Early Medieval Pharmakeia For Contraception And Abortion
John Thomas Noonan Jr.
(October 24, 1926 – April 17, 2017)
was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Noonan was a prolific and wide-ranging author.
Noonan has written a number of important studies about the interaction of Catholic moral doctrine and law, including comprehensive studies concerning contraception, marriage and divorce, and abortion.
From the Work of
Abortion and the Catholic Church – A Summary History
I. The Context (2nd part)
The reasons for abortion were as various as the means. Soranos notes three: to conceal the consequences of adultery; to maintain feminine beauty; to avoid danger to the mother when her uterus is too small to accommodate the full embryo. Plato and Aristotle thought of abortion as a way of preventing excess population. 2 St. Ambrose was familiar with propertied families who practiced it in order not to divide their patrimony among too many children.3
The morality of practicing abortion was debated by physicians, philosophers, and religious teachers. The Hippocratic Oath was well known with its pledge „not to give a deadly drug [pharmakon] to anyone if asked for it, nor to suggest it. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortifacient pessary. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.” 4 Influenced by the authority attributed to the oath as the work of Hippocrates, some physicians of the first century A.D. refused to prescribe abortifacients for anyone. They also had in mind that „it is the task of medicine to maintain and save what nature has engendered.” 5 Others, like Soranos himself, prescribed abortion only where completion of the pregnancy would endanger the mother. Another writing also ascribed to Hippocrates was cited where he himself told a girl how to accomplish an abortion by jumping.6 In the ideal commonwvealth sketched by Socrates in Plato’s Republic abortion is proposed as a solution to prevent endangering the optimum population of the state; it is impossible to say with what seriousness Plato endorses this suggestion. 7Aristotle also proposes abortion if a couple has too many children for the good of the state, but he does so with remarkable caution, saying it is to be done before there is „sensation and life,” and „what is right depends on the question of sensation and life,” a restriction which in his biology might have permitted only contraception. 8
The Old Testament has nothing to say on abortion, but the Hellenic Jews of the diaspora developed an opinion. The Septuagint translation of Exodus 21.22 provided an opportunity. Where the Hebrew had said that where a man accidentally causes an abortion „life is given for life” only if the mother dies, the Greek read „life is given for life” if the embryo is „formed,” so that an express penalty was provided for the abortion. In his first-century commentary Philo noted that by implication intentional as well as accidental abortion was thereby condemned. Philo himself associated abortion with infanticide and the abandonment of children, practices of inhumanity which he now found regarded „with complacence” by many nations. 9
Abortion, indeed, according to contemporary observers, was practiced very generally in the Greco-Roman world. The divided opinions of a few sages scarcely checked the powerful personal motives which made it attractive. The law of the empire punished abortion committed without the father’s consent. 10 It also punished the giving of drugs for abortion,11 but it is unlikely that the law was enforced unless the recipient died. The object of the law was not to protect the embryo as a human person, for it was regarded as part of the mother.12 The purpose was to restrain „bad example,” i.e., the bad example of giving magical potions which could cause death to the recipient. 13 As pagan observations and Christian complaints indicated, parents’ freedom to dispose of their young offspring was taken for granted by the empire. 14 That the Jews should have children born after their fathers’ wills had been made, when heirs were no longer desired by the parents, was a cause for wonder to Tacitus.15 The Roman upper classes diminished during the empire; the decline was probably due, in good part, 16 to the practice of contraception and abortion. 16 It was in this culture generally distinguished by its indifference to fetal and early life that the Christian teaching developed; it was in opposition and conflict with the values reflected in popular behavior that the Christian word was enunciated. Where some wise men had raised voices in defense of early life so that the question was in the air and yet not authoritatively decided, where even the wisest presented hesitant and divided counsel, where other authorities defended abortion, the Christians purposed a rule which was certain, comprehensive, and absolute.
II. Thr Absolute Valuation, 50 A.D.-450 A.D.
The New Testament and the Early Community. – The specific Christian teaching on abortion developed in a theological context in which the commands of the Old Testament to love God with all your heart (Deuteronomy 6.5).and to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19.18) were singled out as the two great commandments on which depended „the whole law and the prophets” (Matthew 22.40). The standard for fulfillment of these commandments was set in terms of the sacrifice of one man’s life for another (John 15.13) and embodied in the self-sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus told the disciples, „This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15.32). In terms of his example, the commandment was „a new commandment” (John 13.34). The Christian valuation of life was made in view of this commandment of love.
The place of children in the Christian community was broadly established in the words of the Lord, „Suffer little children [paidia] and do not prevent them from coming to me” (Matthew 19.14; Mark 10.14; Luke 18.16). In Luke 18.15, the children the Lord welcomed were expressly described as „newborn babies” (brephe). The ethos of the infancy narratives reflected a high interest in infant and fetal life. The infanticide practiced by Herod and its violent threat to the life of Jesus formed the introduction to the life of the Messiah (Matthew 2.1-18). Mary was described as having in her womb what was „from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1.18). In Luke she was greeted in pregnancy by Elizabeth „as the mother of my Lord,” and the „fruit” of her womb was then described as „blessed” (Luke 1.42). The infant (brephos) in Elizabeth’s womb „leaps” when Elizabeth is greeted by Mary (Luke 1.40).
The interest in the behavior of this holy but not miraculous child of Elizabeth and the interest in the life in Mary’s womb reflected the valuations of a community sensitive to the living character of the embryo, and the Gospel accounts must in turn have enhanced that sensitivity. What was unspoken was in its way as important as what was said in reflecting community valuations, attitudes, expectations. It was not necessary in this community to say that a man who protected the state by killing infants was not a good man. It was necessary to say that the first reaction of Joseph to Mary’s unexplained pregnancy was „to put her away” (Matthew 2.19); it was not necessary to say that his first thought was not to procure an abortion.
At the level of specific moral rule, the Apostle Paul denounced the foolish carnality of the Christian community in Galatia (3.1-6), reminded them that there-was a law which was fulfilled in one word, „Love your neighbor as yourself” (5.14), and set out specific types of behavior which violated this law of love (5.19-21). The works of the flesh included not only „lecheries” and „wraths” but pharmakeia (5.20). Pharmakeia is a term best translated as „medicine” in the sense in which a North American Indian medicine man makes medicine. 17 It is the employment of drugs with occult properties for a variety of purposes, including, in particular, contraception or abortion.18 Paul’s usage here cannot be restricted to abortion, but the term he chose is comprehensive enough to include the use of abortifacient drugs. The association of these drugs with sins of lechery and wrath was indeed a constant aspect of the Christian approach to pharmakeia (the practice of „medicine”) and pharmaka (the drugs employed).
The same association and same comprehensive use of the term appeared in the Apocalypse. The sinners who were not saved „did not repent of their homicides nor their medicine [pharmaka] nor their fornications nor their thefts” (9.21). The pharmakai, the medicine men, were condemned by the Lord with the homicides and the fornicators (21.8). Those outside the heavenly city were „the dogs and the medicine-men and the fornicators and the homicides and the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (22.15) .18
That abortion could have been specifically in the mind of the authors of Galatians and the Apocalypse, and that it was specifically dealt with by the early Christian communities, is established by several contemporary writings. The most important is the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. This ancient and authoritative statement of Christian principles in Syria was composed no later than 100 A.D. and may well have been written much .earlier.19 Here a list of precepts, was given for the instruction of the Christian:
You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not corrupt boys. You shall not fornicate. You shall not steal. You shall not make magic. You shall not practice medicine (pharmakeia). You shall not slay the child by abortions (phthora). You shall not kill what is generated. You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife. Didache 2.2.
In this list of related sins, one sentence expressly prohibited abortifacients. The commands on either side of this sentence dealt with other aspects of the same sin, as the commandments on sexual sins complemented each other. Abortion was ranked as a principal sin included with those sins expressly
named by the Ten Commandments.
In the kernel of the Didache, which is probably its oldest part, the Two Ways, the Way of Life was contrasted with the Way of Death. The latter way was followed by sinners who included those who practice „medicine” and those who are „killers of the child, who abort the mold [plasma] of God.” Again there was a complementary character to the acts denounced: pharmakeia, killing of the child, and abortion. The offense of abortion was seen as an offense against God because it attacked what He had made. It was associated with the sinful use of drugs to prevent birth and with the slaying of the child. It may be that both abortion of the mold and killing of the child were mentioned so that any distinction between formed and unformed fetuses would not provide an escape.
The somewhat later Epistle of Barnabas was based on the Didache and provided a commentary by its paraphrases and additions. It put the commandment on abortion in the Didache 2.2 in this framework:
You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not slay the child by abortions. You shall not kill what is generated. Barnabas 19.5.
The proscription was this related to the love of neighbor. The killing of the fetus to save one’s own life was implicitly rejected.
A third writing is of special relevance to the apocalyptic style. This is the Apocalypse of Peter, a species of apocalyptic literature which „ranked next’ 20 in popularity and probably in date to the canonical Apocalypse of St. John. Here there was a pit of torment for sinners, among them women „who have caused their children to be born untimely and have corrupted the work of God who created them.” The phrasing was close to the „abort the mold of God” of the Way of Death in the Didache. Some of these women had conceived the children in fornication; others had husbands who were punished with them because „they forsook the commandments of God and slew their children.” 21 The offense described was killing what God had made, an offense heightened because it was mothers who had killed their own offspring.
The Fathers.-Later in the second century the writing of the „most learned” of the Fathers, Clement of Alexandria, also contained a statement on abortion. In the Pedagogus Clement, the founder of the first school of Christian theology, sought to present Christ as the supreme educator for Christians and to provide teaching on Christian morality to the turbulent Christian community at Alexandria. He declared that Christians do not, in order to hide their fornication, „take away human nature, which is generated from the providence of God, by hastening abortions and applying abortifacient drugs [phthoriois pharmakois] to destroy utterly the embryo and, with it, the love of man.”22 Here there is the same nexus of ideas found in the first century. Drugs to destroy offspring are associated with lechery. Their use is condemned not merely becatise they furnish an aid to sexual sin or incorporate magic, but because they offend God in destroying what He has shaped and destroy the love of neighbor in destroying the fetus.
The foregoing documents were all addressed to Christian communities containing converts and impressing the new Christian morality upon them. Other evidence of Christian belief is furnished by the Christian claims addressed to the pagans. The contention was made that Christians are „homicides or devourers of men.” The second-century philosopher and Christian convert Athenagoras answered this charge in his apologia for Christianity to the emperor:
How can we kill a man when we are those who say that all who use abortifacients are homicides and will account to God for their abortions as for the killing of men. For the fetus in the womb is not an animal and it is God’s providence that he exist.23
The dedicated Christian defense of life at the embryonic stage seemed to Athenagoras the surest proof of the Christian reverence for life.
Addition By The Editor: Hippolytus
„And the hearers of Callistus being delighted with his tenets, continue with him, thus mocking both themselves as well as many others, and crowds of these dupes stream together into his school. Wherefore also his pupils are multiplied, and they plume themselves upon the crowds (attending the school) for the sake of pleasures which Christ did not permit. But in contempt of Him, they place restraint on the commission of no sin, alleging that they pardon those who acquiesce (in Callistus’ opinions). For even also he permitted females, if they were unwedded, and burned with passion at an age at all events unbecoming, or if they were not disposed to overturn their own dignity through a legal marriage, that they might have whomsoever they would choose as a bedfellow, whether a slave or free, and that a woman, though not legally married, might consider such a companion as a husband. Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing 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! And withal, after such audacious acts, they, lost to all shame, attempt to call themselves a Catholic Church! And some, under the supposition that they will attain prosperity, concur with them. During the episcopate of this one, second baptism was for the first time presumptuously attempted by them. These, then, (are the practices and opinions which) that most astonishing Callistus established, whose school continues, preserving its customs and tradition, not discerning with whom they ought to communicate, but indiscriminately offering communion to all. And from him they have derived the denomination of their cognomen; so that, on account of Callistus being a foremost champion of such practices, they should be called Callistians.” (Hippolytus – The Refutation of All Heresies, 9.12.25 )
Resources
Abortion and the Catholic Church – A Summary History – I. THE CONTEXT; II. THE ABSOLUTE VALUATION, 50, – A.D.-450 A.D.; Pages 85-92.- JOHN T. NOONAN, JR.
Hippolytus – – Refutation of All Heresies (Book IX)
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050109.htm
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