# Was the early Christian Church against abortion? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 8, 2021, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482 "2021-03-08T22:49:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/41 "2021-03-09T18:34:09Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Briefly, it was originally allowed in the first 40 days for males and 80-90 days for females. 🤨   And how exactly did they determine the gender of the fetus before deciding whether abortion was allowed or not? I’d like to see some cites for that statement. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/42 "2021-03-09T18:42:16Z")
They’re in the article. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/43 "2021-03-09T18:45:09Z")
Maybe in the article, but you linked to the _abstract_, and as i pointed out earlier, there are no cites in the abstract. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2021, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/44 "2021-03-09T18:55:05Z")
From [Encyclopedia.com](http://Encyclopedia.com): **[Abortion: III. Religious Traditions: B. Roman Catholic Perspectives](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/abortion-iii-religious-traditions-b-roman-catholic-perspectives)** > Contraceptive and abortifacient drugs, as well as infanticide, were certainly used widely in the ancient world, not only to conceal sexual crimes but also to limit family size and conserve property. Early Christian authors such as Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine in the Western church, and Clement of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and Basil in the Eastern church, repudiated these practices. … > > Local councils tended to support this stand. In 303 c.e., on the Iberian Peninsula, the Council of Elvira excluded from the church for the rest of her life any woman who had obtained an abortion after adultery. In 314, the Eastern church, at the Council of Ancyra (Ankara), reduced the period of penance to ten years, although it retained the lifetime ban for voluntary homicide. > > Such church laws made no distinction between the formed and the unformed fetus, but Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine considered that the sin of abortion might not be homicide until after ensoulment. (The fetus was considered by many ancient writers to receive a soul only after the body had “formed,” or reached an appropriate level of development, at about three months.) ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/45 "2021-03-10T00:57:54Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Quite possibly, yes, but remember, the early Christian leaders all decided that the Didache was bogus and not part of canon. Same with The Revelation of Peter (c. 150 CE). > [@DrDeth](#): > > Remember guys, note that of all those early Christian writings that condemn or seem to condemn abortion - none of them made it into canon. > > If the early church was so dead set against abortion, why not include one of them? Because the test for canonicity was not “does it condemn the things we want condemned?”, and “not canonical” is not at all the same thing as “bogus”. Lots of writings from the patristic period were (and still are) venerated and respected without being accepted as canonical. Debates about canonicity tended to focus primarily on whether there was a good case that the text in question was authored by an apostle, or by someone close to an apostle. The Didache makes no claim to apostolic authorship; it just claims to be a compendium of what the twelve apostles taught. But it is close in many ways to the Gospel of Matthew — hence the debates about canonicity. I’m open to correction here, but I don’t think any of the contemporary comments about its canonicity or non-canonicity that we have argue that it’s uncanonical because its teachings are unsound or novel. > [@DrDeth](#): > > Of course Roman law was anti-abortion for safety reasons- among others. So perhaps the early Church saw no reason to include it. I don’t think Roman Law was anti-abortion until the third century, when penalties were introduced on the grounds that abortion was a violation of the father’s right to dispose of his offspring. And so far as I know the dominant philosophical schools in the Roman world generally didn’t regard abortion as unethical. It was risky, as already pointed out, and therefore shouldn’t be undertaken without a sufficiently compelling reason, but it wasn’t inherently immoral. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/46 "2021-03-10T01:13:07Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Remember guys, note that of all those early Christian writings that condemn or seem to condemn abortion - none of them made it into canon. > > If the early church was so dead set against abortion, why not include one of them? I should point out the OP was explicitly talking about the early (pre-Constantine) church, not the Biblical canon. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/47 "2021-03-10T01:50:29Z")
> [@UDS1](#): > > You say that you “don’t know of any ancient society that attempted such hazardous procedures on fertile young women against their will”, but further up the page puzzlegal discusses a case of a female slave made pregnant by her master who wishes an abortion to be performed but is frustrated by circumstances and by the rules about when abortions can and cannot be performed Oh okay, if you’re referring to the Islamic world, which puzzlegal remembers as the source of that account, as an “ancient society”. I’m not sure ancient Rome and medieval Islam are all that comparable, but they are both definitely pre-modern. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/48 "2021-03-10T01:57:45Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > And how exactly did they determine the gender of the fetus before deciding whether abortion was allowed or not? I don’t know what specific procedures the people referred to in RealityChuck’s linked article used for such “determination”. But remember that from antiquity all the way up to the seventeenth century or so (and even to the present day in more informal folk practices), there have been lots of astrological and other divinatory techniques by which people thought they could determine the sex of a fetus, even if none of them could meet modern standards of scientific validity. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/49 "2021-03-10T03:19:24Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Note that we were cited there, but I cant find it: [_Did the ancient Romans use a natural herb for birth control?_](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061013.html), [The Straight Dope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Straight_Dope), October 13, 2006 Per the Glory of the Wayback machine - > **[The Straight Dope: Did the ancient Romans use a natural herb for birth control?](https://web.archive.org/web/20061027173019/http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061013.html)** > > The Straight Dope: Did the ancient Romans use a natural herb for birth control? While I don’t want to copy/paste the whole link, the section that most pertains to the OP’s question would be > Demographic studies suggest that the Roman world should have had a population explosion due to a low disease rate, plentiful food, and relatively few civilian war deaths. Some have seized on the fact that it didn’t as evidence that people of the era had access to effective birth control. Although silphium is no longer around, modern studies of the closely related plant asafetida show a 50 percent success rate in preventing implantation of fertilized eggs in rats, and it’s nearly 100 percent effective when fed to them within three days of mating. Likewise, studies of wild carrot have shown that it blocks production of progesterone, necessary for the uterus lining to maintain the fetus. The seeds of Queen Anne’s lace are still used as a birth control method today. Plausible as all this sounds, one can’t help raising a few objections, the most obvious being that positing a successful, society-wide planned-parenthood program that endured for centuries on the basis of a few rat experiments is a mighty long leap. So Cecil doesn’t really comment on the social issue of abortion, and the rest of the article is similar to what we’ve already discussed. ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/50 "2021-03-10T04:31:43Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Oh okay, if you’re referring to the Islamic world, which puzzlegal remembers as the source of that account, as an “ancient society”. I’m not sure ancient Rome and medieval Islam are all that comparable, but they are both definitely pre-modern. I didn’t make myself clear, which is my fault, but my thinking is that if a female slave could be treated this way in the medieval world, it seems reasonable to infer that she could have been treated in a similar way in the ancient world. Kimstu’s suggestion that in the ancient world women were not subject to abortion without their consent or against their will doesn’t strike me as very likely. My own suspicion would be that such things were commonplace, and that the default assumption in the Roman world was that only women of relatively high status would have the predominant agency in decisions about whether they should have an abortion. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/51 "2021-03-10T05:06:27Z")
I think that something that’s being missed is that before modern times overpopulation was never a problem. On the contrary, underpopulation was often a chronic problem. All cultures tended to feel that it was a _duty_ for people to have as many children as possible. That was a major reason that abortion was frowned on. A big deal is sometimes made about infanticide in Greek and Roman culture, but this was usually because the infant had some kind of birth defect, rather than any other reason. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/52 "2021-03-10T05:18:33Z")
Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/53 "2021-03-10T06:05:18Z")
> [@](#): > > Demographic studies suggest that the Roman world should have had a population explosion… That is not a generally accepted opinion. Demographic information from the Roman world is highly debatable, and population estimates vary wildly. This survey paper from Stanford/Princeton summarizes the current state of the debate about Roman population: ### [Roman population size: the logic of the debate](https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/070706.pdf) > Abstract > > This paper provides a critical assessment of the current state of the debate about the number of Roman citizens and the size of the population of Roman Italy. Rather than trying to make a case for a particular reading of the evidence, it aims to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of rival approaches and examine the validity of existing arguments and critiques. After a brief survey of the evidence and the principal positions of modern scholarship, it focuses on a number of salient issues such as urbanization, military service, labor markets, political stability, living standards, and carrying capacity, and considers the significance of field surveys and comparative demographic evidence. > Conclusion - Where do we go from here? > > This survey has failed to produce a conclusive answer to the question of the size of the population of Roman Italy. The census data are open to too many conflicting readings to offer any simple solutions. A number of features do not strongly favor either ‘high’ or ‘low’ estimates of overall population size: … > > Some facts speak against population pressure and, although they may not directly support any specific scenario, are more readily consistent with the ‘low count’: … > > Other factors are simply puzzling in their logical inconsistency …These problems are illustrated in Figures 2 and 3. … ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/54 "2021-03-10T15:27:20Z")
As much as we all respect Cecil, I don’t think he had the space to do an in-depth analysis of different opinions regarding BCE / early CE Roman population. 🙂 He was addressing the plausibility of the herbal birth control, even he was saying that the evidence on the ground is mighty thin for the scale of assumptions made. For that matter, your cite is from a paper published a year _after_ the original column was posted, so it wouldn’t have been able to be a source to work from, and your own snip says it’s too conflicting to offer any simple solutions despite being “more readily consistent with the ‘low count’”. This is not to fault you, I applaud your research, and wish that the original column was like several other articles in which Cecil linked the books/authors/articles he referenced in researching the column. It’s always interesting to reverse engineer a column from the source. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/55 "2021-03-10T15:37:19Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > I think that something that’s being missed is that before modern times overpopulation was never a problem. > > On the contrary, underpopulation was often a chronic problem. All cultures tended to feel that it was a _duty_ for people to have as many children as possible. See my post #39. ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/56 "2021-03-10T22:27:24Z")
Abortion wasn’t specifically condemned but the Biblical text refers to fetuses as individuals which God knew and cared about before they were born. Many of the prophesies of Israel being destroyed explained it was going to happen because the people were sacrificing their children to Molech. It’s clear people killing babies after they were born pissed God off. It’s not much of a stretch to propose He also valued their lives before they were born. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/57 "2021-03-10T22:36:53Z")
As has been said above, Jewish law frowns on abortion as violating the command to “be fruitful and multiply”. It also does not hold abortion to be murder. OTTOMH, Jewish tradition holds that the soul does not descend from the Guff to enter the body until the baby is born. I can try looking through my Treasury Of Jewish Folklore (edited by Natha Ausubel) or we can just go with the Demi Moore film The Seventh Sign. I don’t recall OTTOMH whether the passages you mention are generally held to denote a special status or destiny, or if they are held to refer to all human souls. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/58 "2021-03-10T22:43:07Z")
> [@Dark\_Sponge](#): > > Many of the prophesies of Israel being destroyed explained it was going to happen because the people were sacrificing their children to Molech. Not clear to me how much the God of the first commandment was pissed off about the children and how much about worshipping a different god. Abraham may have been told not to sacrifice Isaac, but he was expected to be ready to do so, after all. ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/59 "2021-03-10T23:47:41Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Not clear to me how much the God of the first commandment was pissed off about the children and how much about worshipping a different god. Abraham may have been told not to sacrifice Isaac, but he was expected to be ready to do so, after all. They were doing a whole lot of things God didn’t like when they got involved in fertility worship: widespread prostitution, sex with animals, etc. But God makes a point of pointing out how much He hates the babies & children being killed. The Abraham thing was a prophesy of the Messiah to come. It’s not really part of Greek/Western culture but in Israel it was fairly common for a prophesy to be to acted out rather than just spoken aloud. If you look closely at the text you’ll notice Abraham already knew Issac was coming back with him. He tells the men who went with him to wait at the bottom until he and his son come back down the mountain. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482/60 "2021-03-10T23:57:55Z")
The “bitter water” ritual in Numbers is weird. The text makes clear that it consists of making the woman drink some water in which an ink-covered parchment has been soaked, with a little dirt mixed in. IOW, a little gross, but not actually at all dangerous to the woman or her hypothetical fetus. Some have hypothesized that the idea was that guilty women would freak out and confess before having to undergo the ordeal. Women who didn’t freak out would come through just fine, their husband would be reassured of their faithfulness and domestic harmony would prevail. This obviously presumes a rather high degree of credulity on the part of all concerned. IIRC the Talmud says that this practice wasn’t resumed after the Jews returned from Babylon in the sixth century BCE; perhaps people no longer believed in the magical properties of dirt. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-early-christian-church-against-abortion/937482.md?page=4)