The Historic Practice of Abortion and How Ancient Christians Responded

Published in

The Sacred Faith

7 min readJul 1, 2022

Woman with a large, pregnant belly — Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

It’s no secret that the majority of Christians are against abortion, no matter where you look in the world. But nowhere has the issue come to more of a head than in the US recently with the overturning of Roe v Wade, which had made abortion legal across the country. Now abortion is no longer a federal constitutional right, but individual states now have the authority to determine the legality and rulings around abortion.

Christian opposition to abortion in America has always been a heated topic, especially in recent decades, but this isn’t a novelty within the Church in America, or globally, and has been a position of the faithful for about 2000 years. Even before Christianity, Judaism was opposed to abortion and infanticide, until about the 18th century when modernism greatly influenced religious thinking, and abortion became more acceptable in their view.

I’ve had people say to me “why can’t Christians be as progressive as the Jews?” in regards to views on abortion. Being “progressive” is all well and good, but it assumes we’re all intrinsically progressing towards something good or right. I don’t think that disregarding the value of life, and especially that of unborn children is necessarily progressing in the right direction. It baffles me that people think we are taking a step backwards by desiring to preserve the sanctity of life by viewing abortion as a moral issue, not a religious one.

Humans as icons of God

First and foremost, Christians have always held high respect for life and creation, a worldview inherited from Judaism. This is rooted in creation in Genesis where God has made humans in his image, and how we are called to be image-bearers of God; representatives of Him on Earth. But this “imaging” comes with the responsibility of preserving life as something precious, hence why unlawful killing was taken so seriously. We get a glimpse at how seriously God takes this very early on in Genesis 9:5–6,

For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.
Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed, for in his own image God made humans.

You might be familiar with the concept of “icons”; sacred and religious artwork that acts as a representative of the person or object depicted. In the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint or LXX), the creation account of man as an image of God uses the Greek work εἰκόνα where we get our English word “icon” from. This same word and concept is also seen in the New Testament, though often translated as “image”.

Paul makes it clear that while we are icons of Adam now in our fallen state, in and through Christ we shall also be icons of Jesus (1 Cor. 15:49) being renewed back to that original image we were created to be (Col. 3:10) as imagers of God because Jesus is also the icon of God — his exact character and image (Heb. 1:3).

Colossians 1:15
He is the image [εἰκών] of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Hopefully, this explains a little more about why life is seen as precious and something to be protected.

Christian views on abortion, love and charity

Abortion is nothing new though, but the worldview that all life is precious was quite revolutionary in the ancient world. Christianity took this idea and really ran with it more than any other social or religious group of its time. Romans, and others, were often happy to look after their own… and by “their own”, I mean those in the same upper-class social groups who could repay the favour, as “charity” was to increase your own reputation and make people beholden to you. The poor and lower classes were seen as basically worthless and expendable since they could never repay any acts of charity.

This led to the common practice of the time known as “exposing children” — leaving unwanted babies on the side of the road or in rubbish dumps to die of exposure, either to the elements or wild animals. Christians were notorious for collecting and saving these children, adopting them into their own families and the support of the local churches. Tertullian (c. AD 197) speaks of pagans “exposing” their children and how they get taken up by compassionate passers-by if they get found in time. Children were often exposed, Lactantius (c. AD 304) explains, if the parents were “too pious” to strangle their newborn infant!

In 361, Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate wrote a letter to the pagan high-priest Arsacius complaining that the Christians were showing up the state by being too kind to everyone with their acts of charity!

…why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism [Christianity]? […] For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. — Letters of Julian/Letter 22

Christian attitudes towards everyone truly encompassed the commands of Jesus to “love your neighbour” (Lev. 19:18, Matt. 22:39), to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34–35), and to “love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44). This, along with Jesus’ harsh warnings about harming children (Luke 17:2, Matt 18:10–11), spilt over into society and began to reshape it by standing in stark contrast to the accepted behaviour of the day.

In the following years after the Apostles, other early church leaders continued to condemn and stand against the horrible practices their societies did to children, both unborn and born. And they weren’t subtle about it either!

Some of the earliest texts, contemporary to the New Testament, first mention abortion (or infanticide):

You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one who has been born. — Didache, c. AD 50–70
You shall not kill the child by obtaining an abortion. Nor, again, shall you destroy him after he is born. — Epistle of Barnabas, c. AD 70

This attitude towards what was seen as a repulsive and murderous practice continued to be written about and condemned by church leaders for centuries after this too.

[Christians] bear children, but they do no destroy their offspring. — Letter to Diognetus, c. AD 130
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. — Athenagoras, c. AD 175
Although keeping parrots and curlews, the [pagans] do not adopt the orphan child […] they take up the young of birds. So they prefer irrational creatures to rational ones! — Clement of Alexandria, c. AD 195
To hinder a birth is merely a speedier way to kill a human. It does not matter if you take away a life that has been born, or destroy one that is not yet born. — Tertullian, c. AD 197.
Indeed, the Law of Moses punishes with appropriate penalties the person who causes abortion. For there already exists the beginning stages of a human being. — Tertullian, c. AD 210
The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed. […] Women also who administer drugs to cause abortion, as well as those who take poisons to destroy unborn children, are murderesses. — Basil the Great, Letter 188: 2,8; c. AD 374

Conclusion

As you can see by the quotes and dates of when they were written, the high view of the sanctity of life and its relation to being made in the image of God has been the cornerstone of Christian belief for the last 2000 years. Even longer if you take into account Judaism’s history, too.

So it should come as no surprise that even today, Christians generally oppose the practice of abortion and its legality, and have despised modern laws in favour of it, such as the recently overturned Roe v Wade in the United States. There’s a lot more that could be said about the uniquely American situation, and how the country needs better social support to go alongside this decision, but space won’t allow for that here.

In today’s world, this issue has become highly charged and political, and even the worldwide Church isn’t as unified on this issue as it once was, historically speaking. Hopefully, people will come to reconsider their views on this emotional topic. It needs to be viewed as a moral and ethical issue around the life and death of an unborn child, and not merely a religious or political talking point. Neither should it be viewed as an abstract “right” or “healthcare” in which women are given the OK to put an end to the life forming within them, as though it were nothing but a nondescript, featureless “clump of cells”. The foetus quickly develops from any kind of plain cells into something more human within weeks of conception. The brain is beginning to grow at only 16 days and develops more between 6–7 weeks onward when the heart kicks into action too.

I am not so rigid to say there are no exceptions or cases where it truly would fall under the “healthcare” banner (such as ectopic pregnancies etc. where the mother and/or child’s life is endangered). But a new life, and a new body with its own DNA, soul and personhood, is growing from the start of conception. Under normal, healthy circumstances, this is the body that needs consideration when you make choices.

The Historic Practice of Abortion and How Ancient Christians Responded

Humans as icons of God

Christian views on abortion, love and charity

Conclusion

Further Reading

Written by Luke J. Wilson