Tertullian’s attitude towards the human foetus and embryo

Abstract

Much of the current scholarship on Tertullian’s attitude towards offspring in utero has examined the issue in light of the modern abortion debate. Traditionally, modern commentators on the history of abortion have discussed passages from Tertullian concerning the unborn child in isolation, paying no attention to their original context. Such reductionism has resulted in a diminution of Tertullian’s attitude towards the unborn child to a simplified dogma. Scholars have frequently constructed Tertullian as an absolutist opponent of abortion at all stages of pregnancy, overlooking the finer subtleties of his views. This thesis provides a more accurate picture by examining Tertullian’s rhetorical aims, his deft use of Greco-Roman medical sources, and his engagement with Christian and Roman cultural preconceptions regarding the foetus and embryo. Tertullian’s views on the unborn child should be considered in the context of his aims and methods as a writer of rhetoric. When Tertullian’s treatises are analysed in terms of their rhetorical structure, it becomes clear that abortion was never an over-riding concern for him. Rather, he used abortion and the figure of the unborn child to help prove or disprove specific arguments, none of which related to abortion directly. This study also considers the context of previous Christian writing on the status of the human embryo and foetus. When placed alongside earlier patristic authors, it is clear that Tertullian borrowed his denunciation of abortion as a form of infanticide from a pre-existing Christian tradition. Several Christian sources prior to Tertullian, such as the Didache, Clement of Alexandria, and Athenagoras had denounced abortion as an act of homicide on the basis of Scripture. Tertullian was innovative, however, in that he was the first Christian writer to construe abortion explicitly as murder for the entire duration of gestation. Though Tertullian was not the first Christian writer to argue against abortion, he was the first to incorporate ideas from medical authors in his rhetoric, especially Soranus of Ephesus. Yet Tertullian did not consistently follow any particular paradigm of prenatal development. Instead, he alternately borrowed, adapted, and rejected embryological theories according to their usefulness to support his arguments. At times, he freely borrowed from Aristotle’s theory of generation, arguing on this basis that the embryo only gained personhood during the process of gestation. Finally, the thesis argues that Tertullian’s condemnation of abortion owed something to the pagan as well as Christian world. As a Roman author, Tertullian wrote in a literary culture whose attitude towards abortion was overwhelmingly negative. Although Tertullian presented himself as being hostile towards Roman tradition, he often borrowed the Latin trope where women who defied their husbands were characterised as practitioners of abortion. Moreover, Stoic opposition to abortion perhaps influenced Tertullian. It is also highly unlikely that Tertullian influenced the emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla regarding the legality of abortion. This study thus demonstrates that, in order to understand Tertullian’s attitude towards unborn children fully, his works must be analysed in context and against the backdrop of Roman family tradition.