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NRL News
Catholic
Teaching on Abortion: Unchanged and Unchanging If “Things the Catholic Church Opposes” were a category on Family Feud, you can bet the Number 1 audience answer would be “Abortion.” Consistently, forcefully, and universally, the Catholic Church has condemned killing unborn children for nearly two millennia. Its persistence in explaining the moral gravity of abortion has even led some to mistakenly accuse it of being a “single issue” church. But some prominent Catholics appear confused about their Church’s opposition to abortion. They suggest that whether abortion is wrong has been a matter of theological debate and division throughout history, and therefore, that Catholics are free to customize their beliefs and actions (including legislative votes) based on what they think a favorite theologian said. Others argue that the Catholic Church opposes abortion on the basis of its “religiously based view” that human life begins at conception. And so, they argue, it would be wrong to “impose” this sectarian belief on persons of other faiths in our pluralistic society. This is just silly. When human life begins is an objective, indisputable fact of science, not faith, acknowledged by atheists and believers alike (except sometimes when they’re struggling to justify abortion). Today the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) is a sure guide for inquiring Catholics and others as to what the Church teaches: “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, the human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person—among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life” (CCC, 2270). No mincing of words there! The Catechism continues: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable ...” (CCC, 2271). A short review of early Christian sources is enough to show the constancy of Christian teaching on abortion. The earliest widely used statement of doctrine and practice in Christianity outside Sacred Scripture, dating from the late first or early second century, is the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles). It contains this injunction: “Do not kill a fetus by abortion, or commit infanticide” (2:2), then relatively common practices in the Greco-Roman world. The second-century Letter of Barnabas reiterates this command: “You shall not murder a child by abortion, nor kill it after birth.” Tertullian, a Father of the Church in the third century of Christianity, wrote, “For us, killing and murder being forbidden once and for all, it is not permitted to destroy what is conceived in the mother’s womb. To hinder the birth of a child is a faster way to murder [sometimes translated as ‘accelerated homicide’]. It makes little difference whether one destroys a life already born or prevents it from coming to birth. It is a human being. …” In the fifth century, the great bishop-theologian Augustine of Hippo reaffirmed Christian teaching that abortion at every stage is wrong. Naturally, knowledge of biology was then very limited. Augustine was aware of the biological theories of Aristotle (fourth century BC), that a formative power exclusively from the man gradually shaped matter into a living human form (that could receive a soul) in the womb. Augustine warned, however, that such theories of “ensoulment” were very uncertain and should not be misused to risk committing homicide. A recent “Fact Sheet” by the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities paraphrases his reasoning that “God had the power to make up all human deficiencies or lack of development in the Resurrection, so we cannot assume that the earliest aborted children will be excluded from enjoying eternal life with God.” In the thirteenth century as well, St. Thomas Aquinas discussed Aristotle’s theory that a rational human soul is not present in the first few weeks of pregnancy. Significantly, however, he reaffirmed that abortion is wrong at every stage, calling it a sin “against nature” to reject God’s gift of a new life. Until the nineteenth century, debates continued among theologians about human formation and ensoulment, some raising the question whether abortion could be justified in rare cases at some very early stage in the formative process. But all such theories of hypothetically permissible abortions were discussed and rejected by the Catholic Church, which constantly affirmed and refined its understanding that abortion is an intrinsically evil act that can never be morally justified. The chief significance of the ancient debates on when a human being receives a soul concerned the appropriate severity of penalties under canon law. Abortion at every stage was considered a grave evil, but later abortions were punished more severely than early abortions. Why would this be? At the time we are speaking of, no one could even be certain a pregnant woman was carrying a live unborn child until “quickening” (the child’s first movements felt by the mother) some weeks into pregnancy. Well, common sense suggests that the intentional killing of a human being known to be a living person could be considered a graver evil than committing an act which could only potentially result in the death of a human being. Since the discovery of the human ovum in 1827, and with that discovery the knowledge that the union of sperm and ovum marks the conception of a new human life, there has been no basis to doubt that the baby is on board. By 1869, the obsolete distinction in penalties between early and late abortions based on theories of delayed formation/ensoulment were eliminated from canon law. A parallel development occurred in secular law. Many U.S. states enacted statutes to eliminate ancient common law distinctions in penalties for abortions at early and late gestational stages. As the American Medical Association’s Report on Criminal Abortion (1871) stated: “no other doctrine appears to be consonant with reason or physiology but that which admits the embryo to possess vitality from the very moment of conception.” If human rights are not inherent, if the State can dispense and withhold “rights” at will, there can be no equality under the law, for any of us. One cannot hope to achieve a just society when those in power can freely kill, enslave, or arbitrarily discriminate against vulnerable people. That is why Catholics and everyone of good will must defend the inherent right to life of every human being, from conception to natural death. |