Figure 9-2

Early Pronouncements of the Catholic Church Against Abortion

       "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."
—  The Didache ("The Lord's Instruction to the Gentiles through the
     Twelve Apostles"). II, 2, translated by J.A. Kleist, S.J., Ancient
     Christian Writers, Volume 6. Westminster, 1948, page 16.

       "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).

       "The way of light, then, is as follows. If any one 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."
— Barnabas (c. 70-138), Epistle, Volume II, page 19.

       "For us [Christians], murder is once and for all forbidden; so even the child in the womb, while yet the mother's blood is still being drawn on to form the human being, it is not lawful for us to destroy. To forbid birth is only quicker murder. It makes no difference whether one takes away the life once born or destroys it as it comes to birth. He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed."
— Tertullian, 197, Apologeticus, page 9.

       "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."
— Athenagoras of Athens, letter to Marcus Aurelius in 177, Legatio
     pro Christianis ("Supplication for the Christians"), page 35.

       "It is among you that I see newly-begotten sons at times exposed to wild beasts and birds, or dispatched by the violent death of strangulation; and there are women who, by the use of medicinal potions, destroy the unborn life in their wombs, and murder the child before they bring it forth. These practices undoubtedly are derived from a custom established by your gods; Saturn, though he did not expose his sons, certainly devoured them."
— Minucius Felix, theologian (c. 200-225), Octavius, p. 30.

       "... if we would not kill off the human race born and developing according to God's plan, then our whole lives would be lived according to nature. Women who make use of some sort of deadly abortion drug kill not only the embryo but, together with it, all human kindness."
— Clement of Alexandria, priest and the "Father of Theologians"
     (c. 150-220), Christ the Educator, Volume II, page 10. Also see
     Octavius, c.30, nn. 2-3.

       "Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust goes so far as to seek to procure a baneful sterility, and if this fails the fetus conceived in the womb is in one way or another smothered or evacuated, in the desire to destroy the offspring before it has life, or if it already lives in the womb, to kill it before it is born. If both man and woman are party to such practices they are not spouses at all; and if from the first they have carried on thus they have come together not for honest wedlock, but for impure gratification; if both are not party to these deeds, I make bold to say that either the one makes herself a mistress of the husband, or the other simply the paramour of his wife."
— St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), De Nuptius et Concupiscus
     ("On Marriage and Concupiscence"), 1.17.

       "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."
— St. Jerome, Bible Scholar and translator (c. 340-420), Letter to
     Eustochium, 22.13.

       "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!"
— Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies (A.D. 228).

       "When God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but he warns us against the commission of those things which are esteemed lawful among men ... Therefore, let no one imagine that even this is allowed, to strangle newly-born children, which is the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for life, and not for death. But men, that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their hands, deprive [unborn] souls as yet innocent and simple of the light which they themselves have not given.
       "Can anyone, indeed, expect that they would abstain from the blood of others who do not abstain even from their own? But these are, without any controversy, wicked and unjust."
— Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6:20 (A.D. 307).

       "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 die upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees."
       "The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide. ... Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years' penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not."
— St. Basil the Great, priest (c. 329-379), First Canonical Letter, from the work Three Canonical Letters. Canons 2 and 8. Loeb Classical Library, Volume III, pages 20 to 23.

       "Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication ... Why sow where the ground makes 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."
— St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 24 (A.D. 391).

       "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. ..."
       "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, theologian (150-225), Treatise on the Soul, pages 25 and 27.

       "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."
— Council of Ancyracanon 21, (A.D. 314).

       "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; for "everything that is shaped, and has received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed."
—  The Apostolic Constitutions 7:3 (A.D. 400).

       "Those who give drugs for procuring abortion, and those who receive poisons to kill the foetus, are subjected to the penalty for murder."
— Trullian (Quinisext) Council (692), Canons, 91.

Summary of the Most Significant
Early Church Teachings Against Abortion

• The Apocalypse of Peter.

• Hippolytus, Bishop of Pontius and theologian (died 236), Refutation of All Heresies, 9.7.

• Origen, theologian of Alexandria (185-254), Against Heresies, page 9.

• Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (c. 200-258), Letters, page 48.

• Methodius, Bishop of Olympus (died 311).

• Council of Elvira in Granada, Spain (305), Canons, 63 and 68.

• Council of Ancyra in Galatia, Asia Minor (314), Canon, 21.

• Ephraem the Syrian, theologian (306-373), De Timore Dei, page 10.

• Ephipanius, Bishop of Salamis (c. 315-403).

• St. Basil the Great, priest (c. 329-379), Letters, 188.2, 8.

• St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (c. 339-397), Hexameron, 5.18.58.

• Apostolic Constitutions (late Fourth Century)

• St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), Enchiridion, page 86.

• St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople (c. 347-407), Homily 24 ("On The Book of Romans")

• St. Jerome (died in 420)

• Council of Chalcedon (451)

• Caesarius, Bishop of Arles (470-543), Sermons, 1.12.

• Council of Lerida (524).

• Second Council of Braga (527), Canons, 77.

• St. Martin of Braga (580)

• Consillium Quinisextum (692).

Figure 9-2

Early Pronouncements of the Catholic Church Against Abortion

       "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."
—  The Didache ("The Lord's Instruction to the Gentiles through the
     Twelve Apostles"). II, 2, translated by J.A. Kleist, S.J., Ancient
     Christian Writers, Volume 6. Westminster, 1948, page 16.

       "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).

       "The way of light, then, is as follows. If any one 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."
— Barnabas (c. 70-138), Epistle, Volume II, page 19.

       "For us [Christians], murder is once and for all forbidden; so even the child in the womb, while yet the mother's blood is still being drawn on to form the human being, it is not lawful for us to destroy. To forbid birth is only quicker murder. It makes no difference whether one takes away the life once born or destroys it as it comes to birth. He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed."
— Tertullian, 197, Apologeticus, page 9.

       "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."
— Athenagoras of Athens, letter to Marcus Aurelius in 177, Legatio
     pro Christianis ("Supplication for the Christians"), page 35.

       "It is among you that I see newly-begotten sons at times exposed to wild beasts and birds, or dispatched by the violent death of strangulation; and there are women who, by the use of medicinal potions, destroy the unborn life in their wombs, and murder the child before they bring it forth. These practices undoubtedly are derived from a custom established by your gods; Saturn, though he did not expose his sons, certainly devoured them."
— Minucius Felix, theologian (c. 200-225), Octavius, p. 30.

       "... if we would not kill off the human race born and developing according to God's plan, then our whole lives would be lived according to nature. Women who make use of some sort of deadly abortion drug kill not only the embryo but, together with it, all human kindness."
— Clement of Alexandria, priest and the "Father of Theologians"
     (c. 150-220), Christ the Educator, Volume II, page 10. Also see
     Octavius, c.30, nn. 2-3.

       "Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust goes so far as to seek to procure a baneful sterility, and if this fails the fetus conceived in the womb is in one way or another smothered or evacuated, in the desire to destroy the offspring before it has life, or if it already lives in the womb, to kill it before it is born. If both man and woman are party to such practices they are not spouses at all; and if from the first they have carried on thus they have come together not for honest wedlock, but for impure gratification; if both are not party to these deeds, I make bold to say that either the one makes herself a mistress of the husband, or the other simply the paramour of his wife."
— St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), De Nuptius et Concupiscus
     ("On Marriage and Concupiscence"), 1.17.

       "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."
— St. Jerome, Bible Scholar and translator (c. 340-420), Letter to
     Eustochium, 22.13.

       "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!"
— Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies (A.D. 228).

       "When God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but he warns us against the commission of those things which are esteemed lawful among men ... Therefore, let no one imagine that even this is allowed, to strangle newly-born children, which is the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for life, and not for death. But men, that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their hands, deprive [unborn] souls as yet innocent and simple of the light which they themselves have not given.
       "Can anyone, indeed, expect that they would abstain from the blood of others who do not abstain even from their own? But these are, without any controversy, wicked and unjust."
— Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6:20 (A.D. 307).

       "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 die upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees."
       "The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide. ... Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years' penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not."
— St. Basil the Great, priest (c. 329-379), First Canonical Letter, from the work Three Canonical Letters. Canons 2 and 8. Loeb Classical Library, Volume III, pages 20 to 23.

       "Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication ... Why sow where the ground makes 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."
— St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 24 (A.D. 391).

       "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. ..."
       "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, theologian (150-225), Treatise on the Soul, pages 25 and 27.

       "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."
— Council of Ancyracanon 21, (A.D. 314).

       "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; for "everything that is shaped, and has received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed."
—  The Apostolic Constitutions 7:3 (A.D. 400).

       "Those who give drugs for procuring abortion, and those who receive poisons to kill the foetus, are subjected to the penalty for murder."
— Trullian (Quinisext) Council (692), Canons, 91.

Summary of the Most Significant
Early Church Teachings Against Abortion

• The Apocalypse of Peter.

• Hippolytus, Bishop of Pontius and theologian (died 236), Refutation of All Heresies, 9.7.

• Origen, theologian of Alexandria (185-254), Against Heresies, page 9.

• Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (c. 200-258), Letters, page 48.

• Methodius, Bishop of Olympus (died 311).

• Council of Elvira in Granada, Spain (305), Canons, 63 and 68.

• Council of Ancyra in Galatia, Asia Minor (314), Canon, 21.

• Ephraem the Syrian, theologian (306-373), De Timore Dei, page 10.

• Ephipanius, Bishop of Salamis (c. 315-403).

• St. Basil the Great, priest (c. 329-379), Letters, 188.2, 8.

• St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (c. 339-397), Hexameron, 5.18.58.

• Apostolic Constitutions (late Fourth Century)

• St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), Enchiridion, page 86.

• St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople (c. 347-407), Homily 24 ("On The Book of Romans")

• St. Jerome (died in 420)

• Council of Chalcedon (451)

• Caesarius, Bishop of Arles (470-543), Sermons, 1.12.

• Council of Lerida (524).

• Second Council of Braga (527), Canons, 77.

• St. Martin of Braga (580)

• Consillium Quinisextum (692).