As the battle over legalized abortion continues rage as specific states more clearly draw their battle lines, there is a growing number of Christians who are attempting to make a Christian argument in favor of abortion. In truth, there is no Christian defense of abortion and there never has been. Not surprisingly, the abortion apologist’s arguments fall flat, even though they continually recycle the same talking points irrespective of truth. Even if there are different variations on the propagandistic talking points, they seem never to grow weary of repeating them. Given the increased frequency in which we are seeing them, it is important that we have a ready defense.
In order to avoid toppling over a straw man, we will refer to an example that was printed in the Huffington Post last year entitled “The Truth About Christianity and Abortion”. We use this one not because it was a particularly convincing argument, but because it invokes almost all the common arguments for Christian support of abortion in one place.
Before diving into the exact arguments, it is a helpful to remember that there are plenty of arguments against abortion that don’t rely solely upon religious convictions. Instead you can use philosophical reasoning and science. Since that ground has already been covered, we will stick to the Christian-based arguments since that is terrain over which these abortion advocates like to stomp.
“There are no specific references to abortion in the Bible, either within Old Testament law or in Jesus’ teachings or the writings of Paul and other writers in the New Testament.”
This first argument, namely that the Bible doesn’t say anything about abortion is a bit of a red herring, at least as far as Catholics are concerned. Not everything we believe need to be mentioned in the Bible explicitly. If Scripture tells us that the pre-born being in the womb of Elizabeth (somewhere between 20-24 weeks) and the pre-born being in the womb of Mary (somewhere between 0-4 weeks) are both persons (Luke 1:26,41) and that directly killing an innocent person is always wrong (Exodus 20:13) then we could conclude that abortion, that is the direct and intentional killing of an infant in the womb of the mother, is wrong. The Bible need not, nor could it list out all the ways that a person might be murdered but can simply articulate the principle in what amounts to a blanket condemnation.
That being said, the premise that the Bible does not mention abortion is also false. In the ancient world, they were not nimble enough to play verbal gymnastics like us. We are fall more sophisticated in the true sense of the word. Even amongst the pagans, abortion was considered to be baby killing. In fact, the device that they used to perform the abortion was called embruosqakths, which means “the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive.” (Tertullian, On the Soul, Ch. 25).
They also used chemical potions to cause abortions, although they were far more dangerous to the mother than using the “slayer of the infant.” This type of abortion is mentioned in Scripture, even if only implicitly. We shall expound on this in a moment, but these potions fell under the broad Greek term pharmakeia, the same term St. Paul uses in Galatians 5:20 and we translate as “sorcery”.
“Likewise, throughout the history of the early church into the middle-ages, there is little to no mention of abortion as a topic of great alarm – from the days of the Old Testament until modern history. Hence, there is no case to be made for a definitive Christian stance throughout history on the spiritual or moral aspects of abortion.”
While it may have been convenient in supporting the point, the connection of pharmakeia to abortifacient drugs was not an exercise in originality, but something that the early Church did when they spoke against abortion. The Didache, written during the Apostolic Age (probably around 70 AD) of the Apostles in expounding on the commandment of love of neighbor it said, “You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions [pharmakeia). You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2). Likewise, the Letter of Barnabas (74 AD), which is a commentary on the Didache says, “thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (19).
We already heard from Tertullian in the 2nd Century, but the list of Fathers who spoke against abortion down to the beginning of the 5th Century reads like a who’s who of Patristic teachers: Athenagoras of Athens, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome. It is also included in the twenty-first canon of the Council of Ancyra and among the Apostolic Constitutions. In other words, it is hard not to stumble upon a condemnation of abortion among the Early Church Fathers, unless of course you don’t actually look.
Given the unbroken teaching to Apostolic times, abortion was a settled issue and we should not expect to hear about it much unless it is challenged (that is why St. John Paul II included the infallible statement of the Ordinary Magisterium in Evangelium Vitae). The relative silence of the Middle Ages is a non-sequitur for that reason—it was a settled issue within Christendom and thus did not need to be defended or expounded upon much.
The Augustinian Exception?
Among those Church Fathers listed above there is one notable exception: St. Augustine. He is notable not because of his silence but because of the fact that he is often quoted out of context. The Huffington Post author does the same thing quoting him as saying: “The law does not provide that the act (abortion) pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation.” Not surprising she doesn’t cite the source of the quote which would enable us to establish context, but it comes from a commentary on Exodus 21. Taken in context Augustine is asking whether, given the primitive embryology of his time, whether abortion before the 40th day after conception could be classified as homicide or not. In his mind abortion was still a grave evil no matter how old the infant, but he wasn’t sure whether it should be classified as murder.
To cite this is really disingenuous, for the author knows it is based upon an ancient understanding of human development. She knows that modern embryology has established that there is sensation long before the 40th day after conception. Anyone who has seen an ultrasound image (or has watched the movie Silent Scream) can easily attest to that truth. Unless the author of the article is willing to accept the primitive thinking of the 5th Century, then this is actually an argument against abortion. If Augustine has access to modern technology, then he would have concluded that it was murder at any stage.
“I’m not saying abortion cannot be an important issue to a Christian, but there is no scriptural or historical backing for it to be the number one issue, at the expense of the ‘least of these’ who are suffering now.”
This line of reasoning really sets up a false dichotomy that pits poverty against abortion. This is recycled secular thinking. There are those who suffer because of destitution, and we ought to do what we can to alleviate that, but that does not mean you may alleviate it by reducing the number of mouths that need to be fed. Why couldn’t the same argument be applied to the already born children of the poor, or even the poor themselves? One definite way to end poverty would be to kill all the poor people.
As far as it being the “number one issue” is concerned, first we must admit that history is not a repeating cycle in which social ills always occur with the same frequency and intensity. Perhaps destitution was a greater threat to human thriving than abortion was in ancient Rome or in the Middle Ages, but that does not mean it is still a greater threat. In fact, we could argue that destitution (“poor” is a relative term and actually a Christian value, destitution is an objective measure) is at an all-time low. What is not at an all-time low however is the number of innocent lives being snuffed out through abortion every day to the tune of about 125,000 per day worldwide (and this doesn’t include the number of abortions caused by birth control pills which could double or even triple that total). Abortion, because it involves so many, all of which are the most vulnerable and voiceless, is by far the greatest injustice in the world today. They are “’the least of these’ who are suffering now.”