Abstract

The Christian tradition has always taken a generally negative view of abortion, but the moral basis and perceived implications of this negative view have varied greatly. In the early Church abortion and contraception were often seen as broadly equivalent, both involving interference with the natural reproductive process (and an association with sexual immorality which even led some to see contraception as the more sinful of the two). But the tendency to conflate abortion with contraception, and even on similar grounds with male masturbation, declined in the face of the biological discovery of the mother's role as more than just an incubator for the male "seed" - with the recognition of conception as a distinct and crucial event, abortion became generally seen as morally far more serious than contraception, potentially involving threat to an innocent life and therefore, arguably, equivalent to homicide. When seen as homicide, abortion has naturally been subject to an almost total prohibition, the only generally agreed exception being where it is necessary to save the mother's life. Within the Roman Catholic communion, moreover, even this exception has tended to be countenanced only when sanctioned by the doctrine of double effect - where the abortion is not directly intended, but is only a foreseen but unintended consequence of a surgical intervention whose primary intention is to save the mother's life (e.g. the removal of a cancerous uterus or of a fallopian tube containing an ectopic pregnancy).