Christianity and abortion has a long and complex history. There is scholarly disagreement on how early Christians felt about abortion. Some scholars have concluded that early Christians took a nuanced stance on what is now called abortion, and that at different and in separate places early Christians have taken different stances."Abortion and Catholic Thought: The Little-Told History" Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood by Kristin Luker, University of California Press Other scholars have concluded that early Christians considered abortion a sin at all stages; though there is disagreement over their thoughts on what type of sin it wasAna S. Iltis, Mark J. Cherry, At the Roots of Christian Bioethics (M & M Scrivener Press 2010 ), p. 166J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Attitudes (InterVarsity Press 1982 ), p. 50Stem cells, human embryos and ethics: interdisciplinary perspectives: Lars Østnor, Springer 2008 and how grave a sin it was held to be.Robert Nisbet, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Harvard University Press 1982 ), p. 2 Some early Christians believed that the embryo did not have a soul from conception,McBrien, Richard P. The HarperCollins encyclopedia of CatholicismThe Oxford companion to Christian thought and consequently opinion was divided as to whether early abortion was murder or ethically equivalent to murder. Some early Christian texts nonetheless condemned abortion without distinction: Luker mentions the Didache, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Saint Basil. Early church councils punished women for abortions that were combined with other sexual crimes, as well as makers of abortifacient drugs, but, like some early Church Fathers such as Basil of Caesarea, did not make distinction between "formed" and "unformed" fetuses.M. Therese Lysaught, Joseph Kotva, Stephen E. Lammers, Allen Verhey, On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives on Medical Ethics (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing 2012 ), p. 676Michèle Goyens, Pieter de Leemans, An Smets, Science Translated: Latin and Vernacular Translations of Scientific Treatises in Medieval Europe (Leuven University Press 2008 ), p. 384, 399
While Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor held that human life already began at conception, Augustine of Hippo affirmed Aristotle's concepts of ensoulment occurring some time after conception, after which point abortion was to be considered homicide,The Janus face of prenatal diagnostics while still maintaining the condemnation of abortion at any time from conception onward.Daniel Schiff, Abortion in Judaism (Cambridge University Press 2002 ), p. 40 For most of Western European history, the consensus of Christian thinkers was ensoulment occurred around 40 days after conception.
Thomas Aquinas reiterated Aristotle's views of successive souls: vegetative, animal, and rational. This would be the Catholic Church's position until 1869, when the limitation of automatic excommunication to abortion of a formed fetus was removed, a change that has been interpreted as an implicit declaration that conception was the moment of ensoulment. Most early penitentials imposed equal penances for abortion whether early-term or late-term, but later penitentials in the Middle Ages normally distinguished between the two, imposing heavier penances for late-term abortions and a less severe penance was imposed for the sin of abortion "before [the foetus] has life".See for instance Michèle Goyens, Pieter de Leemans, An Smets (editors), Science Translated: Latin and Vernacular Translations of Scientific Treatises in Medieval Europe (Leuven University Press 2008 ), pp. 390-396 Patrick J. Geary, Readings in Medieval History (University of Toronto Press 2010 ), Vol. 1, p. 255. Karin E. Olsen, Antonina Harbus, Tette Hofstra, Germanic Texts and Latin Models (Peeters 2001 ), pp. 84-85 and John Thomas McNeill, Helena M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance (Hippocrene Books 1965 )
Contemporary Christian denominations have nuanced positions, thoughts and teachings about abortion, especially in extenuating circumstances."Religious Groups' Official Positions on Abortion" Pew Forum"Where does God stand on abortion?" USA Today The Catholic Church,The Catholic Teaching on Abortion, Allocution to Large Families, Nov. 26, 1951, Pope Pius XII the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and most evangelical Protestants oppose deliberate abortion as immoral, while allowing what is sometimes called indirect abortion, namely, an action that does not seek the death of the fetus as an end or a means but that is followed by the death as a side effect.Christopher Robert Kaczor, The Ethics of Abortion (Taylor & Francis 2010 ), p. 187 Some mainline Protestant denominations such as the Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, among others, are more permissive of abortion. The Waldensian Evangelical Church has also favored the legal right to an abortion. More generally, some Christian denominations can be considered opposed to abortion while others may be considered in favor of abortion rights.
Influences
Both ancient Greek thought and ancient Jewish thought are considered to have affected early Christian thought about abortion. According to Bakke and Clarke &Linzey, early Christians adhered to Aristotle's belief in delayed ensoulment, and consequently did not see abortion before ensoulment as homicide. Lars Østnor says this view was only "presaged" by Augustine, who belongs to a period later than that of early Christianity. According to David Albert Jones, this distinction appeared among Christian writers only in the late fourth and early fifth century, while the earlier writers made no distinction between formed and unformed, a distinction explicitly rejected by 4th-century Saint Basil of Caesarea,David Albert Jones, Soul of the Embryo: Christianity and the Human Embryo (Continuum International 2004 ), pp. 72-73 who also, though earlier than Saint Augustine, does not belong to the early-Christianity period. While the Hebrew text of the Bible only required a fine for the loss of a fetus, whatever its stage of development, the Jewish Septuagint translation, which the early Christians used, introduced a distinction between a formed and an unformed fetus and treated destruction of the former as murder.Daniel Schiff, Abortion in Judaism (Cambridge University Press 2002 ), pp. 9, 24 It has been commented that "the LXX could easily have been used to distinguish human from non-human fetuses and homicidal from non-homicidal abortions, yet the early Christians, until the time of Augustine in the fifth century, did not do so."Paul T. Stallsworth, Ruth S. Brown (editors), The Church & Abortion (Abingdon Press 1993 ), p. 42
The view of early Christians on the moment of ensoulment is also said to have been not the Aristotelian, but the Pythagorean:
Scholars generally agree that abortion was performed in the classical world, but there is disagreement about the frequency with which abortion was performed and which cultures influenced early Christian thought on abortion.A companion to bioethics By Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer Some writers point to the Hippocratic Oath as evidence that condemnation of abortion was not a novelty introduced by the early Christians. Some writers state that there is evidence that some early Christians believed, as the Greeks did, in delayed ensoulment, or that a fetus does not have a soul until quickening, and therefore early abortion was not murder; Luker says there was disagreement on whether early abortion was wrong. Other writers say that early Christians considered abortion a sin even before ensoulment.Evelyn B. Kelly, Stem Cells (Greenwood Press 2007 ), p. 86 According to some, the magnitude of the sin was, for the early Christians, on a level with general sexual immorality or other lapses; according to others, they saw it as "an evil no less severe and social than oppression of the poor and needy".Michael J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Attitudes (InterVarsity Press 1982 ), p. 50 The society in which Christianity expanded was one in which abortion, infanticide and exposition were commonly used to limit the number of children (especially girls) that a family had to support.Jane F. Gardner and Thomas Wiedemann, The Roman Household: A Sourcebook (Routledge 1991 ), p. 98Paul Carrick, Medical Ethics in the Ancient World (Georgetown University Press 2001 ), p. 123 These methods were often used also when a pregnancy or birth resulted from sexual licentiousness, including marital infidelity, prostitution and incest, and Bakke holds that these contexts cannot be separated from abortion in early Christianity. Johannes M. Röskamp agrees that one reason for Christian disapproval of abortion was that it was linked with attempts to conceal adultery, but stresses that the main reason was the "all new concept" of concern for the fetus,Johannes M. Röskamp, Christian Perspectives On Abortion-Legislation In Past And Present (GRIN Verlag 2005 )which, Michael J. Gorman declares, "distinguishes the Christian position from all pagan disapproval of abortion".Michael J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World (WIPF & Stock Publishers 1998 ), p. 77
Early Christianity
Early Christian thought on abortion is interpreted in different ways. At different times, early Christians held different beliefs about abortion, while yet considering it a grievous sin.D'Antonio, Laity, American and Catholic (Rowman & Littlefield 1996), p. 58Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality (Collier-Macmillan 1970), p. 410Kelly, Stem Cells (Greenwood Press 2007 ), p. 86
The earliest Christian texts on abortion condemn it with "no mention of any distinction in seriousness between the abortion of a formed foetus and that of an unformed embryo".David Albert Jones, The Soul of the Embryo (Continuum International 2004 ), p. 57
According to sociologist Kristin Luker: After the beginning of the Christian era... legal regulation of abortion as existed in the Roman Empire was designed primarily to protect the rights of fathers rather than rights of embryos....induced abortion is ignored in the most central Judeo-Christian writings: it was not mentioned in the Christian or the Jewish Bible, or in the Jewish Mishnah or Talmud. Abortion, it is true, was denounced in early Christian writings such as the Didache and by early Christian authors such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and St. Basil. But church councils, such as those of Elvira and Ancyra, which were called to specify the legal groundwork for Christian communities, outlined penalties only for those women who committed abortion after a sexual crime such as adultery or prostitution. Most importantly, perhaps, from the third century A.D. onward, Christian thought was divided as to whether early abortion – the abortion of an "unformed" embryo – was in fact murder. Different sources of church teachings and laws simply did not agree on the penalties for abortion or on whether early abortion is wrong.