[3][7] Some early Christian texts nonetheless condemned abortion without distinction: Luker mentions the Didache, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Saint Basil.
This would be the Catholic Church's position until 1869, when the limitation of automatic excommunication to abortion of a formed fetus was removed, a change that has been interpreted as an implicit declaration that conception was the moment of ensoulment.
[28] It has been commented that "the LXX could easily have been used to distinguish human from non-human fetuses and homicidal from non-homicidal abortions, yet the early Christians, until the time of Augustine in the fifth century, did not do so.
Though this view was confirmed by St. Gregory of Nyssa a century later, it would not be long before it would be rejected in favour of the Septuagintal notion that only a formed fetus possessed a human soul.
[31] According to some, the magnitude of the sin was, for the early Christians, on a level with general sexual immorality or other lapses;[4] according to others, they saw it as "an evil no less severe and social than oppression of the poor and needy".
[33][34] These methods were often used also when a pregnancy or birth resulted from sexual licentiousness, including marital infidelity, prostitution and incest, and Bakke holds that these contexts cannot be separated from abortion in early Christianity.
But church councils, such as those of Elvira and Ancyra, which were called to specify the legal groundwork for Christian communities, outlined penalties only for those women who committed abortion after a sexual crime such as adultery or prostitution.
[55][56][57] In the 13th century, physician and cleric Peter of Spain wrote a book called Thesaurus Pauperum (Treasure of the Poor) containing a long list of early-stage abortifacients, including rue, pennyroyal, and other mints.
[1] Bakke writes, "Since an increasing number of Christian parents were poor and found it difficult to look after their children, the theologians were forced to take into account this situation and reflect anew on the question.
[25][26] Nonetheless, he harshly condemned the procedure: "Sometimes, indeed, this lustful cruelty, or if you please, cruel lust, resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain before it was born.
Neither Martin Luther nor John Calvin wrote any individual work discussing the question of abortion in particular, though both argued, "in fragmentary passages, for the full humanity of the fetus from its earliest stage.
"[65] While lecturing on Genesis 25:1–4, Luther noted: God wanted to teach and attest that the beginning of children is wonderfully pleasing to Him, in order that we might realize that He upholds and defends His Word when He says: "Be fruitful."
[66] In 1542, Luther wrote a pamphlet in which he distinguished between women who suffer miscarriages through no fault of their own and "those females who resent being pregnant, deliberately neglect their child, or go so far as to strangle or destroy it.
"[67] And in a 1544 letter, Luther strongly condemned a woman who had been a guest in his house for, among other reasons, asking his maid to "jump on her body in order to kill the fetus.
"[68] John Calvin, in his commentary on Exodus 21:22, wrote: [T]he fœtus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, (homo,) and it is almost a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy.