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Order of Contents
Articles 2
Quotes 2
Video & Images 3
Latin 1
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Articles
1500’s
Hall, Joseph – 2nd Decade, Case 3, ‘Whether may it be Lawful, in Case of Extremity, to Procure the Abortion of the Child, for the Preservation of the Mother?’ in Cases of Conscience Practically Resolved Containing a Decision of the Principal Cases of Conscience of Daily Concernment & Continual Use Amongst Men: Very Necessary for their Information & Direction in These Evil Times (London, 1654)
Hall was a godly, Anglican bishop; he gets the answer right.
All parties, including medical workers, ought to seek the preservation of both mother and child. It is morally possible, in order to prevent the mother’s death, to deliver the baby (either naturally or by C-section). There is a legitimate ethical difference between letting a baby die who cannot live (which ought to be done in such a case), versus actively killing the baby. It is also legitimately, ethically better to save either the mother or the baby, than to let both die. In some cases the mother might be able to live long enough, unto her death, in order to bear a baby that will live outside of the womb.
“Others (Rodr., Sum., Tome 1, ch. 5, de Abort.) more probably hold that if the case be utterly desperate, and it be certain that both mother and child must undoubtedly perish if some speedy remedy be not had, it may then be lawful to make use of such receits [receiving treatments] as may possibly give some hopes to save the mother, though not without some peril of the child. But all this while the intentions and indeavours must be no other than preservatory, however it pleases God to order the events:
Shortly, no man that purposely procures an abortion, as such, can wash his hands from blood; No woman that willfully acts, or suffers it (however the secrecy may exempt her from the danger of human laws) can think to avoid those judgments of the righteous God, which he has charged upon murderers.
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But withal, let me advise you, (with Martinus Vivaldus, Mart. Alphons. Vivald., Expli. Bull Crue.) that what I have herein written against the procurers of abortions may not be extended to the practice of those discrete physicians and chirurgeans [surgeons], who, being called to for their aid in difficult and hopeless child-births, prescribe to the woman in travail such receits as may be like to hasten her delivery (whether the child be alive or dead); forasmuch as the conception is now at the full maturity and the endeavor of these artists is not to force an abortment, but to bring forward a natural birth to the preservation of the mother, or the child, or both.” – pp. 96-7, 100
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1600’s
Kellet, Edward – section 4, ‘A Discourse touching aborsives and abortives’ in ch. 6 in Miscellanies of Divinity, divided into Three Books, wherein is Explained at Large the Estate of the Soul in her Origination, Separation, Particular Judgement… (Cambridge, 1635), bk. 1, pp. 98-103
Kellet (1583-1641) was a doctor of divinity and a calvinistic, Anglican, canon in the cathedral church at Exeter.
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Quotes
1600’s
Voetius, Gisbert
Select Theological Disputations, vol. 1 tr. by AI by Onku (Utrecht: Johannes a Waesberg, 1648), pt. 2, ‘On Creation’, pt. 8, ‘On Man’, pp. 264-67 Latin
“IX. Whether, given that some fetuses live an animal life… if indeed we see that they are endowed with touch, it should immediately be established that they are men…
The same thing is asked among the theologians about abortive [including miscarried] fetuses: whether, namely, they are men, and will rise again on the last day? We distinguish between those which lived in the womb of the mother with a human life, and those which did not live. About the former we affirm, about the latter we deny.
Augustine (City of God, bk. 22, ch. 13) does not dare to affirm or deny, but in such a way that he inclines to our opinion. But in the Enchiridion, ch. 85, he openly professes it, and with him [the Venerable] Bede [d. 735] and Philip the Presbyter [fl. 431 at the Council of Ephesus] on Job 3:16. Furthermore, Scripture also mentions the abortive fetus in Eccl. 6:3 and 1 Cor. 15:8.
The case is to be decided with respect to the sixth commandment: Whether the procuring of abortion is homicide? Various authors treat of this case:
First, the commentators on Ex. 21:22-23.
Second, Thomas [Aquinas] and others on [Peter Lombard’s] Sentences, bk. 4, dist. 31.
Third, the casuists on the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, and under the [topical] word “abortion.” The authors are to be compared who write about remaining cases, among whom after all others Francesco Coriolano, a theologian of the Capuchin order, seems to have done this most fully – see him: part 4, case 6, p. 736.
Fourth, the jurists on the Law, “Something,” paragraph “Of abortion,” and on the Law, “Cicero,” Digest, “On punishments,” and on the Law, “If a woman,” and on the Law 3, paragraph “From the decree of the Senate,” Digest, “To the Cornelian law on assassins.” The civil and canon criminal lawyers are to be compared.
Fifth, the [ecclesiastical] canonists who accurately and laboriously inquire into this, on ch. “Moses,” 32, question 2. Their practical criminal lawyers are to be compared, among whom is Diaz with the commentaries of Lopez de Salzedo. And the bulls and constitutions of the Popes, and their collectors, whence new laws can be learned – they are Flavio Cherubini, Agostino Barbosa, and Stefano Quaranta, to be cited by us more often. Of whom the last one noted here many and various things, and indicated other authors.
So that we may now give some taste to students and others who do not have leisure to inquire laboriously into these things, or who do not have the books at hand, we set down these conclusions:
1st conclusion: An accurate determination of the case presupposes and requires the knowledge of physicists and physicians about the time when the fetus is animated by a human soul, so that it may be rightly judged whether homicide properly so called has been committed or not.
From Ex. 21:22-23 we are taught that a distinction is to be applied here. Although among [Roman] Catholics even if some doubt should intervene in thesis or hypothesis, nevertheless they think that should be established which is safer, as Quaranta warns, cited place. “The fetus,” he says, “is said to be animated in a male after forty days, in a female after eighty; and if it is doubted whether it is male or female, it is to be presumed to be animated after forty days. Navarrus in the Manual for Confessors, ch. 15, n. 14, because in doubt the safer part is to be chosen, and it is the common opinion, which the sacred penitentiary follows,” etc. The recent casuist Eligio Basseo follows the same opinion, and Coriolano, cited chapter, who nevertheless in ch. 5 distinguishes between the rational soul and the vegetative and sensitive soul, and wants the case to be understood only of animation by the rational soul.
2nd conclusion: That the procuring of abortion, when the fetus is not yet animated, and the procuring and inducing of sterility is a most grave sin against the natural production of men and the propagation of the human race, and cannot be made honest by any good end, Navarrus establishes in his Manual, ch. 16, n. 33.
Whatever to the contrary other casuists, cited by Basseo, Azor, Bonacina, Diana, the annotators on Toletus, etc., except and distinguish under various distinctions dangerous enough here. See Gen. 38:7 and there Cornelius a Lapide in his commentary. For it prevents a human fetus from being conceived, or a conceived one from being animated, which is against Gen. 1:28.
3rd conclusion: Whether in the external forum, both political and ecclesiastical, such an abortion or procuring of sterility is homicide, complete and strictly so called, and is consequently to be punished by an equal penalty with the procured abortion of an animated fetus, is doubted.
The bull of Sixtus V in the year 1588 seems to affirm this, which you have in the Bullarium of Cherubini and in the constitutions of Quaranta. But the bull of Gregory XIV in the year 1589 revokes that and reduces the penalties to the terms of the common law of the sacred canons and the Council of Trent.
But the penalties in the political forum (as Cherubini indicates in his notes on the aforesaid bull) are exile or another chosen penalty according to the quality of the deed and persons, as the civil and canon criminal lawyers teach, cited in the same place. Coriolano, in the cited place, says: “If the author of the crime is noble, having lost part of his goods, he is relegated; but if ignoble, he is condemned to the mines. Digest, On Punishments, Law, ‘If anyone something,’ paragraph ‘Of abortion.’” The more recent casuists and canonists now follow this milder opinion of Gregory XIV, as can be seen in the authors just cited. The Mosaic law seems to suggest and supply some distinction, Ex. 21:22-23. See the commentary of Cornelius a Lapide. Although he is not freed from homicide in the interior forum of conscience before God, where the occasions, beginnings, progymnasms of homicide, even remote and internal ones, are analogically reduced to homicide.
4th conclusion: One who kills an animated fetus by procuring abortion commits true and properly called homicide, because every composite of body and human soul is a man.
Thus Coriolano rightly from the canonists, cited case, paragraphs 2, 3, and he taxes those who lightly say the contrary. For there are among the more recent authors those who in certain cases concede the procuring of abortion through a potion which directly tends to the health of the mother, although it was doubtful that the killing of the fetus would follow. Thus Thomas Sanchez. There are also the dangerous disputations of others, which see in Azor, vol. 3, bk. 1, ch. 4, question 1.
5th conclusion: It is homicide to procure the abortion of an animated fetus, when it is doubted whether the fetus is animated. In the papacy most teach that [the state of] irregularity is incurred by such a one, because he is doubtful whether he is a murderer. [Rom. 14:23]
Diana nevertheless holds the contrary, who for himself cites from the canonists Praepositus and Gomesius. Coriolano distinguishes, cited chapter, n. 4:
“But if it is doubted about the animation of the fetus – whether a religious giving or procuring a potion for abortion, or advising or lending assistance, incurs irregularity? I respond that in the contentious forum, where the question is about punishment, interpretation ought to be made in the milder part: Law, ‘By interpretation,’ Digest, ‘On punishments.’ But in the forum of the soul, where the question is about placating God and amendment, one ought to consider himself a murderer, because in such matters the safer way is to be chosen, as in ch. ‘A young man,’ on betrothal, and it belongs to good minds to fear fault there where there is no fault: ch. ‘To his hearing’ at the end, dist. 5, argument from ch. ‘To his hearing,’ on homicide. See Navarrus in the Manual, ch. 27, n. 223.”
6th conclusion: That all those procuring and advising abortion in any way whatsoever are held by this crime, the bull of Sixtus V establishes, and rightly so.
7th conclusion: That those are held by the same crime who, although they do not indeed directly or immediately inflict death by a potion or in some other way, but procure that the infant be brought forth into the light before the time, so that it cannot be vital.
8th conclusion: Likewise those who have procured abortion by a potion or in some other way, as much as is in them, although the [fatal] effect [to the fetus] has not followed on account of some impediment. Thus Coriolano, and rightly.
9th conclusion: That abortion can be procured in various ways – by potion, cudgel, burden, through magic and sorceries – and consequently this crime is greater or lesser, but is always homicide.
Coriolano proposes doubtful cases there: Whether a cleric introducing a pregnant harlot through the roof, who by falling dies or aborts, becomes irregular; and whether a cleric who jokes or dances with a pregnant woman who aborts becomes irregular. And to both he responds affirmatively. But these and similar things are to be aired elsewhere.”
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1800’s
The Presbyterian Digest of 1886
“This Assembly regards the destruction by parents of their own offspring before birth with abhorrence as a crime against God and against nature and as the frequency of such murders can no longer be concealed we hereby warn those that are guilty of this crime that except they repent they cannot inherit eternal life.
We also exhort those who have been called to preach the gospel and all who love purity and the truth and who would avert the just judgments of almighty God from the nation that they be no longer silent or tolerant of these things but that they endeavor by all proper means to stay the floods of impurity and cruelty.”
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Contemporary Video, Images & Article
Beautfiul Video of Life in the Womb, 3:40 min.
10 Beautiful Images of Human Life in the Womb
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Latin Article
1600’s
Voet, Gisbert – ‘On abortion, babies that repulse from liquid, the malformed, dead humans and the exposing of infants’ in Select Theological Disputations, vol. 4 (Utrecht, 1667), 50. ‘A Syllabus of Questions on the Decalogue’, ‘On the 6th Commandment’, p. 800
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Related Pages
On the Timing of Ensoulment in the Womb, including with respect to Christ’s Incarnation & Gestation