“On a different page today, that royally pissed me off. Sometime in August, twenty years ago, my mother was raped. 9 months later, I came into the world.

When I was 15, my sister told me I was a “rape baby.” Naturally, I didn’t believe her. But my mom confirmed it. And I would just like to say this: I am NOT worth less than a non-rape baby. I am NOT a burden to my mother. I AM wanted, by many. I am NOT emotionally traumatized, I do not blame myself, and I am beyond grateful to be alive. Those women said they were thinking for their children. I can say, for a fact, their children would rather be alive with that knowledge than murdered for something they had no control of.”

via Life Begins at Conception!

Charles Pope, D.C., is compiling a list of quotations from the early church on abortion, which is not a modern invention but was extremely common during the Roman Empire.

He writes:

A couple of years ago a former Speaker of the House, whose name need not be mentioned here at all, showed herself an amateur theologian lacking in even basic knowledge by claiming (on what she called Jesuitical authority) that the Church teaching on abortion was no older than the 1950s. The usually cautious American Bishops lost no time in issuing vigorous correction. And rightly so, of course, as quotes like these will show.

The Didache (“The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”) ca 110 AD. Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion. (2:2)…The Way of Death is filled with people who are…murderers of children and abortionists of God’s creatures. (5:1-2)

Letter of Barnabas, circa 125: You shall not kill either the fetus by abortion or the new born

Athenagoras the Athenian (To Marcus Aurelius), ca 150 AD: “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…, [For we] regard the very fœtus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care… (# 35).

Clement of Alexandria: (circa 150 – 215 AD) Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, if order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings. Paedagogus, 2

Tertullian circa 160-240 AD: For us, we may not destroy even the fetus 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 when you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one: you have the fruit already in the seed. Apology 9:6

Tertullian (circa 160 – 240 AD): …we are not permitted, since murder has been prohibited to us once and for all, even to destroy …the fetus in the womb. It makes no difference whether one destroys a life that has already been born or one that is in the process of birth. Apology (9:7-8)

Tertullian circa 160-240 AD: [John the Baptist and Jesus] were both alive while still in the womb. Elizabeth rejoiced as the infant leaped in her womb; Mary glorifies the Lord because Christ within inspired her. Each mother recognizes her child and is known by her child who is alive, being not merely souls but also spirits. De Aninta 26:4

Hippolytus (circa 170-236 AD): Whence certain women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility and to gird themselves round, so as to expel what was conceived on account of their not wanting to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same time. From “Refutation of all Heresies” 9:7
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A. Scriptures about God’s effecting conception:
Gen. 29:31 – “the Lord opened her (Leah’s) womb”
Gen. 30:22 – “God opened her (Rachel’s) womb”
Judges 13:3-5 – “committed to God from the womb”
Ruth 4:13 – “the Lord gave her conception”
Luke 1:15 – “filled with Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb”

B. Scriptures about God’s involvement in forming unborn:
Job 10:8-12 – “God knit me together with bones and sinews and granted me life”
Psalm 127:3 – “the fruit of the womb is a reward”
Psalm 139:13-16 – “God weaved me in my mother’s womb”
Eccl. 11:5 – “bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman”
Isa. 49:1,5 – “the Lord called Me from the womb…formed Me from the womb”
Jere. 1:5 – “before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I consecrated you”
Luke 1:15 – “filled with Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb”
Luke 1:39-44 – “the baby leaped in my womb for joy”
Gal. 1:15 – “set me apart from my mother’s womb, and called me through grace”

C. Scriptures to consider about alleged “sacredness” or “sanctity” of human life:
Gen. 1:26,27 – “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image’”
Psalm 8:3-8 – “God made man a little lower than God”

D. Scriptures to consider if abortion is murder:
Gen. 9:6 – “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed”
Exod. 20:13 – “you shall not murder”
Exod. 23:7 – “do not kill the innocent or the righteous”
Prov. 6:17 – “God hates hands that kill innocent blood”
Amos 1:13,14 – “God punished those who ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead”
I Peter 4:15 – “do not let any of you suffer as a murderer”

James Fowler
Excerpted from: Abortion, Study Outlines, 1999