History

- St. Bride (Brigid) by John Guncan

Saw this in the news today from CNN ...

Abortion is ancient history: Long before Roe, women terminated pregnancies

[...] It’s sometimes assumed that Christianity has always unequivocally condemned abortion but Maeve Callan, a professor and historian of religion at Simpson College in Iowa, said this misrepresents the past.

“People act like there’s only one acceptable attitude towards abortion if you’re Catholic, or if you’re Christian more broadly, or even if you’re religious more broadly. And there’s always been a diversity of viewpoints,” said Callan, the author of the book “Sacred Sisters: Gender, Sanctity, and Power in Medieval Ireland.”

Her research, along with other scholars, has uncovered four medieval Irish saints who celebrated ending pregnancy among their miracles, according to medieval manuscripts that described saints’ lives. Typically, these miracles include a nun who has breached her vow to chastity and become pregnant but, through the saint’s intervention, the pregnancy miraculously disappears.

The most famous was Saint Brigid ...