Plato On Abortion

Abortion is a very touchy and seems to be a very recent issue in today’s society, but it is interesting to know that abortion is actually an age-old issue. It’s been actually a bigger issue before than it is now; abortion has been hiding in the shadows of larger issues and has passed through the centuries rarely noticed and discussed. It is noteworthy to see what the early church and society thought about abortion and why they believed the way they did. Abortion has recently been a big issue and has been an area for debate in recent years and has built up many campaigns for both sides of the issue. In the topic it will be important to fully understand every aspect of the issue in Patristic Age; looking into the medical advances, the church …show more content…
While there is no consensus on whether the matter of abortion was moral or not, in the pagan world it seem to lean more in favor of abortion being okay. Some more namely figures that spoke on this from the pagan world would be Plato and Aristotle. Plato was a man who spoke of abortion as necessary when a woman hits a certain age.

“…we grant all this, accompanying the permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange accordingly.” (Plato Republic)

Here he is saying that as long as the parents of the child understand that they must take care of the child if they are going to continue to have children after a late age. Aristotle would agree with Plato but take it even further to say that abortion can be used to create the best human being there is. So without a doubt Greek society was more concerned with how abortion would affect the family and not with the actual child itself. (Gorman, …show more content…
Mainly being preformed by pagans the most popular way to have an abortion at this time was through medicines (poisons), surgery, but most popular and effective was punching and kicking of the stomach. Normally this was okay according to Roman law because the baby was not legally a person until the head a household would claim it, so any time until then the baby could be killed. At this time they had practices that were called “pessaries” where someone would induce substance directly into the birth canal and kill the fetus. There were also ways of taking medicines but more commonly called “poisons” that would destroy the membranes of fetuses and kill the babies inside. Next would be the crudest step by using medical instruments to expel the fetus. They most often used a method where they would bind the woman’s stomach or beat her stomach to get the fetus to die. They also even used instruments where they forcefully hook the fetus and pull it out of the womb. (Gorman,