THE EFFECTS OF ABORTION ON BRITISH SOCIETY

                         by Anthony Fisher, O.P.

It's good to be alive

From the beginning Christians opposed abortion. However they differed over
embryology and sanctions, they were convinced that all abortions and
infanticide were wrong. This marked them out from many of their
contemporaries. This was probably behind the New Testament anathemas
against sorcerors, for abortifacients were one of the principal poisons
they provided. Within a century even clearer denunciations came forth in
the <Didache>, the <Epistle of Barnabas>, and thereafter from the pens of
Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Basil, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine.
This attitude continued throughout the middle ages and beyond the
Reformation: Luther and Calvin were every bit as opposed to abortion as
their Catholic contemporaries. And in modern times the popes and bishops
have been unequivocal: abortion--to quote Vatican II--is an abominable
crime.

Where did all this come from? Partly from Judaism. The God of the Bible is
a living God who communicates his life to all living creatures, above all
to the pinnacle of his creation, human beings. Human beings are accorded
great dignity, created uniquely as God's image and likeness as little less
than gods themselves, intimately known by him, joined to God as in a
marriage covenant, destined and oriented to him as their ultimate goal. In
the Scriptural view of things, life is a trust given into our stewardship
by God; we are called to choose life not death, and the ways of life not
of death; any killing demands justification and the taking of human life
is always contrary to God's law and to that trust. No one should assume