The Church has been condeming abortion since its inception January 24, 2013
Posted by tantamergo in Abortion, awesomeness, Basics, catachesis, contraception, General Catholic, Grace, horror, Papa, self-serving, sexual depravity, true leadership, unadulterated evil.trackback
My fellow parishioner Taylor Marshall has a post up that reminds us that, like all Dogmatic beliefs, the Church’s vehement opposition to abortion has been the constant belief of the Church for 2000 years. In fact, one of the very earliest non-biblical documents of the earliest Church, the Didache, includes this condemnation of abortion (and certain other sins which have suddenly become culturally approved. I note that the Didache was written between AD 70 and 90, it’s one of the very earliest Church documents, and is believed to be a repository of the belief of the Apostles):
The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic or use potions. You shall not procure abortion, nor destroy a new-born child. You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods. You shall not perjure yourself. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not speak evil. You shall not bear malice….
It is fascinating to me, that in this list, which obviously contains much from the Decalogue, there are a few specific additions to that most basic code of moral living God has given to us. The first is that one shall not seduce boys, which, in the context where this was written, was a command to men not to engage in homosexual acts. Then there are the comdenmnations of black magic, potions and spells – something that sadly is making a comeback in our pagan culture. Then there is the condemnation of abortion. In the same league as murder and all the other worst sins. Not a right. Not a choice. A grave immorality, the gravest of sins. Abortion and infanticide were both widely practiced in the Empire at this point. Rather like our own empire……
Similarly, Taylor Marshall’s post quotes Pope Sixtus V, in the first Papal Bull specifically condemning abortion (Effraenatam, 1588):
The Holy Father lists the dreadful means for procuring an abortion in his day. He describes the methods as “blows, poisons, medicines, potions, weights, burdens, work and labor imposed on a pregnant woman, and even other unknown and extremely researched means.” He also speaks of contraception as potions used to prevent conception.Here’s a quote against abortionists found in Effraenatam:“Noticing that frequently by various Apostolic Constitutions the audacity and daring of most profligate men, who know no restraint, of sinning with license against the commandment “do not kill” was repressed; We who are placed by the Lord in the supreme throne of justice, being counseled by a most just reason, are in part renewing old laws and in part extending them in order to restrain with just punishment the monstrous and atrocious brutality of those who have no fear to kill most cruelly fetuses still hiding in the maternal viscera. Who will not detest such an abhorrent and evil act, by which are lost not only the bodies but also the souls?”
Taylor asks a most prescient question – why do we not see the same kind of language used to condemn abortionists today? Or do we? If you’re Randall Terry, this doesn’t apply! But for the rest of us, I think terms like “abhorrent and evil act” are most apropos and should be in general use regarding baby murderers. I also think we should spend much more time focusing on how much damage is done to the souls of the abortionists, and how much they risk eternal damnation if they do not repent and desist from their wanton blood lust.
But in today’s world and Church, such damning language, once a staple of Papal denouncements of immorality, are almost totally forbidden. In fact, making such pronouncements can quickly have one condemned more vociferously than the abortionists themselves. And that’s pretty messed up. Sometimes, it takes a hard slap across the face to shake people lost in sin from their demonic stupor. I, for one, would welcome much more of the harsh old language – even if directed at myself.
Slap me around and tell me what a prideful prig I am! Or whatever….you get the point.
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Although I am not a doctor, I spent six years as an EMT/Firefighter. The Hippocratic Oath that was written ages ago has a passage for doctors to respect all human life. As EMT’s, we were taught in training (late 1980′s) to “preserve human life.”
I’ve heard stories of actual ambulance runs (although personally I did not have one of these) where a young college girl’s roommate dispatched EMS for excessive bleeding. You guessed it, it was due to a perforated uterus.
Recently, I saw an episode of the old TV show “Medical Center” that was made in the early 1970′s. A 19 year old girl had died due to septic shock. The girl had an abortion a few days before. “Marcus Welby, M.D.” even did an episode in the early 1970′s that discussed post-abortion trauma. Why did these cases just start coming to light in recent years, when the medical community knew about these things 40 years ago?
Dennis, it seems like you watch old tv shows, like myself … well, it wasn’t until I caught an episode of “Ironside”, where Eve goes undercover to fish-out an illegal abortionist in the community, that it dawned on me: Chief Ironside’s aide is Mark SANGER – and – he’s a black man, one of the races that Margaret SANGER wanted to eliminate through her PP organization!!! I do believe the writer (or someone) was making a subtle statement …!
Did those shows push a pro-abort viewpoint? Were they arguing “if abortion were legal, this girl needn’t have died?”
Ever watch Emergency!?
You must be from my generation. I still remember our 2nd grade teacher having us write a short paper on what we wanted to be when we grew up. Several of us in the class raised our hands and said, “Mrs. Smith, how do you spell paramedic?”
Emergency! was a great show, and EMS instructors and administrators have said that it was a little accident of history that changed the face of the fire and rescue service forever. I went to EMT school not long after I completed high school.
Who controls the news and entertainment media?
In the beginning, the main argument, strongly pushed, was that we needed legal abortion to save women from back-alley butchers. The pro-abortion advocates pushed their figures of deaths/year to make it seem like an epidemic. But as Bernard Nathanson confessed years later: ‘we just made those numbers up.” Now, it may have occurred to some people that if that many women were dying from illegal abortions/year, the mantra of “safe, legal and rare” didn’t make much sense.
Until it was explained that the ‘rare’ would occur when everybody in the country had access to contraception and sex education. Because Puritanical prudes holding everybody back, or something.
But contraception, which would have made ‘every child a wanted child’ often fails, so abortion as a consolation prize for contraception failure was added.
“My life to do with what I want” was kind of kept in the background in the beginning, because it was not a sympathetic argument, but has come to the fore in the last thirty years or so.
Slap in the face? How about a 2×4 over the old noggin.
Did those shows push a pro-abort viewpoint? Were they arguing “if abortion were legal, this girl needn’t have died?”
I’ll answer your other questions here:
1) The Marcus Welby, M.D. episode is titled “A Fragile Possession”. It is about a 19 year old girl whose mother wanted her to have an abortion. Dr. Welby and his associate did there best to talk the mother out of coercing her daughter to have an abortion (the girl wanted to keep the baby). After Dr. Welby and his associate refused to do the abortion (i.e. Dr. Welby did not do the abortion, so this episode was not a pro-abortion viewpoint), the girl’s mother found another doctor, and the girl had a “therapeutic abortion” (I use this term loosely, since it sounded like in the script that a doctor could come up with some medical mumbo jumbo excuse) at a women’s clinic in what looked like an affluent area in Los Angeles. The next day, the 19 year old girl was rushed to the hospital, and Dr. Welby and his associate were forced to remove her damaged uterus due to excessive hemorrhaging.
There was also another Marcus Welby that I saw where an unwed college girl put her baby up for adoption. This episode is titled “Solomon’s Choice”. Part of the episode covered the rights of the father. This was 1972, and the father wanted to raise the child as his own, and found he had no parental rights. There was even a scene where the father is discussing this with a lawyer.
2) The Medical Center episode that I saw was made in the early 1970′s. It wasn’t about legalizing abortion, but it was pretty much on the “pro-contraception side”. The argument was the girl had an abortion because she was embarrassed to go get a prescription for birth control pills. In the script, “The Center” had a student health clinic, and parents had to be notified about prescriptions being dispensed (the age of consent in those days was 21, not 18).
I did see another episode of Medical Center where some doctors wanted one woman to have a “therapeutic abortion”, and Dr. Gannon refused to do the abortion. The woman had a healthy baby girl, and the other doctors learned something from Dr. Gannon.
3) I do remember a “Quincy” episode years ago where a girl died after having an abortion, and I seem to recall Quincy the Medical Examiner getting on his box about “if abortion is done by a competent surgeon, this girl would still be alive.” In the episode, I recall the abortionist being drunk, and I think he ended up losing his license to practice medicine.