structural:reformatting, linguistic:translation
Early Christian thought on abortion

Between the first and fourth centuries AD, the Didache, Barnabas and the Apocalypse of Peter strongly condemned and outlawed abortion. The first-century Didache equates "the killing of an unborn child and the murder of a living child". To defend that Christians are not "cannibals", in his Plea for Christians (c. 177) to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Church Father Athenagoras of Athens writes: "What reason would we have to commit murder when we say that women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give account of it to God?" Tertullian, another Church Father, provides an identical defense in his Apology to Emperor Septimius Severus (197): "In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing."