In his silly column on Henry Morgentaler’s Order of Canada award, published yesterday in the National Post, Colby Cosh included this categorical—and wrong—statement about historical views on abortion.

The idea that abortion is morally equivalent to murder is just as absent from the history of the world before the 1960s as is the bold, proud, above-board abortionist.

Douglas Farrow, who teaches Christian thought at McGill University, quickly called him on it, citing the 2nd-century apologist Athenagoras, who wrote:

[T]hose women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder . . .

But that wasn’t the end of it: Mr Cosh refused to acknowledge his error and continued digging himself into a hole.  Commenting on Dr Farrow’s post, he insisted that canon law, Ss. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and English common law did not view abortion as murder—as if the fact that some authorities did not equate abortion with murder means that no authorities did so.

Farrow then rejected Cosh’s simplistic understanding of canon law and the thought of Thomas, and adduced another pre-1960s person who called abortion murder: German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945).

But Cosh couldn’t stop digging.

Perhaps it would be helpful if I concede that a few scattered individuals have doubtless expressed the view that abortion is equivalent to murder (and it has very, very occasionally even been treated that way by the secular authorities of Christian countries!); I just don't think cherry-picking Z-grade second-century apologists is really the most relevant way of conducting the inquiry.

Whereupon Farrow threw in several more witnesses, only one of whom lived in the second century: Tertullian, St Basil, and St Chrysostom.  (One could also add to that list Ss. Jerome and Ambrose.)

As of this writing, Cosh has not replied.  For the sake of his journalistic integrity, he needs to admit he was wrong and, in future, be more careful about making categorical statements.

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