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So the Catholic Church has always been against abortion?
Lots of Popes and Catholic scholars would disagree with that.
The Church’s longest held belief on this matter is one of “delayed hominization,” or that a fetus could not gain a soul until it was “formed.” St. Thomas Aquinas, a major heavyweight in the Catholic Church in the 13th century, took after Aristotle and believed that being formed enough for ensoulment happened at around 40 days for males and about 80 days for females. More commonly, ensoulment was deemed to happen at the “quickening,” the moment when a pregnant woman first feels her child move, normally around 18 weeks into a pregnancy. While Catholic law frowned upon abortion, it ruled that it was only homicide if it occured after the fetus gained a human soul.
Writings from the time show that abortion was a widespread and largely socially accepted practice, and in some cases, supported by church leaders. In the fifteenth century, St. Antonius, Archbishop of Florence, defended abortions that were medically necessary for a pregnant woman so long as they occurred before ensoulment. Antonius wasn’t a controversial figure. The pope at the time declared him to be a “brilliant theologian and a popular preacher,” and Antonious’ view was shared by many influential theologians.
Things changed in the late 1580s when Pope Sixtus V came to power. Sixtus V was a notoriously harsh man. Prior to his papacy, he was recalled from his role as the inquisitor general in Venice due to his intensity. In 1588, he issued a papal bull declaring that abortion at any stage of a pregnancy was homicide, and that the punishement was excommunication that could only be lifted by traveling to Rome to beg for forgiveness. However, Sixtus V seemed to be uninterested in enforcing this bull, and frequently granted special dispensations to bishops to handle matters themselves and did not wish for women who procurred abortions to be treated as if they had committed homicide.
This hardline stance on abortion lasted only three years. In 1591 the new Pope Gregory XIV reversed the decision, declaring abortion to only be homicide if it took place after ensoulment, which he determined took place 166 days into a pregnancy, or well over halfway through the second trimester. This decision lasted for 278 years until Pope Pius IX reversed the decision yet again in 1869 and made abortion after conception a sin that automatically excommunicated those involved in its procurement from the Catholic Church. There are only nine sins that have automatic excommunication as a punishment. This new ruling elevated abortion to the same level of sinfullness as punching the pope.
In other words, typewriters, electric batteries, and elevators were all invented before the Catholic Church hardened its stance on abortion. Pope Pius IX didn’t change the Church’s stance on abortion, however, because he believed that ensoulment happened at conception. Rather, he believed that conception gave the potential for ensoulment, and that that potential must be protected. For some, this argument is wildly unpersuasive. Daniel Maguire, a professor emeritus of theological ethics at Marquette University, a Catholic institution, wrote in The Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health & Ethics, “The argument is heard that the fetus is ‘potential life.’ That's wrong. It's real life. It just has not reached personal status. It is potentially a person, but the potential is not actual. After all, gentle reader, you and I are potentially dead but would not like to be treated as if that potentiality were fulfilled.”
He goes on to say, “There may be serious and justifying reasons for killing pre-personal, fetal life. The decision on that belongs naturally to the woman who carries that life. Women have a far better track record than men when it comes to cherishing and protecting life. Let's leave abortion decisions up to them”
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