The official teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992 oppose all forms of abortion procedures whose direct purpose is to destroy a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus, since it holds that "human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life". However, the Church does recognize as morally legitimate certain acts which indirectly result in the death of the fetus, as when the direct purpose is removal of a cancerous womb. Canon 1397 §2 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law imposes automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication on Latin Catholics who actually procure an abortion, if they fulfill the conditions for being subject to such a sanction. Eastern Catholics are not subject to automatic excommunication, but by canon 1450 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches they are to be excommunicated by decree if found guilty of the same action, and they may be absolved of the sin only by the eparchial bishop. In addition to teaching that abortion is immoral, the Catholic Church also generally makes public statements and takes actions in opposition to its legality.
Many Catholics hold views on abortion that differ from the official position of the Catholic Church. Views range from anti-abortion positions that allow some exceptions to positions that accept the general legality and morality of abortion. There is a correlation between Mass attendance and agreement with the official teaching of the Church on the issue; that is, frequent Mass-goers are far more likely to be anti-abortion, while those who attend less often (or rarely or never) are more likely to be in favor of abortion rights under certain circumstances.
Early writings
According to Respect For Unborn Human Life: The Church's Constant Teaching, a document released by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities, the Catholic Church has condemned procured abortion as immoral since the 1st century.
John R. Connery writes that early Christian writings rejecting abortion are the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the works of early writers such as Tertullian, Athenagoras of Athens,Frank K. Flinn, J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of Catholicism (Facts on File Encyclopedia of World Religions 2007 ), p. 4 Clement of Alexandria and Basil of Caesarea.Kristin, Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (University of California Press 1985 ), p. 12 The earliest Church legislation did not make a distinction between "formed" and "unformed" fetuses, as was done in the Greek Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22-23; this position can be found in the writing of early Church Fathers such as Basil of Caesarea and early Church council canons (Elvira, Ancyra).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
In the 4th and 5th centuries, some writers such as Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor held that human life already began at conception, others such as Lactantius – following Aristotle's view – spoke rather of the soul that was "infused" in the body after forty days or more, and those such as Jerome and Augustine of Hippo left the mystery of the timing of the infusion to God.
Augustine of Hippo "vigorously condemned the practice of induced abortion" as a crime, in any stage of pregnancy, although he accepted the distinction between "formed" and "unformed" fetuses mentioned in the Septuagint translation of Exodus 21:22-23, and did not classify as murder the abortion of an "unformed" fetus since he thought that it could not be said with certainty whether the fetus had already received a soul. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops considers Augustine's reflections on abortion to be of little value in the present day because of the limitations of the science of embryology at that time.
Later writers such as John Chrysostom and Caesarius of Arles, as well as later Church councils (e.g. Lerida and Braga II), also condemned abortion as "gravely wrong", without making a distinction between "formed" and "unformed" fetuses nor defining precisely in what stage of pregnancy human life began.
Some theologians, such as John Chrysostom and Thomas Sanchez, believed that post-quickening abortion was less sinful than deliberate contraception,Angus McLaren, A History of Contraception from Antiquity to the Present Day, Basil Blackwell, 1990.Peter Biller, The Measure of Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought, Oxford University Press, 2000. and Chrysostom believed that contraception was worse than murder.John Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, Harvard University Press, 1965 (2nd edition 1986).
As Koblitz writes,Ann Hibner Koblitz, Sex and Herbs and Birth Control: Women and Fertility Regulation Through the Ages, Kovalevskaia Fund, 2014.
Belief in delayed animation
Following Aristotle's view, it was commonly held by such leading Catholic thinkers in early Church history as Jerome and Augustine that a human being did not come into existence as such immediately on conception, but only some weeks later. Abortion was viewed as a sin, but not as murder, until the embryo was animated by a human soul.David L. Hull, Michael Ruse (editors), The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge University Press 2007 ), p. 328 In On Virginal Conception and Original Sin 7, Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) said that "no human intellect accepts the view that an infant has the rational soul from the moment of conception". A few decades after Anselm's death, a Catholic collection of canon law, in the Decretum Gratiani, stated that "he is not a murderer who brings about abortion before the soul is in the body".
Even when Church law, in line with the theory of delayed ensoulment, assigned different penalties to earlier and later abortions, abortion at any stage was considered a grave evil by some commentators. Thus Thomas Aquinas, who accepted the Aristotelian theory that a human soul was infused only after 40 days for a male fetus, 90 days for a female, saw abortion of an unsouled fetus as always unethical,David Albert Jones, Soul of the Embryo (Continuum International 2004 ), p. 221 a serious crime,S. C Selner-Wright, On Creation: Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei, Q. 3 (CUA Press 2010 ), p. xiv a grave sin, a misdeed and contrary to nature. He wrote: "This sin, although grave and to be reckoned among misdeeds and against nature [...] is something less than homicide [...] nor is such to be judged irregular unless one procures the abortion of an already formed fetus".William Petersen, From Persons to People (Transaction Publishers 2002 ), p. 114William B. Smith, Donals Haggerty, Modern Moral Problems (Ignatius Press 2012 ), p. 19
Juridical consequences
Most early penitentials imposed equal penances for abortion whether early-term or late-term, but others distinguished between the two. Later penitentials normally distinguished, imposing heavier penances for late-term abortions.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 By comparison, anal and oral sex were treated much more harshly, as was intentional homicide.
Although the Decretum Gratiani, which remained the basis of Catholic canon law until replaced by the 1917 Code of Canon Law, distinguished between early-term and late-term abortions, that canonical distinction was abolished for a period of three years by the bull of Pope Sixtus V, Effraenatam, of 28 October 1588. This decreed various penalties against perpetrators of all forms of abortion without distinction. Calling abortion murder, it decreed that those who procured the abortion of a fetus, "whether animated or unanimated, formed or unformed" should suffer the same punishments as "true murderers and assassins who have actually and really committed murder". As well as decreeing those punishments for subjects of the Papal States, whose civil ruler he was, Pope Sixtus also inflicted on perpetrators the spiritual punishment of automatic excommunication (section 7). According to Riddle, "The bull had a lifetime of about two-and-a-half years and was weak in influence. The succeeding pope countered it and returned to the traditional position that contraception was a sin and abortion a crime, but that abortion could not occur until after the fortieth day, when the fetus was ensouled".John M. Riddle, Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West, Harvard University Press, 1997.
Sixtus's successor, Pope Gregory XIV, recognizing that the law was not producing the hoped-for effects, withdrew it in 1591 by publishing new regulations in the apostolic constitution Sedes Apostolica (published on 31 May 1591), limiting the punishments to abortion of a "formed" fetus:Nicholas Terpstra, Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins University Press 2010 ), p. 91 "When abortion was neither 'an issue of homicide or of an animate fetus,' Gregory thought it 'more useful' to return to the less-harsh penalties [for early abortion] of the holy canons and profane laws: those who abort an inanimatus [soulless] will not be guilty of true homicide because they have not killed a human being in actuality; clerics involved in abortions will have committed mortal sin but will not incur irregularity". After 1591, Gregory's Sedes apostolica "remained in effect for almost three centuries, being revised only in 1869 by Pius IX".
With his 1869 bull Apostolicae Sedis moderationi, Pope Pius IX rescinded Gregory XIV's not-yet-animated fetus exception with regard to the spiritual penalty of excommunication, declaring that those who procured an effective abortion incurred excommunication reserved to bishops or ordinaries."Excommunicationi latae sententiae Episcopis sive Ordinariis reservatae subiacere declaramus: ... 2. Procurantes abortum, effectu sequuto" ( , p. 317) From then on this penalty was incurred automatically through abortion at any stage of pregnancy. An excerpt can be found here.
The 1917 Code of Canon Law codified Pius IX's bull.
Discussions about possible justifying circumstances
In the Middle Ages, many Church commentators condemned all abortions, but the 14th-century Dominican John of Naples is reported to have been the first to make an explicit statement that if the purpose was to save the mother's life abortion was actually permitted, provided that ensoulment had not been attained. This view met both support and rejection from other theologians. In the 16th century, while Thomas Sanchez accepted it, Antoninus de Corbuba made the distinction that from then on became generally accepted among Catholic theologians, namely that direct killing of the fetus was unacceptable, but that treatment to cure the mother should be given even if it would indirectly result in the death of the fetus.
When, in the 17th century, Francis Torreblanca approved abortions aimed merely at saving a woman's good name, the Holy Office (what is now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith), at that time headed by Pope Innocent XI, condemned the proposition that "it is lawful to procure abortion before ensoulment of the fetus lest a girl, detected as pregnant, be killed or defamed".