History of Christian thought on abortion

See also: History, Abortion, Christianity, Christian, Religion and abortion, and Christianity and abortion

Early Christian thought on abortion was varied. There is no mention of abortion in the Christian Bible, and at different times Early Christians held different beliefs about abortion.

1st Century AD and the Classical World

See also: Christianity in the 1st century

Abortion was widely performed in the classical world, but there is disagreement about the frequency with which abortion was performed in the general population, and which cultures were most influential on the beliefs of early Christian scholars. It is widely held that Greeks (see also Hellenization) influenced early Christian ideas about abortion in the 1st Century AD. Important Greek scholars such as Aristotle believed a fetus in early gestation has the soul of a vegetable, and only later in gestation does the soul become "animated" as the result of "ensoulment." For the Greeks, ensoulment occurred 40 days after conception for male fetuses and 90 days after conception for female fetuses. Consequently, abortion was not condemned among the Greeks if performed early. There is evidence that some very early Christians believed in delayed ensoulment.

Classics scholars such as Suzanne Dixon, a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland, writes that abortion was a threat to traditional power structures in the classical Roman world. A husband had power over his wife, her body, and their children. She explains that writings from the classical world portray abortion as expressions of an ideological agenda where men maintain or reestablish patterns of power between the sexes, not as information about historical realities. However, theologian Odd Bakke argues that Christians in the 1st Century AD were more notably influenced by Jewish ideas on the subject of abortion and that Jewish discussion generally centered around two schools of thought. Bakke writes that only one school of thought was based in Greek or Roman thought:

The Alexandrian school, with a minority in the Palestinian school, held that the fetus acquired the juridical status of a human person at one particular point in time, while the Palestinian majority held that the fetus and the mother were one, so that the fetus on its own had no legal existence. The latter point of view entailed that abortion was allowed, or indeed even demanded, in certain situations. We must, however, emphasize that the Palestinian school discussed abortion almost exclusively in relation to "the problem of the legal and cultic status of the fetus, especially in relation to miscarriages and certain necessary (and usually late) abortions. Abortions in the early stages of pregnancy, 'on demand' or as a means of birth control 'is very likely not even contemplated in the Mishnaic law.'"

Bakke goes on to write that other Jewish thought did not "envisage abortion as a possible means of limiting the number of one's children." Rather, abortion was discussed in a "juridical context." He notes that only in Exodus does the Bible discuss what the punishment should be to a man who strikes a woman so that she miscarries.

2nd century AD to 4th century AD

See also: Christianity in the 2nd century, Christianity in the 3rd century, and Christianity in the 4th century

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. 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.

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.

While Luker thus holds that early Christians were uncertain whether abortion was wrong, Robert Nisbet and Michael J. Gorman state that they declared abortion (according to Evelyn B. Kelly, even before ensoulment) a sin, either on a level with general sexual immorality or as "an evil no less severe and social than oppression of the poor and needy".

In the late 1st century or early 2nd century, the Didache explicitly condemned abortion, as did the Apocalypse of Peter in the 2nd century. The early 4th-century Synod of Elvira imposed denial of communion even at the point of death on those who committed the "double crime" of adultery and subsequent abortion, and the Synod of Ancyra imposed ten years of exclusion from communion on manufacturers of abortion drugs and on women aborting what they conceived by fornication (previously, such women and the makers of drugs for abortion were excluded until on the point of death), and Basil the Great (330-379) imposed the same ten-year exclusion on any woman who purposely destroyed her unborn child, even if unformed.

For other early Christian declarations on abortion, see Wikiquote.

4th to 16th century

See also: First seven Ecumenical Councils

From the 4th to 16th century, Christian philosophers had varying stances on abortion. Under the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I, there was a relaxation of attitudes toward abortion. Bakke writes, "Since an increasing number of Christian parents were poor and found it difficult to look after their children, the theologians were forced to take into account this situation and reflect anew on the question. This made is possible to take a more tolerant attitude toward poor people who exposed their children." Augustine of Hippo believed that an early abortion is not murder because the soul of a fetus at an early stage is not present. Augustine reversed earlier Christian teaching by returning to the Aristotelian concept of "delayed ensoulment." This belief passed into canon law. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Innocent III, and Pope Gregory XIV also believed that a fetus does not have a soul until "quickening," or when the fetus begins to kick and move, and therefore abortion was not murder. Abortion was considered murder by Aquinas after quickening. Pope Stephen V and Pope Sixtus V opposed abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

See also

• Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance a scholarly work by John Riddle. Published by Harvard University Press.
• Eve's Herbs, a scholarly work by John Riddle. Published by Harvard University Press.
• Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World a scholarly work by Merry E. Wiesner. Published by Routledge.