We should point out the Pro-Abortion side is willing to lie. They quote SOME of Saint Augustine, but not ALL he said on the subject.
And they are simply being willfully blind to the Church’s historical opposition to abortion. Here’s a short precis:
**Catholic Positions on Abortion
****The Didache
**
“The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (*Didache *2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).
**The Letter of Barnabas
**
“The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (*Letter of Barnabas *19 [A.D. 74]).
Tertullian
“In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That
is a man which is
going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed” (*Apology *9:8 [A.D. 197]).
“Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does” (ibid., 27).
**Basil the Great
**
“Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’ penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not” (
First Canonical Letter, canon 2 [A.D. 374]).
“He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense, when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it dies upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees” (ibid., canon 8).
**Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
**Sometimes, indeed, this lustful cruelty, or if you please, cruel lust, resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain before it was born.
-De Nube et Concupiscentia 1.17 (15)
Therefore brothers, you see how perverse they are and hastening wickedness, who are immature, they seek abortion of the conception before the birth; they are those who tell us, “I do not see that which you say must be believed.”
Are you to dissolve the conception by aid of drugs? I think to us it is no more lawful to hurt [a child] in process of birth, than one [already] born.
- De exhortatione castitatis 12
