When the Papacy Allowed Abortion

Considering the terrible events I cannot help but remember these things mentioned in a previous post.

Appendix F contains these words concerning Catholicism's views on abortion.

From the fifth century onward, Aristotle's view that the embryo goes through stages from vegetable to animal to spiritual was accepted. Only in the final stages was it human. Thus Gregory VI (1045-6) said, "He is not a murderer who brings about abortion before the soul is in the body." Gregory XIII (1572-85) said it was not homicide to kill an embryo of less than 40 days since it wasn't yet human. His successor, Sixtus V, who rewrote the Bible, disagreed. His Bull of 1588 made all abortions for any reason homicide and cause for excommunication. His successor, Gregory XIV, reversed that decree. In 1621 the Vatican issued another pastoral directive permitting abortion up to 40 days. As late as the eighteenth century the Church's greatest moral theologian, St. Alphonsus de Liguori, still denied that the soul was infused at conception and allowed for flexibility, especially when the mother's life was in danger. Finally, in 1869, Pius IX declared that any destruction of any embryo was an abortion and merited excommunication--a view that remains to this day. (Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast, pp. 519-520.)