Supporting Abortion Means Rejecting Christ, Church Fathers Say

Some Christians want to advocate for abortion and keep their faith. The testimony of the early Church cries foul.

(This article will continue to be updated as more quotes are found)

There is a persistent myth that the Church can accept abortion without contradicting her doctrine. The Bible is clear on this issue, but so is Church consensus. The Church has always rejected abortion. While the argument for Church-accepted abortion is easily refuted, it persists and must be addressed, as it remains blasphemous against Christ and His Bride.

This post compiles brief research on the Church's earliest views regarding abortion (a practice common in ancient Rome), providing Patristic quotes exclusively, as Saints and Society focuses on Patristic theology. As will be proven, historic orthodox Christianity undeniably upholds the sanctity of life in the womb and stands firmly against abortion.

The evidence against abortion is so undeniable that if someone claims to be a Christian and is pro-choice, they are either ignorant, confused, or not truly Christian. Supporting abortion is heretical and fundamentally anti-Christ.

This article draws extensively from Michael Gorman's research in Abortion & the Early Church, a highly recommended resource for understanding Pagan, Jewish, and Christian perspectives on abortion in the ancient Roman Empire and earlier times.

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Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD)

"Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the matter completely dead, abort at the same time their human feelings."

Athenagoras (133-190 AD)

"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? For the same person would not regard the fetus in the womb as a living thing and therefore an object of God’s care [and then kill it].… But we are altogether consistent in our conduct. We obey reason and do not override it."

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Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

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Tertullian (160-230 AD)

"In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the foetus 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 man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed."

"In this matter the best teacher, judge, and witness is the sex that is concerned with birth. I call on you, mothers, whether you are now pregnant or have already borne children; let women who are barren and men keep silence! We are looking for the truth about the nature of woman; we are examining the reality of your pains. Tell us: Do you feel any stirring of life within you in the fetus? Does your groin tremble, your sides shake, your whole stomach throb as the burden you carry changes its position? Are not these moments a source of joy and assurance that the child within you is alive and playful? Should his restlessness subside, would you not be immediately concerned for him?"

"They [John and Jesus] were both alive while still in the womb. Elizabeth rejoiced as the infant leaped in her womb; Mary glorifies the Lord because Christ within inspired her. Each mother recognizes her child and each is known by her child who is alive, being not merely souls but also spirits....Thus, you read the word of God, spoken to Jeremias: “Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee.” If God forms us in the womb, He also breathes on us as He did in the beginning: “And God formed man and breathed into him the breath of life.” Nor could God have known man in the womb unless he were a whole man. “And before thou camest forth from the womb, I sanctified thee.” Was it, then, a dead body at that stage? Surely it was not, for “God is the God of the living and not the dead.”"

Minucius Felix (died 235 AD)

"And there are women who swallow drugs to stifle in their own womb the beginnings of a man to be—committing infanticide before they give birth to the infant."

Hippolytus (160-236 AD)

"Women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same time!"

The Council of Elvira (305 AD)

While these Canons may, on the surface, seem to speak only of infanticide, they are applied to abortion by later writers, such as in the Council of Ancyra and by Basil the Great.

"Canon 63: If a woman becomes pregnant by committing adultery, while her husband is absent, and after the act she detroys [the child], it is proper to keep her from communion until death, because she has doubled her crime."

"Canon 68: If a catechumen should conceive by an adulterer, and should procure the death of the child, she can be baptized only at the end of her life."

The Council of Ancyra (314 AD)

"Canon 21: Women who prostitute themselves, and who kill the children thus begotten, or who try to destroy them when in their wombs, are by ancient law excommunicated to the end of their lives. We, however, have softened their punishment, and condemned them to the various appointed degrees of penance for ten years."

Basil the Great (330-379 AD)

"She who has deliberately destroyed a fetus has to pay the penalty of murder. And there is no exact inquiry among us as to whether the fetus was formed or unformed. For, here it is not only the child to be born that is vindicated, but also the woman herself who made an attempt against her own life, because usually the women die in such attempts. Furthermore, added to this is the destruction of the embryo, another murder, at least according to the intention of those who dare these things. Nevertheless, we should not prolong their penance until death, but should accept a term of ten years, and we should determine the treatment not by time, but by the manner of repentance."

"Moreover, those, too, who give drugs causing abortion are [deliberate murderers] themselves, as well as those receiving the poison which kills the fetus."

Ambrose (349-397 AD)

"The wealthy, in order that their inheritance may not be divided among several, deny in the very womb their own progeny. By use of parricidal mixtures they snuff out the fruit of their wombs in the genital organs themselves. In this way life is taken away before it is given.… Who except man himself has taught us ways of repudiating children?"

"It is written: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and in the genitals of your mother I sanctified you” (Jer 1:5). To inhibit your rashness, you are made to notice that the hands of your maker are forming something in the womb into a man."

Jerome (347-420 AD)

"Some, when they learn they are with child through sin, practice abortion by the use of drugs. Frequently they die themselves and are brought before the rulers of the lower world guilty of three crimes: suicide, adultery against Christ, and murder of an unborn child."

Apostolic Constitutions (380 AD)

"Thou shalt not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten. For every thing that is shaped, and hath received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed."

Augustine (354-430 AD)

"Sometimes, indeed, this lustful cruelty, or if you please, cruel lust, resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain before it was born."

John Chrysostom (347-407)

"Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? where there are many efforts at abortion? where there is murder before the birth? for even the harlot thou dost not let continue a mere harlot, but makest her a murderer also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then dost thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine. Hence too come idolatries, since many, with a view to become acceptable, devise incantations, and libations, and love-potions, and countless other plans. Yet still after such great unseemliness, after slaughters, after idolatries, the thing [fornication] seems to many to belong to things indifferent, aye, and to many that have wives, too."

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All dates are estimates.