America’s pagan ritual

By Joseph Beaudoin

Pro-choice advocates regard “a woman's right to choose” as a civil right. To them, Roe v. Wade is an expression of the separation of church and state. The history of the Roman Empire shows that “a woman's right to choose” is simply America's version of an inhuman pagan ritual.

In ancient Rome, fathers had the legal right to kill their offspring before or after birth. That right was called the patria potestas , the supreme jurisdiction of the father. At the time, the punishment for a mother who killed her child was death.

Romans practiced infanticide – the killing of infants – on a large scale.  In addition to the patria potestas, the Twelve Tables of Roman Law literally stated that deformed infants had to be killed.  As there was no Roman Surgeon General, one can assume that the term, “deformed,” was loosely defined to fit any circumstances.

In the ancient world, infanticide was not limited to Rome. It was a generally accepted practice for all pagan cultures from Greece to Carthage to Asian civilizations. Alone, among ancient people, were the Jews whose law prohibited infanticide, although it did permit abortion.

It is clear that Romans did not have, for human life, the respect we claim to have for it today. They, however, understood murder and usually punished it by death. Yet, they permitted the killing of newborn babies on an industrial scale. How did they legally reconcile the conflict between punishing murderers with death while letting parents kill their babies with total impunity?

The legal foundation of infanticide was the pagan belief that infants were not human beings until some time after their birth. In Rome, that period of time was seven days. In other words, Romans defined human life in such way as to legally permit the continued practice of their only full-proof birth control method: the killing of infants.

The rise of Christianity began a pro-life revolution within the Roman Empire.  From its earliest days, Christianity regarded abortion and infanticide as murder and prohibited them without reservation.  Christianity’s challenge of Roman law did not go unpunished.  Christians were persecuted.

By the 5th century, with the majority of the population of the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, infanticide became less common.  It did not disappear, however, but it was no longer legally permitted.  Following the fall of Rome, as ecclesiastical law became the foundation of European legal systems, the Christian notion of the sanctity of human life was established in law throughout Christendom. This was one of Christianity's greatest contribution to humanity as absolute respect for human life was a sine qua non requirement for the development of democracy.

To be fair to the Romans, there were extenuating circumstances for infanticide. Birth control methods were limited in availability and effectiveness. Poverty, famine, pestilence, wars, etc. often made it quite hard for a family to feed an additional mouth.  And, most significantly, the high rate of infant mortality from natural causes played a role in the belief that infants were not human beings until they had proven their ability to survive long enough outside the womb.

Regardless, the scale of the carnage was staggering.  Historians estimate that 20% to 40% of pagan infants were victims of infanticide.  As horrific as these numbers may be to Americans, these numbers show that infanticides were no more common in Rome than abortions are today in America.

In 2005, there were 1,370,000 abortions and 4,138,349 births in the United States. Based on that year, American women abort about 25% of pregnancies. Romans, who did not have access to current birth control methods, killed 20% to 40% of infants. In addition, Romans did not know that a fetus could survive outside the womb several weeks prior to birth and grow to be an adult human being.  Romans did not have the medical equipment to assess the extent to which, at a certain stage, a fetus meets virtually all the characteristics of a newborn. Perhaps Roman infanticides resulted from poverty and ignorance.

Unlike Romans, Americans have access to a plethora of birth control technologies and Americans know that a fetus can survive as an infant several weeks before birth. Yet, Americans practice their own brand of infanticide at about the same rate as the Romans did, and for the same reason, namely, the destruction of unwanted children.  Indeed, over 90% of American abortions are performed for birth control purposes.

Finally, Roman infanticides and American abortions are based on the same legal premise. Roman law did not recognize the humanity of infants and American law does not recognize the humanity of the unborn.

Roe v. Wade has simply replaced the patria potestas with the matria potestas — the supreme power of the mother. While Romans felt the father had the right to kill his newborn, the Supreme Court of the United States feel the mother has the right to kill her unborn child.

Roe v. Wade, by legalizing a pagan principle, violates the separation of church and state.

-Joseph Beaudoin holds degrees in economics and finance, and worked in the banking and investment industries for 20 years. He is a regular contributor to Reflections.