I'm sure you guys have seen this site

[Fight_n_back]

but I just found it and think it a good starting point.

http://www.cbctrust.com/abortion.html#2

Especially this part:

"Evolving Position of the Christian Church
St. Augustine (AD 354-430) said, “There cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation”, and held that abortion required penance only for the sexual aspect of the sin.6 He and other early Christian theologians believed, as had Aristotle centuries before, that "animation", or the coming alive of the fetus, occurred forty days after conception for a boy and eighty days after conception for a girl. The conclusion that early abortion is not homicide is contained in the first authoritative collection of canon law accepted by the church in 1140.6 As this collection was used as an instruction manual for priests until the new Code of Canon Law of 1917, its view of abortion has had great influence.6

At the beginning of the 13th century, Pope Innocent III wrote that “quickening” —the time when a woman first feels the fetus move within her— was the moment at which abortion became homicide; prior to quickening, abortion was a less serious sin. Pope Gregory XIV agreed, designating quickening as occurring after a period of 116 days (about 17 weeks). His declaration in 1591 that early abortion was not grounds for excommunication continued to be the abortion policy of the Catholic Church until 1869.

The tolerant approach to abortion which had prevailed in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries ended at the end of the nineteenth century.7 In 1869, Pope Pius IX officially eliminated the Catholic distinction between an animated and a nonanimated fetus and required excommunication for abortions at any stage of pregnancy.

This change has been seen by some as a means of countering the rising birth control movement, especially in France,8 with its declining Catholic population. In Italy, during the years 1848 to 1870, the papal states shrank from almost one-third of the country to what is now Vatican City. It has been argued that the Pope's restriction on abortion was motivated by a need to strengthen the Church’s spiritual control over its followers in the face of this declining political power.8"

[liberal N proud]

1. The Bazaar part, 2X time for a girl?

the coming alive of the fetus, occurred forty days after conception for a boy and eighty days after conception for a girl.

I don't get it except for the chauvinistic thing that the church has always had.

[Warpy]

2. Misogyny

is the one basic tradition that the church will never let go. This is only one example. Religious men, especially celibate ones, view women as "occasions of sin," and despise them for reminding these exalted men of their own animal natures and desire for sex, something they consider a terrible failing.

So the evils are asceticism, denial, celibacy, projection, and hatred, all of which add up to an abyss of fear and hatred of anything female.

That's why they granted extra time to kill a female fetus. It's why women who had given birth were considered "unclean" for twice as long when they bore girls. It's why a stuffed shirt of a priest once gave a sermon about how the only place for women in a Catholic church was in cleaning it.

However, yes, abortion was perfectly legal until mother church decided that she was losing the baby race against all those other religions out there and forbade it. Most women are sensible enough to ignore her.

[Fight_n_back]

3. Misogyny and cold hearted "practicality"

young boys were thought to be able to perform more difficult labor so if a girl was sickly and may end up costing the family resources then they have an eighty day "extended warranty" time period to evaluate the girl.

In effect, the stated church policy was one of gender choice much like what they accuse liberals of wanting, abortion on demand to choose the baby you want.

[suziedemocrat]

4. In 400 A.D. - how would you know your fetus was a girl?

Wouldn't you need to know if the fetus was a boy or a girl before you had an abortion between 40 and 80 days?

[Fight_n_back]

5. 40 and 80 days AFTER BIRTH

this was a policy of infanticide, the most used method of Birth Control on earth even today.

[suziedemocrat]

6. OH - It says "after conception" in the first post. n/t

[politicat]

7. There were two 40 and 80 day cycles....

One for ensoulment and one for baptism/churching.

Ensoulment supposedly took place 40/80 days after conception, but since the date of conception could not be determined, effectively, quickening was used as the crucial standard. Some communities even shrugged at abortion up to 40 days after quickening, moving the standard from conception to quickening in a bit of practical mechanics. (Specifically, Eastern European Catholic communities, such as Poland and the Czech regions used the 40 days post-quickening for the cutoff for an induced miscarriage without great sin up until the 17th century.)

Then, after birth, there was a 40/80 day lag between birth and baptism/churching. In some communities, mothers were required to be at their children's baptism, so children were not baptised until the 40th or 80th day after birth, giving the parents time to engage in some quiet infanticide if necessary (by starvation, rejection leading to failure to thrive, exposure, overlaying, or other means). Requiring the mother (if alive) to be present at baptism was common in communities where an extra mouth would be a burden, not a blessing, and was more common in times of overpopulation and famine than in times of underpopulation and economic growth. In regions and times of abundance, the mother was less likely to be needed at the baptism, and so godparents would be employed and baptisms took place within a week or so of birth, while the mother was still in recovery.

The point of churching really was to give the mother some recovery time, and bonding time. While in the peasantry this was not generally possible, it did lighten her burdens considerably, since she was not supposed to work in public. Further, it was considered less appropriate for a mother to become very attached to a son, and so churching was held sooner for boys than for girls.

Sexist? What in the middle ages wasn't? But there are worse examples - at least the 40/80 rules had a logical and relatively compassionate reason behind them.