Catholic Teaching on Abortion: Unchanged and Unchanging.

If "Things the Catholic Church Opposes" were a category on Family Feud, you can bet the Number 1 audience answer would be "Abortion." Consistently, forcefully, and universally, the Catholic Church has condemned killing unborn children for nearly two millennia. Its persistence in explaining the moral gravity of abortion has even led some to mistakenly accuse it of being a "single issue" church.

But some prominent Catholics appear confused about their Church's opposition to abortion. They suggest that whether abortion is wrong has been a matter of theological debate and division throughout history, and therefore, that Catholics are free to customize their beliefs and actions (including legislative votes) based on what they think a favorite theologian said.

Others argue that the Catholic Church opposes abortion on the basis of its "religiously based view" that human life begins at conception. And so, they argue, it would be wrong to "impose" this sectarian belief on persons of other faiths in our pluralistic society. This is just silly. When human life begins is an objective, indisputable fact of science, not faith, acknowledged by atheists and believers alike (except sometimes when they're struggling to justify abortion).

Today the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) is a sure guide for inquiring Catholics and others as to what the Church teaches: "Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, the human being must be recognized as having the rights of a personamong which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life" (CCC, 2270). No mincing of words there!

The Catechism continues: "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable ..." (CCC, 2271).

A short review of early Christian sources is enough to show the constancy of Christian teaching on abortion. The earliest widely used statement of doctrine and practice in Christianity outside Sacred Scripture, dating from the late first or early second century, is the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles). It contains this injunction: "Do not kill a fetus by abortion, or commit infanticide" (2:2), then relatively common practices in the Greco-Roman world.

The second-century Letter of Barnabas reiterates this command: "You shall not murder a child by abortion, nor kill it after birth."