History of Abortion Exhibit Now Open!
- Abortion Museum
- Oct 7, 2025
- 6 min read
We’re honored to announce the opening of The History of Abortion exhibit, an in-depth exploration tracing how societies throughout time have viewed and justified the taking of unborn life. Divided into two distinct sections, Pre-Modern and Modern Era, this exhibit guides visitors from the ancient world’s early medical practices and rituals to the political, cultural, and ideological movements that shaped today’s debates. Through historical evidence, faith perspectives, and moral reflection, The History of Abortion invites you to journey through humanity’s complex relationship with life, and to rediscover the enduring truth that every life is sacred.
History of Abortion (Pre-Modern)
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Abortion in Ancient Civilizations
From Egypt’s early medical texts to Greece’s philosophical debates and Rome’s pragmatic laws, ancient civilizations often treated abortion as a practical or social matter rather than a moral one. These early societies reveal both humanity’s curiosity about life and its tragic willingness to end it for convenience, control, or superstition. From child sacrifices to Moloch to the Incan Capacocha rituals, cultures across history sought prosperity at the cost of innocent lives. Yet even in these ancient practices, traces of conscience, laws protecting the unborn and moral warnings in Scripture, hint at the universal truth that life begins in the womb and deserves protection. This exhibit invites visitors to reflect on how the disregard for life in the past continues to echo in modern times, urging a return to recognizing every human being as sacred and irreplaceable.
Early Christian Views on Abortion
In a world shaped by Greco-Roman pragmatism and patriarchal control, early Christianity stood as a radical defender of life. From the first centuries, believers rejected abortion, infanticide, and child sacrifice, proclaiming that every human being, born or unborn, was made in God’s image. Foundational texts like the Didache and the writings of Tertullian, Athenagoras, and Basil of Caesarea condemned abortion as murder and established the Church’s unwavering pro-life ethic. Christians not only opposed destructive cultural norms like Rome’s patria potestas but also acted with compassion, rescuing abandoned infants, supporting widows and mothers, and founding the first hospitals and charitable institutions. Their faith-driven care transformed societies steeped in death into communities of mercy and dignity. Through their courage and conviction, the early Church laid the moral foundation for the enduring belief that life, at every stage, is sacred and worthy of protection.
Abortion in Medieval and Renaissance Europe
From the early medieval period through the Renaissance, Europe’s understanding of abortion evolved under the growing influence of the Christian Church. Early laws, once lenient and rooted in Roman custom, were gradually transformed as theology, philosophy, and law united to affirm the sanctity of life. Thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas shaped the moral debate, condemning abortion as a grave sin while wrestling with concepts like ensoulment and “quickening.” By the High Middle Ages, both Church and state had criminalized abortion, reflecting a unified Christian ethic that valued life from conception. During the Renaissance, this conviction deepened through the Counter-Reformation, culminating in Pope Sixtus V’s 1588 papal bull Effraenatam, which declared abortion homicide at any stage. Art and humanism of the era, from Giotto’s Last Judgment to Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, mirrored this reverence for life, depicting humanity’s divine origin and moral accountability. Together, faith, philosophy, law, and art shaped a culture that saw every life as sacred, weaving the defense of the unborn into the very fabric of European civilization.
Abortion in the New World
Across Indigenous North America, women’s health knowledge, kept by elders, midwives, and healers, included herbal and physical methods to prevent or end pregnancy, practiced within community norms but often risky. As colonial pressures and Christian missions grew, some nations shifted: the Cherokee formally banned abortion in 1826, while others, like the Seneca, saw gradual restrictions under outside legal influence. In the colonies, English common law drew a line at “quickening,” tolerating earlier abortions while condemning later ones; remedies were typically managed quietly by women using midwife-passed herbs. After independence, states moved from custom to statute, tightening rules before and after quickening, driven by religious reform movements, the professionalization of medicine, and social concerns about family and nation-building. Meanwhile, America’s constitutional framework encouraged a slow secularization of public life, relocating debates from theology to medicine and law. Together these forces transformed abortion in the New World from private, community-regulated practice to a contested matter of statute, science, and public morality, setting the stage for the modern era.
History of Abortion (Modern Era)
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Secularization and the Legalization of Abortion
Beginning with the Enlightenment, Western culture steadily shifted from a religiously anchored ethic to a secular, rights-based framework that elevated reason, science, and individual autonomy. In the 19th–20th centuries, secular theories (Comte, Durkheim), medicalization, and eugenics currents reframed moral debates in non-theological terms, while feminist and liberation movements, organized campaigns like NARAL, mass protests, and court strategies, translated “choice” into law. A global legalization wave followed (e.g., USSR, UK 1967, Roe v. Wade 1973; later reversals and limits in places like Germany and the 2022 U.S. Dobbs decision), revealing deep tension between autonomy-centric norms and the pro-life conviction that human life is sacred from conception. The Sexual Revolution, the separation of church and state, and post-WWII human-rights language further normalized abortion within public policy, even as pro-life voices argued for a holistic ethic that protects both mother and child. Seen together—philosophy, activism, jurisprudence, globalization—secularization recast abortion from a private moral question into a defining cultural and legal fault line of the modern era.
The Roe v. Wade Era
In 1973, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling located a constitutional right to abortion in a broad “right to privacy,” striking down many state bans and introducing the trimester framework. Roe reshaped American law and culture, galvanizing pro-choice activism around autonomy and access, and energizing a growing pro-life coalition (notably evangelical and Catholic) that challenged Roe’s constitutional basis, its viability/trimester scheme, and its marginalization of state interests in protecting unborn life. Over the next five decades, legal scholars and faith leaders mounted sustained critiques while politics, courts, and public opinion polarized around abortion. In 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturned Roe, returning abortion policy to the states and creating a patchwork of protections and permissions nationwide. The Roe-to-Dobbs arc marks a defining chapter in U.S. history, where constitutional theory, moral conviction, and lived realities collided over the question of life and liberty.
Planned Parenthood
Founded in 1916 by Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood began as a small birth control clinic aimed at empowering poor women but was rooted in the era’s eugenics and Social Darwinist ideology. Sanger’s advocacy intertwined reproductive choice with population control, particularly targeting marginalized groups she viewed as “unfit.” From these controversial beginnings, the organization expanded into a national and global network promoting contraception, abortion access, and “family planning” through the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Over the decades, Planned Parenthood’s influence grew, bolstered by federal funding, political lobbying, and close alignment with the Democratic Party, but so did criticism. Pro-life advocates cite its ongoing abortion practices, disproportionate presence in minority neighborhoods, and ethical controversies like the 2015 fetal tissue scandal as evidence of a legacy that undermines the sanctity of life. While Planned Parenthood continues to frame its mission as advancing reproductive health and equality, its history and operations remain deeply divisive, symbolizing the moral conflict between autonomy and the protection of the unborn.
Abortion in Modern Politics
Abortion stands at the heart of America’s deepest political and moral divide. Once a topic of limited partisanship, it has evolved into a defining issue separating Democrats, who largely defend abortion as a fundamental right, and Republicans, who generally frame it as a moral imperative to protect life. Over decades, powerful advocacy groups on both sides, from Planned Parenthood and NARAL to the National Right to Life Committee and Susan B. Anthony List, have shaped laws, elections, and public opinion through lobbying, activism, and media influence. The 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, intensified this polarization, pushing abortion debates to the state level and into the digital age, where social media amplifies both awareness and hostility. Rising political violence primarily from the left, radical activism, and moral confusion now mark the national landscape, revealing a country torn between autonomy and sanctity, choice and conscience. This exhibit challenges visitors to look beyond politics, to confront the moral question at the heart of the debate: will America remain divided by convenience and ideology, or rediscover the courage to uphold the sacred value of every human life?
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