Was the early Christian Church against abortion?

Factual Questions
121

@md-2000, you should really try to read some modern history books! :grinning:

So did the various mystery religions, like the cults of Dionysus, Demeter at Eleusis, the Orphic cults, and others. So did the popular worship of Isis, Osiris, and Serapis (all over the Roman Empire, not only Egypt). There was also the cult of Mithras, and the Pythagoreans. For more intellectual people there were the Neoplatonists.

In fact many Neoplatonist ideas influenced Christianity.

Well, that’s what Christians like to think, anyway.

You’re thinking of Julian, in the 4th century, when Christianity was already well established. But Julian was only Emperor for less than two years until his death, otherwise he might have had far more influence.

122

Hard to tell, the ancients mostly danced around the issue.

123

To get back to the topic, early Christian fathers like Tertullian, Jerome, Augustine, Clement of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and Basil made a distinction between early abortions (no problem), and late abortions (unacceptable).

They were influenced by the Aristotelian view that the soul only entered a fetus when it was fully formed, at about 3 months. Before then it did not have a soul, so there was no religious issue with abortion.

That seems to have been the general view in the early Christian Church.

124

But you’re still not not refuting what he and I said - you’re not countering my argument. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. :grinning:

Christianity appears to have appealed in more ways to the general population than the other mystic cults like Isis. The “go forth and spread the word” message appears to be more responsible for its growth than any version of “go forth and multiply”.

Indeed, the Exodus passage that reduces “inadvertently inducing a miscarriage” to a property crime is probably more indicative of many of the ancients’ attitude toward miscarriages, abortion, etc.

125

@Dark_Sponge Now that this thread has been revived, would you care to back up your claims?

126

I’m working on an article about the origins of UHC, and my source said that there is no record of fees being collected at all. They were funded like temples, and some individuals agreed to contribute certain amounts based on specific outcomes, such as healing. The building itself was funded by the government.
In England in the 19th century hospitals did not have fixed fees either, but a person called an almoner set a fee based on the ability of the patient to pay. In those days, before Lister, the middle upper classes avoided hospitals like the ahem plague. After going to a hospital became less likely to kill you the middle classes started going, and hospitals began charging fees and building private rooms.

127

Serious question: did they think that early abortion was “no problem”, or merely that it was less problematic than later abortion?

128

I overstated that, I shouldn’t have said no problem.

Most thought that there was a problem with it, but that early abortion didn’t amount to homicide. It was a lesser sin, and usually some penance was assigned.

If an abortion was done in order to conceal an illicit relationship, that made it a more serious sin because the illicit relationship was a more serious sin.

There was also the argument that even if the fetus didn’t yet have a soul, you were destroying the possibility of creating a human being, and that was still some degree of sin.

St. Jerome wrote to a female correspondent, Algasia, that “seeds are gradually formed in the uterus, and it is not reputed homicide until the scattered elements receive their appearance and members.”

Augustine wrote, “Because the great question about the soul is not to be hastily decided by unargued and rash judgment, the law does not provide that the act pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation when it is not formed in flesh and so not yet endowed with sense.”

But then there was also the question of when exactly the soul entered the fetus – and if there was uncertainty about that, it was better to be on the safe side.

The other issue was that women sometimes died from taking abortion drugs, so it was dangerous and potentially harmful for the mother, even in early pregnancy.

From Abortion and the Catholic Church: A Summary History by John T. Noonan Jr. :

By 450 the teaching on abortion East and West had been set out for four centuries with clarity and substantial consistency. There was a distinction accepted as to the unformed embryo, some consequent variation in the analysis of the sin, and local differences in the penance necessary to expiate it.

The sin itself was often associated with lechery, sometimes with marriage. The usual method of accomplishing it was by drugs, sometimes associated with magic, sometimes with danger to the user. The motive animating it was seen variously as shame, as avarice, as lust. Although therapeutic and social reasons for abortion were known from the best of doctors and philosophers, these reasons were never mentioned as justification.

All the writers agreed that abortion was a violation of the love owed to one’s neighbor. Some saw it as a special failure of maternal love. Many saw it also as a failure to have reverence for the work of God the creator.

129

Can I get a cite?

Since they seemed to have made this as vague as possible, and since pretty much only early were possible since women had to use abortifacients, not surgery.

More or less, the idea was late abortions, causing miscarriages, and killing a fetus by attacking the mother were all forms of murder.

Physicians could not accept fees in Republican Rome. Instead they expected a nice gift, come the occasion. Some did work for a gladiator trainer, and I suppose they were paid, but not on a per patient or per treatment basis. Mind you early medical science was pretty worthless, so it was worth nothing.

True.

130

I should have linked to the cite I used above:

Abortion and the Catholic Church: A Summary History by John T. Noonan Jr.

131

The issue with that cite is that he heavily relies upon the Didache and other non-canon writings. Non-canon generally means some Christians thought that way, but not the leaders.

Yes, the Church, as well as the Empire was against abortifacients , and the primary reason was they too often killed the mother. Mind you I see that some of the writings by the early church fathers were against them on general principals.

However, once we get into later canon, it does seem as you said- early abortions were not condemned (nor condoned) as the fetus was not yet “Vivified” or “ensouled”.

But that is a good cite anyway, and thank you for that.

132

Er… yes and no. There were some things the ancients were capable of that people survived often enough to make it worth while. Supposedly the Ancient Romans had some notion of cleanliness and cleaning things like surgical instruments between patients that wouldn’t be rediscovered for about 1500 years even if they didn’t have germ theory.

133

Yeah, you can conclude that there’s something gross that gets all over surgical instruments and causes disease if they’re not cleaned, without knowing that that something gross is specifically microscopic organisms.