Early Christians Against Abortion

[angellous_evangellous]

Etienne van de Walle finds "38 references from Greek or Hellenistic pagan authors, 45 from Latin pagan authors, 7 are from Jewish origin and 30 Christian," page 118.

Towards a Demographic History of Abortion
Etienne van de Walle Population: An English Selection, Vol. 11. (1999), pp. 115-131.

I'll see if I can list a few. Edit: I'm sorry, I can't post examples. van de Walle does not cite the ancient writers in standard notation, but by page numbers in reference books. Her analysis compliments my independent research, however, and I think that she's reliable.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I've known about Hippocrates and Galen's treatment on abortion, but I had not heard of Soranus (a Greek physician in Ephesus in the second century) until this afternoon.

http://www.unc.edu/courses/rometech...anie_Doerfler/Contraception_and_Abortion.html

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Dang this is a good thread!

 

[angellous_evangellous]

It appears that the translations are quite literal.

http://www.catholicplanet.com/ebooks/didache.htm - translation by Schaff

Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not corrupt boys; thou shalt not commit fornication. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; thou shalt not practice sorcery. Thou shalt not procure abortion, nor shalt thou kill the new-born child. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/richardson/fathers.viii.i.iii.html - translation by Richardson
2"Do not murder; do not commit adultery"; do not corrupt boys; do not fornicate; "do not steal"; do not practice magic; do not go in for sorcery; do not murder a child by abortion or kill a new-born infant. "Do not covet your neighbor's property;

I have highlighted some Greek words below... the first word is the unborn "teknon" - "child" and it is apposed to the other word highlighted in blue "gennothen" = "the one who has been born" both words are surrounded by destruction. Do not destroy the unborn child by destruction or the one who has been born.

ou) foneu&seij, ou) moixeu&seij, ou) paidofqorh&seij, ou) porneu&seij, ou) kle/yeij, ou) mageu&seij, ou) farmakeu&seij, ou) foneu&seij te/knon e0n fqora|~ ou)de\ gennhqe\n a)poktenei=j, ou)k e0piqumh&seij ta_ tou~ plhsi/on.

I just found this tonight... it only differs from the Didache by the last word, a synonym, and is translated the same.

A very similar command to avoid abortion is in Barnabas: Ou) foneu&seij te/knon e0n fqora|~, ou)de\ pa&lin gennhqe\na)nelei=j.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I thought someone said that there is a reference to abortion in Clement of Alexandria. I found it today while reading him.

From my notes:

Strom 1.22.3; cf., 2.18.79; 2.18.92-3 using Pythagoras and the Hebrew Bible to argue against the practice of exposure, comparing the care of animal mothers to their offspring as a calling for human mothers to care for theirs.

From Clement:

ANF02. Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire) | Christian Classics Ethereal Library

And Pythagoras seems to me, to have derived his mildness towards irrational creatures from the law. For instance, he interdicted the immediate use of the young in the flocks of sheep, and goats, and herds of cattle, on the instant of their 368birth; not even on the pretext of sacrifice allowing it, both on account of the young ones and of the mothers; training man to gentleness by what is beneath him, by means of the irrational creatures. “Resign accordingly,” he says, “the young one to its dam for even the first seven days.” For if nothing takes place without a cause, and milk comes in a shower to animals in parturition for the sustenance of the progeny, he that tears that, which has been brought forth, away from the supply of the milk, dishonours nature. Let the Greeks, then, feel ashamed, and whoever else inveighs against the law; since it shows mildness in the case of the irrational creatures, while they expose the offspring of men; though long ago and prophetically, the law, in the above-mentioned commandment, threw a check in the way of their cruelty. For if it prohibits the progeny of the irrational creatures to be separated from the dam before sucking, much more in the case of men does it provide beforehand a cure for cruelty and savageness of disposition; so that even if they despise nature, they may not despise teaching. For they are permitted to satiate themselves with kids and lambs, and perhaps there might be some excuse for separating the progeny from its dam. But what cause is there for the exposure of a child? For the man who did not desire to beget children had no right to marry at first; certainly not to have become, through licentious indulgence, the murderer of his children. Again, the humane law forbids slaying the offspring and the dam together on the same day. Thence also the Romans, in the case of a pregnant woman being condemned to death, do not allow her to undergo punishment till she is delivered.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

OK, I can add one more quote from Athenagoras. I am typing it now...

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Athenagoras

Athenagoras of Athens: A Plea for the Christians
CHAP. XXXV.--THE CHRISTIANS CONDEMN AND DETEST ALL CRUELTY.


"What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our character, that we are murderers? For we cannot eat human flesh till we have killed some one. The former charge, therefore, being false, if any one should ask them in regard to the second, whether they have seen what they assert, not one of them would be so barefaced as to say that he had. And yet we have slaves, some more and some fewer, by whom we could not help being seen; but even of these, not one has been found to invent even such things against us.

For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death?

And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God s for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it. But we are in all things always alike and the same, submitting ourselves to reason, and not ruling over it."

====

Ya'll will remember, of course, that I said that women ate certain plants, etc, for abortions in this time. Greek to follow.

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This is highly specific. Athenagoras says that to cause an abortion (chrao = kill/injure ... amblothridious = abortion) is murder (lit, to kill a man androfonein= ἀνδροφονεῖ&#957

Here is the LSJ definition:

amblothridous... ἀμβλ-ωθρίδιον , to/,
I.(sc. παιδίον) abortive child, “ἀ. καὶ ἐκτρώματα” Ph.1.59, cf. Hsch., Harp.
II. Act. (sc. φάρμακον), drug to cause abortion, Poll.2.7.—Prop. neut. from ἀμβλωθρίδιος , ον, causing abortion, Aret.CA2.11:—also ἀμβλώθριον , to/, Sch.Ar.Nu. 137 (s. v.l.).

fonein... φον-εύω , A. murder, kill, τινα Hdt.1.35, 211, al., A.Th.340 (lyr.), S.OT716, etc.; c. dupl. acc., [φόνον] φ. τινά Sch.E.Hec.335: abs., “καὶ τίς φονεύει;” S.Ant.1174, cf. El.34:—Pass., to be slain, Pi.P.11.17, E.IA1317 (lyr.), Th.8.95.
2. of an animal, “ἐὰν . . ζῷον . . τι φονεύσῃ τινά” Pl.Lg.873e.
3. stain with blood, “φασγάνῳ δέρην” E.IA875 (troch.).

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Gregory of Nyssa, On the early death of Infants

Gregory does not consider a baby a human being:

[FONT=&quot]A human being enters on the scene of life, draws in the air, beginning the process of living with a cry of pain, pays the tribute of a tear to Nature1540 just tastes life’s sorrows, before any of its sweets have been his, before his feelings have gained 34[/FONT]any strength; still loose in all his joints, tender, pulpy, unset; in a word, before he is even human (if the gift of reason is man’s peculiarity, and he has never had it in him), such an one, with no advantage over the embryo in the womb except that he has seen the air, so short-lived, dies and goes to pieces again; being either exposed or suffocated, or else of his own accord ceasing to live from weakness. What are we to think about him? How are we to feel about such deaths?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Out of curiosity, when it was translated before 1547, what word did they use?

I found today an ancient work that defines abortion in Greek. It is dated in the first or second century by TLG.

[SIZE=-0]Harpocration Gramm.[/SIZE], [SIZE=-0]Lexicon in decem oratores Atticos[/SIZE]. {1389.001} Page 25 line 13. (Browse)

[FONT=SPIonic,SPDoric][/FONT]
[FONT=SPIonic,SPDoric][SIZE=-0] 0Amblwqri/dion[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-0]:[/SIZE][FONT=SPIonic,SPDoric][SIZE=-0] to_ a)mblwqe\n[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=SPIonic,SPDoric][SIZE=-0] bre/foj.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=SPIonic,SPDoric][SIZE=-0] 0[/SIZE][/FONT]

Transliterated: Amblothridion: to amblothen brethos

Translation: Abortion: the killing of the babe in the womb

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Tertullian describes surgical abortion:

210 AD Tertullian "Among surgeons' tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery. "There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of course was alive. . . ." [The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive" (The Soul 25).

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I looked up embrosphakyes in the Greek lexicon, LSJ, and sure enough the definition is "to cut up the fetus in the womb."

 

[angellous_evangellous]

They were able to do both.

Usually, herbs were taken to kill the baby and it was removed by natural birth, albeit stillborn. Women can also be punched with the same effect. I don't know if survival rates for the mothers are recorded, but it's possible.

They did think about it (because it is in the medical literature and possibly elsewhere) but Iagree that killing a born child is much more convenient, and probably more common than killing the unborn. Nevertheless, the practice is well documented in Lefkowitz and Fant's collection of texts.

Hippocrates (I think) tells of a time when he wanted to study a fetus, so he had a pregnant slave girl jump up and down until she the fetus came out. I don't know of a surgical removal.

Jerome says that many women died from surgical abortions.

396 AD Jerome "I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother . . . Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13).

 

[angellous_evangellous]

The following is copyrighted - a rough draft of my conclusions.

The Christian literature is remarkably unified in its attitudes towards both surgical and pharmaceutical abortion and exposure of infants. From earliest times, abortion was linked with the commandment prohibiting murder and was linked to apologetic concerns. With Hippolytus and Cyprian, there is a dramatic change. Christian writers dared to accuse other Christians - even those considered heretics - of aborting or exposing their young. This polemic could prove fatal in an environment where proto-orthodox and heterodox were persecuted together by prosecutors who viewed both groups with similar disdain. Nevertheless, Christians were no longer compelled to completely disassociate themselves with their old accusation of eating infants, the very charge which lead them to have a unified front against all types of killing their young.


We must consider the unified front against abortion and exposure to be artificial. There is no reason to believe that Christian families associated with the early Christian churches were any less likely to expose or abort than non-Christians. The apologetic nature of the anti-abortion rhetoric is possibly more for the entertainment or education of the group rather than for the education of the persecutors to whom the apologies are addressed (if any). The texts and apologies are most likely addressed to a group that is continually address an ongoing struggle of the community. Christian families, like everyone else in the ancient world, struggled with the hard choices of life and were compelled by need or greed to control the size of their families. They had similar choices of other people in the ancient world: contraceptives, abortificants, surgical abortion, and the best choice for the health of the mother, exposure. It seems to me that the early Christian literature is best explained by keeping with contemporary style of Middle-Stoic writings by decrying the inhumanity of abortion and exposure. Christians of the third century were freer to honestly approach the problem and Christian bishops were comfortable enough to allow it in their congregations - or accuse one another of what they had been allowing all along.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

bump for recent interest

 

[angellous_evangellous]

*bump*

 

[Rainbow Mage]

I agree the early Christians probably were against abortion. Abortion has been a hot topic all throughout Christian history. Did they really understand the full picture of abortion though? Also it's interesting to note that while Christianity may be traditionally against abortion, Judaism is not explicitly against it.

 

[Wannabe Yogi]

What do you mean by "Early Christians", sure the earliest of christians didnt even know what abortion was?

The Romans and Greeks had an herb that caused Abortion. It went extinct from over use. I read this in Smithsonian magazine years ago.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

It seems many early Christian morals were based on trying to seperate Christians from Greco-Roman practices.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

It seems many early Christian morals were based on trying to seperate Christians from Greco-Roman practices.

Quite the opposite, actually, which is why the unified position against abortion and exposure is so shocking (to me, anyway).

The early Christians adopted the patriarchal househlold, did not oppose slavery, and applied the qualifications of the ideal wise-man to Jesus and the apostles.

The list goes on, but opposition to abortion is quite unique in normal Christian morals that conform to the Roman norm.

 

[Wannabe Yogi]

The early Christians adopted the patriarchal household,

I think I read Elaine Pagels (my favorite christian Theologian profound yet easy to read) said that this patriarchy started to spread after the 2nd century. Am I right ?