Jerome: "Drugs to procure abortion"

"I CANNOT bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother.... You may see many women widows before wedded, who try to conceal their miserable fall by a lying garb. Unless they are betrayed by swelling wombs or by the crying of their infants, they walk abroad with tripping feet and heads in the air. Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder."

~St. Jerome: Letters 22, To Eustochium, para. 13 (A.D. 396).


Artwork: St. Jerome in his Study, by Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Fresco, 1480; Ognissanti, Florence.