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"None of those who have Hell before their eyes will fall into Hell. No one of those who despise Hell will escape Hell.... Nothing is so profitable as to converse concerning Hell. It renders our souls purer than any silver."  

~St. John Chrysostom~

THE CHURCH FATHERS SPEAK - Abortion

Barnabas (100)

The Epistle of Barnabas

Chap. 19 - Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born.

The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (120)

Chap. 2 - Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten.

Athenagoras (177)

A Plea for the Christians

Chap. 35 - Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it.

Tertullian (220)

The Apology

Chap. 9 - 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 its seed.

A Treatise on the Soul

Chap. 27 - How, then, is a living being conceived? Is the substance of both body and soul formed together at one and the same time? Or does one of them precede the other in natural formation? We indeed maintain that both are conceived, and formed, and perfectly simultaneously, as well as born together; and that not a moment's interval occurs in their conception, so that, a prior place can be assigned to either.

Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.

Chap. 37 - The embryo therefore becomes a human being in the womb from the moment that its form is completed. The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion, inasmuch as there exists already the rudiment of a human being, which has imputed to it even now the condition of life and death, since it is already liable to the issues of both, although, by living still in the mother, it for the most part shares its own state with the mother.

Minucius Felix (210)

The Octavius

Chap. 30 - There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth.

Cyprian (200-258)

The Epistles

Epistle 48 - The womb of his wife was smitten by a blow of his heel; and in the miscarriage that soon followed, the offspring was brought forth, the fruit of a father's murder. And now does he dare to condemn the hands of those who sacrifice, when he himself is more guilty in his feet, by which the son, who was about to be born, was slain?