Knife

I am looking fo a good history concerning the views of the catholic church on abortion for the past 2000 years. I have found some essays, but nothing that gives me a good overview.

Any suggestions?

mikem

A good start would be the article on "Abortion" in the Catholic Encyclopaedia at http://www.newadvent.org unless you have already seen it?

Knife

I had read that recently. I didnt find it very thorough when concenring history. And as usual with the Catholic Encyclopedia, you get just as much theology as you do history.

I have read other essays that list quotes from saints and popes, that seem to have a diffferent opinion than the catholic church today on abortion, which are not even dealt with in the catholic article.

On a side note, I re-read the article anyway and I noticed this:

However, if medical treatment or surgical operation, necessary to save a mother's life, is applied to her organism (though the child's death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked. Moralists agree that we are not always prohibited from doing what is lawful in itself, though evil consequences may follow which we do not desire. The good effects of our acts are then directly intended, and the regretted evil consequences are reluctantly permitted to follow because we cannot avoid them. The evil thus permitted is said to be indirectly intended. It is not imputed to us provided four conditions are verified, namely:

That we do not wish the evil effects, but make all reasonable efforts to avoid them;
That the immediate effect be good in itself;
That the evil is not made a means to obtain the good effect; for this would be to do evil that good might come of it -- a procedure never allowed;
That the good effect be as important at least as the evil effect.
All four conditions may be verified in treating or operating on a woman with child. The death of the child is not intended, and every reasonable precaution is taken to save its life; the immediate effect intended, the mother's life, is good -- no harm is done to the child in order to save the mother -- the saving of the mother's life is in itself as good as the saving of the child's life. Of course provision must be made for the child's spiritual as well as for its physical life, and if by the treatment or operation in question the child were to be deprived of Baptism, which it could receive if the operation were not performed, then the evil would be greater than the good consequences of the operation. In this case the operation could not lawfully be performed. Whenever it is possible to baptize an embryonic child before it expires, Christian charity requires that it be done, either before or after delivery; and it may be done by any one, even though he be not a Christian.

Seems to put a precedence on the baptism of the unborn baby over the mother's life. There is no way I can make myself think that way.

mikem

Well there's no reason you should think like that unless you were a Catholic, and would therefore have to believe that baptism was essential to remove the stain of original sin and allow the baby into heaven. The mother presumably is already saved by baptism, and her death is only a transition to a better state. Better to let her die then, so the baby can be saved both physically and spiritually.

Knife

Absolutely, it just struck me as very odd.