Did Catholics at some point condone abortion?

  • Thread starter Thread starter MoonlitYT
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

MoonlitYT

Guest
It’s states in an article (nytimes) that St. Antoninus was fine with abortion if it meant to save a womans life.

“St. Antoninus (1389-1459) early abortion can be justified when necessary to save a woman’s life, not a rare exception in the medical conditions at that time.”

can you give your insight on this, because i thought Catholics condemn all forms of abortion. thank you.
 
Last edited:
Welcome to CAF. It would be helpful in the future if you could provide a link to any articles you wish to discuss.

I have serious doubts about that quote. It seems just too tailor made for those who favor abortion. I question it’s authenticity.

That said, no, Catholics do not “at some point” ever condone abortion.
 
What I found St Antoninus said is this:
A doctor sinned in giving medicine to cause an abortion “to preserve a pregnant woman” when the fetus was ensouled, for, when “one cannot help one without hurting the other, it is more appropriate to
help neither.” But if the fetus was not ensouled, then the physician “ought to give such medicine,” because “although he impedes the ensoulment of a future fetus, he will not be the cause of death of any man.”
Click to expand...
This means that if the fetus was not yet ensouled, a doctor does not sin in “aborting” it. If the fetus was ensouled, then the doctor would be sinning.

But, this was written at a time when there was debate about when the ensoulment of a fetus happened. Now we have Magisterial teaching that ensoulment happens at the moment of conception. If there was such a teaching when St Antoninus was writing, he would not have said what he said.
 
Last edited:
So was there a point in time where catholics condoned Abortion? because most pro-choice people usually use st. antoninus to prove their point and making us look like hypocrites.
 
Last edited:
I think it’s fair to say that some prominent catholic theologians were unsure when Ensoulment happened, and if a fetus did not have a soul, then there is no Homicide during an abortion.

BUT, it is important to understand that was not taught by the entire Church. Even if some individuals debated some things, it doesn’t change the teaching of the entire church. It is wrong to say the Catholic Church ever taught that Abortion was ok after ensoulment, which we now know is at the moment of conception.
 
Last edited:
This is one of those issues pro choices like to trip up young pro lifers with.

In ye olde days, it was thought that the womb was just an incubator, and that the Father supplied all the material necessary to make a baby.
They thought semen contained a tiny baby that would grow if the womb was hospitable enough.
So that left a lot of gray area about when the baby got a soul. Generally they figured from the time Mom felt movement, but opinions varied.

So, acts to prevent a birth weren’t considered quite the same as “abortion” in the way we understand it today.
<<this paragraph was edited due to being poorly worded😳>>

Nowadays, we know about sperm cells and egg cells and dna and ovulation.

So we know that when the dna from Mom combines with the dna from dad, we have a new human being.
 
Last edited:
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
So, abortion was not considered a sin before “ensoulment”.
Click to expand...
Not quite. It wasn’t considered homicide, but it was still considered the sin of contraception, which was considered very close to murder, by preventing a life from coming into being.

Amy Wellborn posted about St. Antoninus’s position here:


His reasoning was that since it was less than homicide, it could be done in extremis to save a life. However, he also said if there was any risk of ensoulment having happened, it could not be done. In any event, it was hardly some definitive position of the Church, but rather of a handful of theologians. It seems the absolute prohibition was more common.
 
Last edited:
MoonlitYT said:
So was there a point in time where catholics condoned Abortion? because most pro-choice people usually use st. antoninus to prove their point and making us look like hypocrites.
Click to expand...
Catholics condone many things.
However, The Catholic Church has a consistent position on the sanctity of all life that is based on God’s “I Am” and the human being in the image of God. That position is informed by Scripture, Tradition, and the current teaching of the Magisterium. Science helps inform the Church also on specific details.
We have much greater biological information now than in ancient times.
 
Last edited:
Correct me if I’m wrong, please.

I though that the church still doesn’t actually claim that ensoulment takes place at conception, rather that because it is a human being from the point of conception, we can’t know exactly when ensoulment takes place and thus just assumes this for safety. Am I wrong…has there been an official statement of ensoulment at conception?
 
MoonlitYT said:
So was there a point in time where catholics condoned Abortion?
Click to expand...
No. At no point has the Church been in favor of or condoned abortion.
MoonlitYT said:
because most pro-choice people usually use st. antoninus to prove their point and making us look like hypocrites.
Click to expand...
Reading comprehension is a big problem. I better clarify. By reading comprehension, I mean the pro-choice people and their lack of context and understanding regarding church teaching.

In the days before biology was a thing, they didn’t know about embryos and conception, now and when it happened. The idea that a child came into being at the “quickening” (when the woman could feel the fetus moving) does not undermine the Church’s position on abortion.

So what you have is one saint giving an opinion on giving medicine to a woman that could harm a child, and his opinion on when it was and wasn’t OK give this medicine based on the biological knowledge of the time. And I use the term “medicine” loosely, because 14th century doctoring? Yeah, not so much.

The church still has teachings regarding the principle of double effect when giving medicine to a woman that could also harm the baby. We just know a lot more about the baby now.
 
Last edited:
Pattylt said:
I though that the church still doesn’t actually claim that ensoulment takes place at conception, rather that because it is a human being from the point of conception, we can’t know exactly when ensoulment takes place and thus just assumes this for safety. Am I wrong…has there been an official statement of ensoulment at conception?
Click to expand...
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception strongly hints that ensoulment takes place at conception. Since we must believe in the IC of Mary as a dogma, then we must believe in everything else that logically follows from it.

But aside from that, no, there is no absolutely certain doctrinal or dogmatic teaching that the soul enters the body at the instant of conception. There is one passage from the Catechism that is sometimes invoked, but it involves a misinterpretation of the word “immediately”:

CCC 366: The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

In this context, “immediately” means “without any mediation”, i.e., God creates the soul all by Himself, not with any intervention by the parents. It doesn’t have the usual vernacular connotation of “right that very second, without any delay, pronto”. See Robert M Martin, The Philosopher’s Dictionary, third edition:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Please note well that I do not condone abortion at any stage, ensouled or not.
 
Last edited:
The Christian churches all agreed that contraception was a sin, until the pill became available and convenient, and protestant churches changed their view. It’s hard to imagine that abortion would have been ok in 1400.

So what kind of medical intervention was available in 1400 to diagnose a medical problem where an abortion would save a woman’s life?? That whole sentence seems suspicious.

If pro-choice people use an argument like this, it says lots about them, AND it does not mean we look like hypocrites.
 
It is condemned in the Didache. It is safe to say that abortion is always murder, no exceptions.
 
Abortion was always considered wrong because it deliberately frustrated the procreative aspect of sex (St Thomas Aquinas would say) but in a modern context we now know when a human being becomes a human being - when the sperm successfully fertilizes the egg - so in addition to frustrating the procreative act of sex, we can objectively say that an abortion is also a murder and a human becomes a human at conception.

I’m assuming the NYT is taking the issue and simplifying it and then distorting it to make it appear like Catholicism is historically grey on the area of taking a human life. The average reader, though having a good education, will probably be fooled by it too.
 
Last edited:
Before the early 20th century all abortions were usually very dangerous or even lethal for the mother as well, so abortion to ”save the life or health of the mother” wasn’t something that realistically could be done. So all such discussions before that time must have been very hypothetical.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
40.png
TK421:
The average reader, though having a good education, will probably be fooled by it too.
Click to expand...
Nah, I cynically think most NYT readers fall in with its bias.
Click to expand...
Aren’t you both saying the same thing?
 
tuffsmurf said:
Before the early 20th century all abortions were usually very dangerous or even lethal for the mother as well, so abortion to ”save the life or health of the mother” wasn’t something that realistically could be done. So all such discussions before that time must have been very hypothetical.
Click to expand...
There are herbal potions that would include things like tansy that could force the womb to expel the fetus. The earlier in the pregnancy it was done the less danger there was to the mother, but it was definitely an ordeal that had the possibility of permanent negative consequences to the health of the mother.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top