Ambrose (c.340-397)

 
Church Fathers

Indeed there are those women who cut off the word prematurely born/aborted, before they give birth, there are those who have Christ in the womb but they will not yet have formed (him), to whom it is said: my children, whom I desire to bring forth again and again until Christ be formed in you.


Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, lib. 10, line 252 [private translation]


 


But why the eye or the hand, since the aborted child has both a hand and an eye which has already been formed?


-Ambrose, Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, lib. 10, line 283 [private translation]


 


And elsewhere the same Ecclesiastes, being an old man, guarded him better whom his mother had cast out by abortion, because he did not see these bad things which they make in this world, he neither came into these shadows nor walked in vanity, and for that reason he who did not come into this life will have more of a rest than he who came.


- De bono mortis, cap 2, par. 4, line 11


 


The poor get rid of their small children by exposure and denying them when they are discovered. But the rich also, so that their wealth will not be more divided, deny their children [when they are] in the womb and with all the force of parricide, they kill the beings of their wombs [while they are] in the same fruitful womb. In this way life is taken away from them before it has been given.


-Hexameron V.18.58 [private translation]


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