Barbabas, The Epistle of Barnabas 14:11 (2nd c.) "Thou shalt not destroy thy conceptions before they are brought forth; not kill them after they are born."
The Didache or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (a 2nd century catechism for young converts to teach them the 'way of life' and 'the way of death') "You shall not slay a child by abortions."
Clement of Alexandria, Pedagogus (2nd c.) "For those who conceal sexual wantonness by taking stimulating drugs to bring on an abortion wholly lose their own humanity along with the fetus."
Tertullian, The Problem of Abortion, p. 14 (2nd c.) "For us, since homicide is forbidden, it is not even permitted, while the blood is being formed into a man, to dissolve the conceptus in the uterus. For to prevent its being born is an acceleration of homicide, and there is no difference whether one snuffs out a life already born or disturbs one that is in the process of being born. For he is also a man who is about to be one, just as every fruit already exists in the seed."
Athenagoras (a 2nd c. philosopher answering a charge that Christians were cannibals because they ate the body and drank the blood of Jesus Christ) "How could we kill a man - - we who say that women who take drugs to procure abortion are guilty of homocide and that they will have to answer to God for this abortion? One cannot at the same time believe that the fetus in the womb is a living being - - as such in God's care - - and kill one already brought forth into the light."
Martin Luther "Surely at such a time (conception), the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed."
John Calvin "The fetus carried in the mother's womb is already a man; and it is quite unnatural that a life be destroyed of one who has not yet seen its enjoyment. For, it seems more unworthy that a man be killed in his home rather than in his field because for each man his home is his safest refuge. How much more abominable ought it to be considered to kill a fetus in the womb who has not yet been brought into the light."
John Weemse (17th century Protestant theologian) “It is a great cruelty to kill the child in the mother’s belly, to kill this innocent in his first mansion, which should have been the place of his refuge; the tunicle in which he is wrapped in his mother’s belly, is called Shilo, because (as Hebrews say) the young infant should live peaceably in it, in his mother’s womb, as in a place of refuge.”
Presbyterian Convention, 1869 “…that we regard the destruction by parents of their offspring, before birth, with abhorrence, as a crime against God, and against nature…”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (hanged by the Nazis, April, 1945) “Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. A great many different motives may lead to an action of this kind; indeed in cases where it is an act of despair, performed in circumstances of extreme human or economic destitution and misery, the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. Precisely in this connection money may conceal many a wanton deed, while the poor man’s more reluctant lapse may far more easily be disclosed. All these considerations must no doubt have a quite decisive influence on our personal and pastoral attitude towards the person concerned, but they cannot in any way alter the fact of murder.”
Helmut Thielicke (German Lutheran theologian) “Once impregnation has taken place it is no longer a question of whether the persons concerned have the responsibility for a possible parenthood; they have become parents.”
Paul Ramsey (Professor of Ethics at Princeton University) “One grasps the religious outlook upon the sanctity of human life only if he sees that this life is asserted to be surrounded by sanctity that need not be in a man; that the most dignity that a man ever possesses is a dignity that is alien to him… A man’s dignity is an overflow from God’s dealing with him, and not primarily an anticipation of anything he will ever be by himself alone.”
George H. Williams (Professor of Church History at Harvard Divinity School) “Two thousand years of Jewish-Christian history maintain that the fetus is a person with the right to life. We know very well that what has happened in conception is the emergence of a new being and all it needs is time.”