died, they are condemned to capital punishment.
Gregory the Great (540-604), Moralia, Bk. IV, line 3 [private translation]:
The aborted
[fetus] because it is born before its due time, is immediately concealed [as]
dead.
Gregory the Great (540-604), Moralia, Bk. IV line 25 [private translation]:
Moreover
this abortion is best said to be secret because from the origins of the world,
when we know Moses was writing certain things, part of the human family was greatly
unknown/concealed to us.
Disciple of Cassiodorus (after 540 AD), Commentary on I Corinthians, cap. 15,
line 49:
He is said to be
aborted who was born before the time, or who, alive, was given birth by a dead
mother.
Following
citations are from: M.J. Elsakkers, Reading
between the lines: Old Germanic and early Christian views on abortion.[11]
Theodore’s penitential:
24. Women who
commit abortion before [the fetus] has life, shall do penance for one year or
for the three forty-day periods or for forty days, according to the nature of
the offense; and if later, that is, more than forty days after conception, they
shall do penance as murderesses, that is for three years on Wednesdays and
Fridays and in the three forty-day periods. This according to the canons is
judged [punishable by] ten years.[12]
27. A woman who
conceives and slays her child in the womb within forty days shall do penance
for one year; but if later than forty days, she shall do penance as a
murderess.
Bede’s penitential III. Of Slaughter.
A woman who
kills her child in the womb before the fortieth day shall do penance for one
year. If it is later than forty days, [she shall do penance for] three years.41
But it makes a great difference whether a poor woman does it on account of the
difficulty of supporting [the child] or a harlot for the sake of concealing her
wickedness.[13]
St Hubert Penitential
37:
On abortion. If
any woman intentionally brings about abortion, she shall do penance for 10
years.
Burchard’s Decretum CXLVII:
Have you done
what some women are accustomed to do when they fornicate and wish to kill their
offspring, act with their maleficia and their herbs so that they kill or cut
out the embryo, or, if they have not yet conceived, contrive that they do not
conceive? If you have done so, or consented to this, or taught it, you must do
penance for ten years on legal feriae. But an ancient determination removed
such from the Church till the end of their lives. For as often as she impeded a
conception, so many homicides was a woman guilty of. But it makes a big
difference whether she is a poor little woman and acted on account of the
difficulty of feeding, or whether she acted to conceal a crime of fornication.[14]
Old English Confessional 19.i, k.
19 i. A woman who causes an abortion of the
child (conception) in her womb, and kills [it] after forty days after she
received the seed, before it was ensouled, shall fast as a murderess for three
years each week on two days till evening [and] in three [forty-day] periods.
19.k. If she loses the child (fetus) [she
shall fast] for one year or in three [forty-day] periods.[15]
Further Resources:
Mistry, Zubin, Abortion in the Early Middle
Ages, c. 500-900 (York: York Medieval
[1] Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham (London and Cambridge, MA, 1967), pp.
622–25.
[2] Aristotle, History of Animals.
ed. and trans. D.M. Balme, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA and London, 1965–91).
[3] Following
quoted in: Elsakkers, M.J., Reading
between the lines: Old Germanic and early Christian views on abortion. PhD Dissertation: University of
Amsterdam, 2010. Online: https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1578602/76072_article_01.pdf.
[4][4] Translation by Darrel W. Amundsen,
‘Visigothic Medical Legislation’, Bulletin
of the History of Medicine 45 (1971), 553–69, at 567.
[7] The Laws of the Earliest
English Kings, ed. and trans. F.L. Attenborough (Cambridge, 1922; repr.
1974).
[8] A number of the early
Christian sources are taken from: http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/earlychurchfathers/fatherscover.html.
[9] Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 7, trans.
M.B. Riddle, ed. Aexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886).
[10] Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 7, ed.Alexander
Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. James Donaldson (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886).
[14] Translated by Noonan, Contraception, p. 160, from Migne’s text of Burchard’s Decretum (Bk
19) in PL 140.
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