The recent judicial verdict jailing a woman who lied to get drugs for an abortion at around 33 weeks has stirred-up a centuries-old debate. Researching this further, I was struck by how much misinformation circulates on this topic. Take, for example, this view of the quickening, used to claim Catholic teaching on abortion dates from 1869 or claim that 19th Century America viewed the practice as an acceptable means of avoiding the risks of pregnancy.
If we look back to the first Christians, however, what is remarkable is their staunch belief in the sanctity of human life at a time when many ancient civilisations counted it cheap. Abortion was widespread in the Graeco-Roman world but the early church’s opposition to the practice was so universal and so staunch that many believe it was responsible for purging abortion from the Roman Empire. William Lecky asserts that: “With unwavering consistency and with the strongest emphasis, they denounced the practice, not simply as inhuman, but as definitely murder.” The Didache, an early Christian teaching manual, stated bluntly: “You shall not commit infanticide, nor procure abortion.”
Among the citizens of the Graeco-Roman world, abortions were procured either by crude mechanical means, or more commonly by the use of abortifacient drugs, the so-called pharmakon, often in the form of pessaries. One of the leading gynaecologists of the time, Soranos of Ephesus (AD 98-138), classified these abortion methods as either phthorion (which destroys what has been conceived) or ekbolion (which expels what has been conceived).
The Greek word used for the medical practice of the times, in the Didache and elsewhere, was pharmakeia. This was often ‘folk medicine’, which embraced abortion, linked to occult practices. In English versions of the Bible this word has generally been translated as ‘sorcery’ or ‘witchcraft’. For example, in Galatians 5:20, the apostle Paul condemns the practitioners of such ‘medicine’.
John Noonan considers that: “Paul’s usage here cannot be restricted to abortion, but the term he chose is comprehensive enough to include the use of abortifacient drugs.” Analogous condemnation occurs in the pagan Hippocratic Oath, which forbade doctors from giving lethal drugs. It included a pledge, “…not to give a deadly drug [pharmakon] to anyone if asked for it, nor to suggest it. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortifacient pessary.” The ‘deadly drug’ undoubtedly included a range of poisons used to perform acts of euthanasia, but, according to Soranus and other first-century medical practitioners, it also included an assortment of forbidden abortifacients (phthorion).
Into the second century, the same prohibitions were maintained. The early Christian theologian, Clement of Alexandria (AD 150-215), taught that Christians must not, “…take away human nature, which is generated from the providence of God, by hastening abortions and applying abortifacient drugs [phthoriois pharmakois] to destroy utterly the embryo and, with it, the love of man.”
The downgrade started when the biological analysis of Aristotle (384-322 BC) influenced the theological analysis of early Christians but you can read about that elsewhere. May we recover a true, Biblically-grounded view of reality that protects all human life as intrinsically valuable, made in God’s image.
excalibrate 