Demonstrators voiced differing opinions on the abortion issue outside the Americana Hotel in New York in June 1973, the year abortion was legalized in the United States by the Supreme Court.

AP FILE

The controversy between Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy over Kennedy’s assertion that he is “no less a Catholic” because of his support for abortion rights may lead to the impression that opposition to abortion is primarily a Catholic concern.

But that view would ignore the reality that nearly all the anti-abortion laws on the books in most states prior to the Supreme Court’s legalization of abortion in 1973 were put there by Protestant lawmakers, some at the urging of physicians groups and by such early feminists as Susan B. Anthony, who saw abortion as “child murder.”

Still, there is no question that the Catholic Church has a long history of opposition to abortion dating to the first century.

Prof. Paul Gondreau, who teaches courses on marriage and early church history at Providence College, a private Catholic school, says the opposition springs from an innate human sense that the murder of the innocent is a heinous evil that is always wrong.

The commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” he says, gives expression of that idea, but is also reinforced by other words in scripture that describe human life as a gift of God.

As Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1995 encyclical, the Gospel of Life: “All human beings, from their mother’s womb, belong to God who searches them and knows them, who forms them and knits them together with his own hands, who gazes on them when they are tiny shapeless embryos and already sees in them the adults of tomorrow whose days are numbered and whose vocation is even now written in the ‘book of life.’ ”

Gondreau, who has taught extensively on the natural law writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, acknowledges that some medieval scholars, including Aquinas, had theorized that a human embryo might not acquire its human soul until 40 days after conception. But he said Aquinas and others would be aghast to see that theory used to justify abortion since they, too, saw abortion as wrong, beginning at conception.

Gondreau says that notwithstanding philosophers’ questions on when the soul enters the body, the life in the womb must always be protected and treated with respect.

“The pro-choice argument operates on the assumption that it is not a human being, but they have no way of proving that.

“That’s important because if a hunter in a forest sees an object moving in front of him, he certainly shouldn’t shoot unless he’s sure it’s an animal, not a man. If you don’t know, you have to give it the benefit of the doubt.”

Gondreau notes that the Catholic Church has been consistent in holding that abortion is wrong regardless of the circumstances.

The church says an unborn child resulting from rape or incest is still an innocent human being whose life must be protected, regardless of how the child was conceived. The same holds for an unborn child that doctors believe will have birth defects.

Along the same lines, he says, the church teaches that caregivers may never directly kill a fetus in order to “save the life of a mother.”

But under the principle of “double effect,” they could be permitted to employ procedures that lead indirectly to the death of a fetus, even though that’s not intended — such as a pregnant woman who undergoes radiation or chemotherapy in her battle with cancer although she knows that the unborn child may not survive the treatment.

Over the centuries, the church has attempted to underscore the gravity of abortion by imposing the penalty of excommunication on its participants.

That’s because, Gondreau said, protecting the weakest and most vulnerable is central to what society should be about.

“In America, we all are endowed with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty and [pursuit of] happiness. Well, when politicians get that wrong, when they can’t affirm that the most vulnerable should be protected, they call into question the basis of a just social order.”

rdujardi@projo.com