Ancient Christian Attitudes to Abortion

1. I, Human
The Beginning of Life

2. Ancient Greek & Roman Views

3. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Why Would the Ancient Romans Practice Abortion?
Soranos listed three
1. To conceal adultery,
2. To maintain feminine beauty,
3. To avoid damaging the health of the mother.
Plato and Aristotle would mention…
4. To prevent excess population.
Ambrose of Milan also mentioned (but did not support)…
5. To limit the division of inheritance.
(The above includes both abortion and the use of contraceptives.)

4. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Attitudes to Abortion
Hippocrates and the Hippocratic Oath:
“…not to give a deadly drug to anyone if asked
for it, nor to suggest it. Similarly, I will not give
to a woman an abortifacient pessary. In purity and
holiness I will guard my life and my art.”
Another writing appears to have Hippocrates recommending a girl
jump up and down to dislodge an embryo, so his views and practices
may have been a little inconsistent.

5. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Attitudes to Abortion
Soranos of Ephesus
Only when the mother’s life is endangered.

6. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Attitudes to Abortion
Roman Law: The Twelve Tables (455 BC)
IV. 1 “A dreadfully deformed child shall be killed.”
The freedom of parents to dispose of offspring was taken for granted
by the empire. This would include infanticide, abortion, and
contraception.

7. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Attitudes to Abortion
Roman Law:
Note that Felicity was not executed until after she gave birth.

8. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Soranos of Ephesus (98-138 AD)
Methods of abortion
Purging the abdomen with clysters,
Walking about vigorously,
Carrying things beyond one’s strength,
Bathing in sweet water which is not too hot,
Bathing in decoctions of linseed, mallow, and wormwood,
Injecting warm and sweet olive oil,
Being bled and shaken...
He opposes the use of sharp instruments as it can damage the woman.

9. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Soranos of Ephesus (98-138 AD)
Contraceptives (atokia):
Soronos preferred the use of contraceptives, which were drugs.
Several of these drugs would also work as abortifacients.

10. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Ensoulment
At conception the body receives a vegetable soul.
Gradually it would be replaced with an animal soul.
Finally by a rational soul.

11. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Summary:
1. Pre-scientific
2. Lack of individual human rights.
The child/embryo belonged to the father.
3. John T. Noonan summarizes it as a society that was “indifferent to
fetal and early life”.
4. Recognition of stages of life before birth.

12. Ancient Greek & Roman Views
Ensoulment:
At Conception
Pythagoras
Between Conception and Birth
Aristotle
Philo of Alexandria
At Birth (or shortly after)
Stoics
Many Platonists
Sometime After Birth
A person’s recognition under Roman Law

13. Ancient Jewish Views

14. Ancient Jewish Views
Exodus 21: 22, 23 (NIV)
“If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth
prematurely 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 harm, then you shall pay life for life…”

15. Ancient Jewish Views
Exodus 21: 22, 23 (Septuagint)
“And if two men strive and smite a woman with child, and her child
be born imperfectly formed, he shall be forced to pay a penalty: as
the woman's husband may lay upon him, he shall pay with a
valuation. But if it be perfectly formed, he shall give life for life…”

16. Ancient Jewish Views
Exodus 21: 22, 23
Philo of Alexandria (25 BC – 50 AD)
Philo used Ex 21: 22 to condemn both
accidental and deliberate abortions.
He condemned abortion as infanticide.

17. Ancient Jewish Views
Antoninus said to Rabbi, “From when is the soul endowed in man,
from the time of conception* or from the time of the embryo’s
formation?”
Rabbi replied: “From the time of formation.”
The emperor demurred: “Can meat remain three days without salt
and not putrefy? You must concede that the soul enters at
conception.”
Rabbi Mater said, “Antoninus taught me this, and Scripture supports
him, as it is said, ‘And thy visitation* hath preserved my spirit”’
(Job 10:12). (Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 91b)

18. Ancient Jewish Views
“Your hands shaped me and made me.
Will you now turn and destroy me?
Remember that you molded me like clay.
Will you now turn me to dust again?
Did you not pour me out like milk
and curdle me like cheese,
clothe me with skin and flesh
and knit me together with bones and sinews?
You gave me life and showed me kindness,
and in your providence watched over my spirit.”
Job 10

19. Ancient Jewish Views
If a woman has difficulty in childbirth, one dismembers the embryo
within her limb from limb because her life takes precedence over its
life.
Once its head (or the greater part) has emerged, it may not be
touched, for we do not set aside one life for another.
(Mishnah, Oholoi 7.6; see also Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 72b)

20. The Early Christians

21. The Early Christians
Genesis 2: 7
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living being.
1 Thessalonians 5: 23
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and
through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

22. The Early Christians
Delayed Ensoulment: God creates the soul and the body separately.
Immediate Ensoulment: The soul is formed along with the body.

23. The Didache (100)
“You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not
corrupt boys. You shall not fornicate. You shall not steal. You shall
not make magic. You shall not practice medicine (pharmakeia). You
shall not slay the child by abortions. You shall not kill what is
generated. You shall not desire you neighbor’s wife.”
The Way of Life is contrasted with the Way of Death. The way of
death includes those who are “killers of the child, who abort the mold
(plasma) of God.”

24. The Epistle of Barnabas (130)
“You shall love your neighbor
more than your own life. You
shall not slay the child by
abortions. You shall not kill what
is generated.”

25. The Apocalypse of Peter (2nd century)
“They forsook the commandments of God and slew their children.”
"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."

26. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215)
Christians do not “take away human nature, which is generated from
the providence of God, by hastening abortions and applying
abortifacient drugs to destroy utterly the embryo and, with it, the love
of man.”
Abortions are associated, by Clement, with…
1. Destroying what God has created,
2. and destroying Love.

27. Athenagoras of Athens (190)
Context: The Pagan rumor that Christians kill people.
“How can we kill a man when we are
those who say that all who use
abortifacients are homicides and will
account to God for their abortions as for
the killing of men.
For the fetus in the womb is not an
animal and it is God’s providence that he
exist.”

28. Minucius Felix (d. 250 ?)
Again, there was the charge of infanticide
against Christians.
Minucius complains…
“By drinks of drugs they extinguish in their viscera the beginning of
a man-to-be and, before they bear, commit parricide (killing of a
near relative).

29. Tertullian (d. 198)
Again, a defense against the charges of
infanticide, in his Apology Tertullian
writes…
“For us, indeed, as homicide if forbidden, it is not
lawful to destroy what is conceived in the womb
while the blood is still being formed into a man.
To prevent being born is to accelerate homicide, nor does it make a
difference whether you snatch away a soul which is born or destroy
one being born.
He who is man-to-be is man, as all fruit is now in the seed.”

30. Tertullian (d. 198)
We indeed maintain that both ‘body and soul’ are conceived, and
formed, and perfectly simultaneously...
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 manner and place that the soul does.

31. Tertullian (d. 198)
The embryo therefore becomes a human being in the womb from
the moment that its form is completed.
The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who
shall cause abortion, inasmuch as there exists already the rudiment
of a human being.

32. A Controversy within the Church
Calixtus (d. 222) An ex-slave who became a bishop of Rome.
Hippolytus (d. 236) A rival and critic of Calixtus.

33. A Controversy within the Church
Calixtus permitted Christian women to marry their slaves, though
Roman law did not allow for this.
In order to avoid scandal several of these women appeared to have
used drugs and/or “bound themselves tightly” to expel the fetus.
According to Hippolytus Calixtus was responsible for what
Hippolytus considered homicide.

34. Council of Elvira (305)
Canon 53
Bishops (Western) excommunicated women who committed abortion
after adultery, for life.
They were not to be readmitted even at the point of death.

35. Council of Ancyra (314)
Canon 21
Bishops (Eastern) from Syria and Asia Minor denounced women
who…
“…slay what is generated and work to destroy it with abortifacients”.
Their time of penance was “reduced” to ten years.

36. Basil of Caesarea (d. 379)
Commenting of Exodus 21 he writes that…
“…the hairsplitting difference between formed
and unformed makes no difference to us.”
Then, “Whoever deliberately commits abortion
are subject to the penalty for homicide.”
Penance, according to Basil, was set along the standards of the
Council of Ancyra at ten years.

37. Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394)
But as man is one, the being consisting of soul and
body, we are to suppose that the beginning of his
existence is one, common to both parts, so that he
should not be found to be antecedent and posterior
to himself, if the bodily element were first in point
of time, and the other were a later addition; but we are to say that in
the power of God’s foreknowledge ... all the fullness of human nature
had pre-existence. (On the Making of Man)

38. Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394)
But as man is one, the being consisting of soul and
body, we are to suppose that the beginning of his
existence is one, common to both parts, so that he
should not be found to be antecedent and posterior
to himself, if the bodily clement were first in point
of time, and the other were a later addition; but we are to say that in
the power of God’s foreknowledge ... all the fullness of human nature
had pre-existence. (On the Making of Man)
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born
I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Jerimiah 1

39. Jerome (d. 420)
Jerome writing to Algaisa, a female correspondent, that…
… the “seed are gradually formed in the uterus, and it is not reputed
homicide until the scattered elements receive their appearance and
members.”

40. Jerome (d. 420)
Jerome also condemned the use of contraceptives and abortion.
Noting that at times women died when using the drugs he writes that
they go to a threefold judgment…
1) Condemned as adulteresses,
2) As killers of their own children,
3) As killers of themselves (suicide).

41. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430)
On Exodus 21
“…because the great question about the soul is not to be hastily
decided by unargued and rash judgment, the law does not provide that
the act pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet
be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks
sensation when it is not formed in flesh and so
not yet endowed with sense.”

42. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430)
“Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust comes to this that they
even procure poisons of sterility, and if these do not work, they
extinguish and destroy the fetus in some way in the womb, preferring
that their offspring die before it lives, or if it was already alive in the
womb, to kill it before if was born.
Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this,
they are not married, and if they were like this
from the beginning, they come together not
joined in matrimony but seduction.
If both are not like this, I dare to say that either
the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband,
or he is an adulterer with his own wife.”

43. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430)
Augustine recognizes three sinful acts against marriage.
1. Contraception
2. Killing the unformed fetus
3. Killing the formed fetus.

44. Summary: Both East and West
By the fourth century there was little debate (there was never much
debate). Abortion was clearly viewed as a sin.
1. As a violation of love for one’s neighbor (the child).
2. As a failure of marriage (to fulfill its purpose).
3. As a failure to reverence the work of God as Creator.
4. Abortion was viewed as a sin by all (delayed and immediate
ensoulment).

45. Ensoulment and the Quickening

46. Pope Stephen V (served 885-891)
"If he who destroys what is conceived in the womb by abortion is a
murderer, how much more is he unable to excuse himself of murder
who kills a child even one day old.”
Epistle to Archbishop of Mainz.

47. Pope Innocent III (1161-1216)
Early in the 13th century Innocent stated that the
soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of
"quickening" - when the woman first feels
movement of the fetus.
After ensoulment, abortion was equated with murder; before that
time, it was a less serious sin, because it terminated only potential
human life, not human life.

48. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
Ensoulment at 40 & 80 days.
There are stages of the soul.
Natural Law forbids all abortions.
Some Prochoice advocates point to Thomas for support.

49. Pope Sixtus V (1520-1590)
Sixtus issued a Papal bull "Effraenatam" in 1588 which threatened
those who carried out abortions at any stage of gestation with
excommunication and the death penalty.
Pope Gregory XIV (1535-1591)
Gregory revoked the above Papal bull shortly after taking office in
1591. He reinstated the "quickening" test, which he determined
happened 116 days (about 17 weeks) into pregnancy.

50. Quickening
Quickening is a term derived from the idea that at some particular
moment of pregnancy life is suddenly infused into the infant.

51. Quickening
“Life... begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to
stir in the mother's womb.
For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise,
killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth
in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child;
this, though not murder, was by the ancient law
homicide or manslaughter.
But at present it is not looked upon in quite so
atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous
misdemeanor.”
William Blackstone (d. 1780)_

52. Against the Law
When (and why) did abortion become illegal (USA)?

53. Against the Law
When (and why) did abortion become illegal (USA)?
Connecticut in 1821, criminalized the administration of poison or of
any "destructive substance" to induce a miscarriage. It applied only
to cases where the baby had "quickened."
Maine in 1840 became the first state to pass a law that expressly
protected all babies, "quick or not."

54. Against the Law
When (and why) did abortion become illegal (USA)?
The abandonment of the "quickening" requirement generally
coincided with the 19th century discovery of how conception takes
place.
The people were becoming aware that a new life begins when a
sperm enters an ovum.
It began with the medical profession.

56. Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903)
In 1886 Leo issued a decree prohibiting all
procedures that directly killed the fetus, even
if done to save the woman's life.
The tolerant approach to abortion which had
prevailed in the Roman Catholic Church for
previous centuries ended.
The church required excommunication for abortions at any stage of
pregnancy.

57. Roe vs Wade
1971-1973
In 1970, Jane Roe (a fictional name) filed a lawsuit against Henry
Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, challenging a
Texas law making abortion illegal except by a doctor’s orders to
save a woman’s life.
In her lawsuit, Roe alleged that the laws were unconstitutionally
vague and abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the
First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

58. Ancient Romans did not recognize individual human rights,
we now have that complication.

59. The Beginning of Life