So I heard this from a Christian source recently (nothing particularly out there or extreme) , various fairly uncontroversial statements about the early (i.e. pre-Constantine) Christian Church, that they had large numbers of women congregants and leaders, support among the poor and enslaved, and concentrated a lot feeding the poor and living communally. But also that they were against abortion.
This last one seems a bit fishy to me. Is there anything in either the historical record or religious writings to support that?
Abortion is of course never mentioned in the Bible. But I understand abortion was a thing in the roman world but never heard of it being something the early church was opposed to. Unlike infanticide, which was more prevalent in Roman culture than other neighboring cultures (including Judaism), and was definitely opposed by the church (and they were just conflating the two things in what I heard).
Keeping this GD, so not interested in the morality or the reasons a 21st Century christian might want to make this point erroneously, or even in discussing the reliability of what we know about the early church its writings (just would like to know if there is a tradition that the early church held this position, that predates the modern era, modern post-renaissance medicine, and “culture wars”).
As I understand it, for most of history, the notion was that the fetus gained life at the time of quickening, i.e., when the mother can feel the fetus moving, and that termination of a pregnancy before that point would not have been regarded as a moral issue. After that point, however, it would have been.
The Bible does say that when Mary (pregnant with Jesus) visited Elizabeth (pregnant with John the Baptist), the child within Elizabeth’s womb leapt with joy. This would have been at some point shortly after the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy.
Briefly, it was originally allowed in the first 40 days for males and 80-90 days for females. It was banned in 1588, but allowed again three years later. It was permanently banned in 1869.
In the early Roman Catholic church, abortion was permitted for male fetuses in the first 40 days of pregnancy and for female fetuses in the first 80-90 days. Not until 1588 did Pope Sixtus V declare all abortion murder, with excommunication as the punishment. Only 3 years later a new pope found the absolute sanction unworkable and again allowed early abortions. 300 years would pass before the Catholic church under Pius IX again declared all abortion murder.
That answers my follow up question, of when did the church come out unambiguously against abortion. Though that’s still a 1200 years after the period I am talking about.
How could they tell the sex of the fetus, that early in pregnancy? Or before birth at all, for that matter?
That is a very good question. Do you have to guess and then go to hell if you make the wrong choice? Or use the latest medeival gender detection techniques (I rubbed dung from an all white calf on my belly, and the calf died of dropsey, so it must be a girl!)
Back in those days? Abortion was a death sentence, everyone was against it, but other than some herbs (abortifacients, which were also very dangerous) it wasnt done. There is nothing in the Bible about it.
If you went digging around in there with those tools and no concept of germs, the woman wasnt gonna make it. AFAIK, surgery abortion wasnt common until much, much later.
This touches on another subject I’ve asked on the SD about. What could a pre-modern doctor treat. I mean given everything we know about germ theory you’d think anything remotely invasive would be a death sentence. But its clear from the documents we have the doctors fairly routinely did things that were quite invasive (including abortion), and stay in the job, which you’d think wouldn’t happen if the fatality rate was close to 100%.
Silphium. That was more of a contraceptive or possibly a morning after pill rather rather than a abortifacient I believe. Its also (apocryphally) may be the actual source of the “heart” symbol being the symbol for love.
Yes, abortifacients were somewhat popular but still dangerous: Silphium (also known as silphion , laserwort , or laser ) is an unidentified plant that was used in classical antiquity as a seasoning, perfume, aphrodisiac, and medicine.[1][2] It also was used as a contraceptive by ancient Greeks and Romans.[3] It was the essential item of trade from the ancient North African city of Cyrene, and was so critical to the Cyrenian economy that most of their coins bore a picture of the plant. The valuable product was the plant’s resin ( laser , laserpicium , or lasarpicium ).
Silphium was an important species in classical antiquity, as evidenced by the Egyptians and KnossosMinoans developing a specific glyph to represent the silphium plant.[4] It was used widely by most ancient Mediterranean cultures; the Romans who mentioned the plant in poems or songs, considered it “worth its weight in denarii” (silver coins), or even gold.[2] Legend said that it was a gift from the god Apollo.
The exact identity of silphium is unclear. It is commonly believed to be a now-extinct plant of the genusFerula ,[1] perhaps a variety of “giant fennel”. The still-extant plants Margotia gummifera [pt][5] and Ferula tingitana[6] have been suggested as other possibilities. Another plant, asafoetida, was used as a cheaper substitute for silphium, and had similar enough qualities that Romans, including the geographer Strabo, used the same word to describe both.[7]
They may have been guessing by calculating from when the first period was missed, but of course that is unreliable.
External genitalia don’t even appear before 90 days. So you couldn’t tell even from an aborted fetus. So a violation would be hard to prove with certainty.
Earlier than your time frame, but Numbers includes a ritual to perform on a woman accused by her husband of adultery that sure sounds a lot like an induced abortion to me:
I note that Orthodox Jews today tell me, “no, no, that was a death penalty for the woman”, but “make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to fall away” sure sounds like how a group of people who used “uncovered their nakedness” to mean “had sex with them” would describe an abortion.
So I’m pretty certain that abortion wasn’t considered to be ending a life in Biblical times. (Although it does constitute the sin of failing to be fruitful and multiply. And remember what happened to Onan. I’m sure intentional abortion of legitimate fetuses was frowned on.)
There also Exodus 21 (new JPS translation)
22When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. 23But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, 24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
which pretty clearly distinguishes what I think we’d call today a civil tort of inducing a miscarriage from the criminal offense of damaging an actual human being.
It’s hard to say whether the early Christians and their Jewish neighbors would have held the same opinion as the writer of that Biblical passage, but given that their gentile neighbors were still exposing babies (I think) my guess is they did.
So, Biblically, it looks like killing a fetus is a bad thing, but not as bad as breaking a man’s tooth. Does that count as being anti-abortion? It probably depends on your a priori bias.
The OP seems to think it “a bit fishy” that the early church would draw its support/membership disproportionately from women, etc and yet oppose abortion. I disagree; do we have any reason to think that, in the Roman world, women experienced the practice of abortion as liberating? It may well be that decisions about abortion were predominantly made by the same people who made decisions about exposing newborns, etc — men. Even in modern times abortion is used as tool of oppression - e.g. under China’s one-child policy, or in conjunction with sex slavery. So I wouldn’t project modern Western assumptions about abortion back to the Roman world.
I may be mistaken about this, but I think the Jewish tradition from which Christianity emerged was also, at the time, generally negative about abortion. If that’s correct, it would make early Christian opposition abortion less surprising.
The Didache has already been mentioned. As pointed out, the passage usually cited as an early Christian condemnation of abortion doesn’t actually use the word “abortion”. Nevertheless, I’ve always understood that the dominant scholarly opinion is that it is, indeed, a condemnation of abortion. Another early condemnation is to be found in the Epistle of Barnabas (composed between 70-132 CE); “Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor again shalt thou kill it when it is born”. I’ve seen several translations, all of which use the English word “abortion” but I don’t read Greek and it may be that other translations exist which do not. The Revelation of Peter (c. 150 CE) speaks very negatively of procuring an abortion. Clement of Alexandria, at the end of the second century, is also not keen on the practice. In 177 CE Athegenoras of Athens, in A Plea for the Christians, defends Christians against accusations of child murder by pointing to their notorious hostility to abortion, which suggests that opposition to abortion may have been a characteristic stance of Christianity, and recognised as such by non-Christians. Tertullian, in the early third century, mentions the unacceptability of abortion at several points in his writings.
We have numerous Christian writers in the first three centuries CE condemning abortion; do we have
any at all taking the opposite view? Genuine question.
I think it helps to bear in mind the distinction between (a) a condemnation of abortion, and (b) a condemnation of abortion as murder. All the discussion about ensoulment and quickening and so on may reflect a preoccupation with the point at which abortion is considered tantamount to murder. It doesn’t necessarily follow that abortion before that point was considered morally neutral or acceptable; it may still have been seen as wrong; just less gravely wrong than later abortion. Early abortion could, for instance, have been condemned in the same way and for the same reason as Onan spilling his seed on the ground was; an attempt to frustrate the divine plan for human growth and flourishing.