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1 results

  • 11 - Popes, Contraception, and Abortion

  • from Part II - Women, Gender, Sexuality
  • Edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, University of Rhode Island, Robert A. Ventresca, King’s University College at Western University, Melodie H. Eichbauer, Florida Gulf Coast University, Miles Pattenden, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Papacy
    Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025, pp 330-348

  • Summary

    The modern papacy emerged from the clash with the values of Enlightenment and the pope’s loss of temporal power. In a way, popes established themselves as a renovated source of moral authority on bioethics. This chapter aims to trace the history of papal pronouncements on contraception and abortion. It examines the historical roots of Christian sexual ethics from antiquity. It focuses on the early modern origin of the questions concerning the beginning of life and on the modern idea of immediate ensoulment. It shows how modern medical knowledge and eugenics contributed to a new view of reproduction as separate from sexuality, which called into question the traditional sense of marriage and gender roles. In this context, in which anti-modernism certainly played a role, popes condemned birth control, abortion, and women’s emancipation, revealing a huge hiatus between the experience of laity and the inflexible authority of the Catholic Church.