IOW, abortions BEFORE the 40 day cut-off were NOT BANNED. And therefore could be considered a form of contraception.?
If they were all alive today they would all be excommunicating each other and the whole of the RCC would disintegrate. Infallibly of course.
Yes, that is because they didn’t know that conception was the point at which a child becomes a child.
They hadn’t even seen what conception was at that point. No one had demonstrated it. It’s not like you could take a petri dish out and do an in-vitro fertlization to demonstrate conclusively that conception was the decisive point.
The clear point is that after 40 days, abortion was banned. So clearly the Church did reject abortion during the period when they believed that the child was a child.