A Ramble about Abortion and Contraception

Where abortion, and infanticide in general, is concerned, the Church's stance has always been very clear. It actually surprised me when I learned that it was a subject which had been brought up as far back as the first and second centuries because it had occurred to me that it would have been possible in the ancient world. It was something which, when they did discuss it, the Fathers condemned in no uncertain terms.

The Didache, also called the “Teaching of the Twelve”, one of the oldest manuals of Christian practice written between 80 and 140 AD says:

“You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one who has been born.”

Athenagoras, a Christian apologist writing in 175 AD, says this:

“We say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder. And we also say they will have to give an account to God for the abortion. So on what basis could we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being (and therefore an object of God's care)--yet, when he has passed into life, to kill him. We also teach that it is wrong to expose an infant. For those who expose them are guilty of child murder.”

Clement of Alexandria, a Catechetical teacher in Egypt, writes in 195 AD:

“What cause is there for the exposure of a child? The man who did not desire to beget children had no right to marry at all. He certainly does not have the right to become the murderer of his children, because of licentious indulgence.”

Tertullian, a priest from Carthage in North Africa, writes in 197 AD:

“In our case, murder is once for all forbidden. Therefore, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier way to kill a human. It does not matter whether you take away a life that has been born, or destroy one that is not yet born.”

There are other more graphic descriptions which they bring up and unanimously condemn, but the point is made pretty clear. There is no excuse or reason for someone who professes to be a Christian to either have an abortion or kill the infant after it is born either by directly killing it or through neglect by leaving it to the elements by the side of the road.

The irony of the ancient argument for the practice fascinates me to no end. In Roman society, it was argued that the father had the right to choose which offspring lived and which died or was left to fate. Fathers strangled their newborn children if they chose not to accept them. Fathers could decide if their wives had abortions. Fathers could leave the new infant by the side of the road for anyone to pick up, and often did. If these children were picked up, they were usually raised as sex-slaves and prostitutes, and it is observed by one Church Father who abhorred the practice that fathers often had intercourse with their abandoned children unknowingly. “Pro-choice” in this case had nothing to do with the mother's choice, but the father's, and the ancient pagan Romans could be decidedly pro-choice.

I was reading an article online, as I often do, that mentioned the number of abortions of unwanted pregnancies in the world, citing a study done by the World Health Organization. Apparently, most, if not all, of such abortions happened in developing countries, and it said that 40% (near half) of all American women will have had an abortion by the age of 45. It also cited the study as saying that the abortion rates in countries with restrictive abortion laws was no different from the rates in countries. In other words, it didn't matter if abortion was outlawed, women still went to get them done regardless in the same number as women in countries where abortion was cheap and easy to get. The only difference is that the abortions performed illegally were done in unsafe and unsanitary conditions which threatened the woman's health and life.

What this information tells me is that it doesn't matter if a country completely outlaws it. People who want the abortion done will find a way to get it done, even if they have to take matters into their own hands. This tends to be true of “prohibition” laws regardless of what you're prohibiting, be it alcohol, drugs, tobacco, or even infanticide. If someone believes they should have the right to do something, they'll find a way to do it. An unwanted pregnancy has a way of making someone desperate enough to take those kinds of actions. Condemning the person for the actions which led to the unwanted pregnancy really doesn't help because it doesn't change the fact of the pregnancy, it only pushes them away and they go and get the abortion regardless.

The truth is that you can't legislate the Christian rule of life on those who don't profess Christ. The Roman Church keeps trying. Historically, the Roman See has continued to confuse the rule of the Church with the rule of the State. This has a lot less to do with being salt and light than it does with holding on to earthly political power. It started with the collapse of the western Roman empire when the Church had to take on the functions of the State because the civil government was weak, corrupt, and ineffective. The Bishop of Rome took on the role of the head of State in practice if not in name (at that time). The eastern empire, and hence the eastern Church, never had those issues (there was an eastern Patriarch that attempted to exert authority over the Emperor. He was deposed, and I think he was executed for his trouble, but that's another story). History uses the Roman Church's administration again and again as the poster child for not mixing Church and State. To this day, the Roman Church would like nothing better than to return to the place of political power it once held.

The Roman Church has decreed for its members that they can't use contraception of any kind. That is their prerogative. I even understand why, and don't fully disagree. But this prohibition extends to the members of the Roman Church as part of the religious rule of Roman practice. It should not be enforced or expected of those people who are not members of the Roman Church. Rome's misunderstanding here is that it tends to act as though everyone is a member of the Roman Church whether they want to be or not, they just don't know it yet.

Here's the argument that the person who wrote the article made, the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. The best way to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies is to make contraception freely available. The counter argument being proposed by those who profess to follow Christ in some way is that the best way to reduce unwanted pregnancies is to prevent sexual relations. I don't think anyone would seriously disagree that fewer instances of sexual relations would result in fewer pregnancies, unwanted or otherwise.

For the Christian, this makes sense. Our goal in life is union with God, not our own indulgence in sexual pleasure. But it really doesn't make sense to expect those outside of the Church to accept chastity. They have neither the reason nor the ability to accept it. And like with every other case of enforced prohibition, they won't accept it. There was a point in time when Rome, while under the political rule of the Vatican during the middle ages, was known as the city of harlots because of the tens of thousands of harlots in the city. This is just the disorder in the human psyche at work. You forbid something, the psyche demands to find a way to do it. You forbid sexual intercourse outside of marriage, the psyche will find a reason why it has to do so. When alcohol was outlawed in the twenties, alcohol sales and use went up, not down. When sex was socially prohibited and looked down on in the fifties, the sexual revolution happened for the next three decades. So, if we attempt to enforce chastity on those who have no reason to embrace it, the number of unwanted pregnancies will go up, and so will the number of abortions.

If we really want to bring Jesus and demonstrate Jesus to those outside of the Church, and if we want to reduce the number of infanticides practiced, than we need to look at this thing from a practical standpoint. We need to show some compassion and help those outside of the Church avoid those unwanted pregnancies altogether without demanding they submit to a religious rule they have no reason to keep.

Someone here might bring up adoption. To this, I would say don't bring up adoption unless you are ready and willing to adopt right then and there. Adoption is prohibitively expensive in the US, and all too often adoption is encouraged in ignorance. In reality, the chances of a kid being adopted out of the foster system are slim to begin with, and they get worse the older the child gets. To make matters worse, it seems like most of the kids who go into the foster system get shuffled around so much, they have severe emotional problems if they reach adulthood (and I do mean “if”). Many of them are horribly abused, sexually and otherwise in the foster system. In reality, it's somewhat comparable with the Roman father abandoning his infant to the Fates on the side of the road.

Our goal towards these matters, as with anything we do in the pursuit of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, needs to be to demonstrate the love and compassion of God flowing through us towards the other person no matter who it is. The question we must ask is how best can we love this person without submitting them to standards they can't hope to meet? The best way to avoid the slaughter of an unwanted infant is to allow for the reasonable prevention of the conception of that infant to begin with. Contraception isn't the absolutely best way for a person to go, but as we seek to demonstrate the compassion of Christ to those who don't know Him, it's the best compromise possible.