The Murder of Children

Convertar ad populum. Quot vultis ex his circumstantibus et in Christianorum sanguinem hiantibus, ex ipsis etiam vobis justissimis et severissimis in nos praesidibus apud conscientias pulsem, qui natos sibi liberos enecent? Siquidem et de genere necis differt utique crudelius in qua spiritum extorquetis, aut frigori et fami et canibus exponitis; ferro enim mori aetas quoque maior optaverit. Nobis vero, homicidio semel interdicto, etiam conceptum utero, dum adhuc sanguis in hominem delibatur, dissolvere non licet. Homicidii festinatio est prohibere nasci; nec refert natam quis eripiat animam, an nascentem disturbet: homo est, et qui est futurus; etiam fructus omnis jam in semine est. Tertullianus, Apologeticum

I shall turn to the people. How many do you think, of those crowding around and gaping for the blood of Christians, how many even of your rulers, most just to you and most severe to us, may I strike in their own consciences with the killing of their own children? As to any difference in the kind of killing, it is certainly the more cruel way to wrench out the spirit by either exposure to cold, or hunger, or dogs; a superior age has always preferred death by the blade. We in truth, murder being once forbidden, even that conceived in the womb, a man being fashioned in blood, we may not destroy. To prevent a birth is a swift murder. Nor does it matter whether the life born is snatched away, or that which is coming to the birth is undone, for a man it is which is going to be one; every fruit is already in the seed. Tertullian, The Apology