I have been told that the church didn’t specifically say abortion was a no-no until the 19th century. I’m not disagreeing with your point, but I am wondering what backs that idea, since I’ve heard it many times over the years. If you know, or anyone else knows about this specific point, let me know.
Abortion was condemned way back in the Didache, which was written around AD 80.
There have been arguments back and forth over the years about whether early abortion was morally identical to murder, or was some lesser (but still serious) sin. The position that abortion is a serious sin has been essentially constant teaching since the beginning.
The Church has always said that abortion is a “no-no.” The confuse arises from a difference of opinion about the severity of the offense. Some theologians accepted the embryology of Aristotle, which had it that the soul did not enter the body until the “quickening’” This theory was held until the 1840s when the nature of conception was first clearly understood. Until this time, physicians had been accustomed to solve female problem by givng them drugs that “loosened the menses,” But after a Belgien scientist actually observed the union of a rabbit sperm with an ovums and the beginning of the borth process, physicians realized they had actually been producing abortions. Consequently state medical associations began pushing for laws that prevented such treatments. The Texas law struck down by Roe V. Wade was enacted at the instigation of the TMA. The Church’s position was simply a recognition of where the science pointed to, which affirmed the Church’s ancient position that all life was sacred, and that the pagan practices of abortion and infanticide were abominations. Even the Justinian Code, enacted by a Christian emperor, had not banned abortion, but the new science made it clear that avoiding abortion was not just simply a very pious act but the proper basis for law. Incidentally, the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception went hand in hand with this new awareness. If God became man at the moment of the Annunciation, than all humans come into being at the moment of their conception.
“I have been told that the church didn’t specifically say abortion was a no-no until the 19th century. I’m not disagreeing with your point, but I am wondering what backs that idea, since I’ve heard it many times over the years. If you know, or anyone else knows about this specific point, let me know”
I don’t know the specifics - or the dates here. But I suspect it has something to do with not being able to pronounce definitively on something where actual knowledge was limited.
In understanding the nature of how conception occurs, how embryos develop into fetuses, and how fetal development proceeds until birth -these are things that are fairly “recent” in how we understand them.
There was never a moral question about whether it's the crime of homicide to deliberately kill a living human being. There did remain a fact-question concerning embryology: when can we know that there is a living being in the woman's womb?
Until fairly recently, there was no way to know until the woman felt movement.
Even a few centuries ago, the common medical guess was that the father's semen coagulated in the womb, like curds forming in milk, stuck together in clumps until it formed a baby-shape about as big as a walnut, and then the baby-shaped clump came alive and started kicking mama!
So, knowing that any sabotage of God's work in the creation of new life is morally wrong, the Church said that the destructive interruption of pregnancy at any stage is always a serious sin; and additionally, if you knew that the baby was alive, it's murder.
Since the discovery of DNA and the observation that fertilization constitutes Day One of every human person's lifespan, the Church (being reality-based) teaches that all embryo-killing is murder.