How long has abortion been considered murder?

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I’ve recently come across the argument that abortion has only been considered murder by the Church recently. Before that it was not considered murder and was prohibited because abortions would make it hard to prove infidelity.

Anyone have early sources about when abortion was considered murder. I know that it was considered unacceptable from the earliest times but it does not say why.
 
Not something “new”.

Here is one example for ya from the CA site:

Early Christian wring from AD 177

Athenagoras

. . . “…we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder…”
 
Bookcat said:
Not something “new”.

Here is one example for ya from the CA site:

Early Christian wring from AD 177

Athenagoras

. . . “…we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder…”
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So it is at least 1836 years old, but probably much, much older. 😛
 
Strictly speaking, direct abortion is always a “grave moral disorder” (Evangelium Vitae), but it isn’t always murder.

Murder would be after ensoulment. For many centuries tradition held that ensoulment was at quickening, first movement inside the womb. So there was a distinction between the animated and not-animated fetus in the Church Catechism. This distinction was in the printed Catechism until 1920.

In history, it is undeniable that early (pre quickening) abortion was taken as a less grievous sin, but it has always been a sin. The only real change or evolution in the Church’s theological position on abortion has been situations like maternal health. In 1st century Jewish tradition, an abortion would be morally required if the mother’s life was threatened. The fetus was precious, because it was a potential human being, but was not a full person until ‘first breath’ (the Holy Spirit) at birth.

Theological thought on the subject has varied. As recently as 1869, the Holy See refused to rule on a situation involving maternal health, referring the question to theologians. However, when eugenics began emerging at the end of of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the Church was forced to reconsider abortion closely. The conclusion was that the logical moral extension of our beliefs was no exceptions. The distinction between animated and non animated was dropped because the reasoning was, it doesn’t matter. We don’t know exactly when ensoulment occurs but even prior to ensoulment it is a potential human person developing.

The doctrine started emerging more clearly for the first half of the 20th century (Catholic midwives were unclear on the maternal health shift as recently as 1951 and received specific papal instruction) and was well codified by Vatican II, and explained very well by Blessed John Paul. Prior to promulgating EV, he polled all the bishops and found that our position on abortion had become dogmatic by virtue of the universal agreement of the Magisterium.

But, just because the distinction was dropped from language in the Catechism, to remove perceptions of lesser sin, doesn’t mean that, theologically, the distinction does not still exist. The Doctrinal Notes from the CDF, both on abortion and protection of the human fetus reiterate that the Church does not profess to know or teach when ensoulment occurs, and that the reasoning of Pius IX, not always murder, but same moral considerations, is still in place.

I hope that helps.
 
JIB said:
I’ve recently come across the argument that abortion has only been considered murder by the Church recently. Before that it was not considered murder and was prohibited because abortions would make it hard to prove infidelity.

Anyone have early sources about when abortion was considered murder. I know that it was considered unacceptable from the earliest times but it does not say why.
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I would guess that since at least the time of Hippocrates since the Oath he authored prohibits abortion. In both versions, it is specifically connected to “deadly things.”

Hippocrates predates the Church by hundreds of years.
 
What’s changed over the years is our understanding of biology and ability to confirm pregnancies. It used to be that you couldn’t tell for sure if a woman was pregnant until quickening, and many people thought this was the beginning of human life. So many people might not have considered anything prior to that abortion. As medical science progressed, we realized that quickening is actually a pretty arbitrary line, and church teaching adjusted to protect the fetus from conception.
 
The first century Didache condemns abortion as murder:
And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.
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SonCatcher said:
I would guess that since at least the time of Hippocrates since the Oath he authored prohibits abortion. In both versions, it is specifically connected to “deadly things.”

Hippocrates predates the Church by hundreds of years.
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To be fair, Hippocrates’ understanding of ‘abortion’ isn’t quite the modern understanding. In fact, he described performing a form of late term, partial birth abortion for the sake of a seriously deformed child (a mercy because of the child’s prospects in life).

Tertullian one of the first great Latin Christian apologists, in his treatise on the human soul also describes a similar procedure, in fairly gruesome detail, and declares that it is morally just, even though his general take on abortion is very close to our modern understanding (though his theological argument for it is different and would now be considered heretical).
PaulfromIowa said:
The first century Didache condemns abortion as murder:
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From a scholarly point of view, it’s not quite clear what precisely the Didache means. Remember, it was a work of Jewish-Christians. The Hilacha held that the reason that personhood is at birth is that ensoulment was a mystery that would be revealed after the Messiah.

The break with Judaism from birth to quickening appears to date from this time (prophecy fulfilled?). It is not clear if the Didache, or many of the earliest writings mean all abortions or post ensoulment abortions because the quickening standard emerged from oral tradition from the same period.

I know it is popular to cite early writings on abortion, but we have to be careful. Two of the most popular quotes are from Tertullian, but right smack in the middle of them in the original text is a gruesome partial birth abortion, argued as just (see above), though we would argue it as not just today.

What we can say with some certainty is that our roots come from the most pro-life tradition in that quadrant of the world at that time. At the time of Christ, Jews already viewed abortion as an attack on the potential person and very limited in permissibility. Christians went farther and argued that personhood was at quickening (something we do not hold dogmatically to be certain, but it is the longest tradition), but that was a theological distinction, it doesn’t automatically mean that Christians were even more stringent on abortion than Jewish tradition.

Chances are good it wasn’t. Pauline Christianity thrived in the gentiles, and we had a lot farther to mature morally. For the first 1000 years of the Church the big battle wasn’t educating us about abortion, it was breaking us from our traditions of infanticide.
 
What about abortion being illicit due it making adultery harder to prove?

Is the difference in the stance abortion due to theological or biological understanding?
 
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