The early Church existed in a time where abortion and infanticide were commonplace in Roman and Greek society.  In Roman law, abortion and infanticide were considered the same.  An infant did not have legal status until the head of the family accepted it. Until that time, the child could be destroyed (A History of the Roman People, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1984, pages 35-38).  Cicero records that in the Twelve Tables of Roman Law, "deformed infants shall be killed" (De Legibus 3.8). 

 

Basically, you can say that the child in these societies had no inherent right to life before or after birth.  However, both the Jewish and Christian thinking during the first century period regarded a child's life in its early stages as a human being and abortion was wrong.  Flavius Josephus, a first century Jewish historian, recorded in his works, "The law, moreover enjoins us to bring up all our offspring, and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child, by destroying a living creature, and diminishing humankind." (The Works of Flavius Josephus translated by William Whiston; Philadelphia, 1966, page 374-375)

 

Early Christian literature condemned abortion and infanticide.  The Didache, a second century catechism, instructs not to murder a child by abortion or to kill a newborn infant (Didache 2:2).  Athenagoras, when defending Christians before Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 177 stated, "What reason would we have to commit murder when we say that women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give account of it to God? . . . The fetus in the womb is a living being and therefore the object of God's care" (A Plea for the Christians, 35.6).  

Keep in mind that the Bible does not make a distinction when it refers to born children and unborn children.  These are innocents and the Bible clearly prohibits the killing of innocent people.  Any honest individual would have to agree with Camille Paglia, who is pro-choice, an atheist, and libertarian, when she wrote in her September 10, 2008 Salon column, "Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful."  Abortion is nothing less than the extermination of the powerless (in this case innocent) by the powerful, and the Bible is very plain about in its teachings on the shedding of innocent blood. 

Charles Royal

Decatur AL