It is rather common for some pro-abortion members of the Church to point to some early Latter-day Saints holding to a form of "quickening" (*) (i.e., the spirit enters the body when the unborn child begins to kick, so a few months into pregnancy) to support their agenda. However, anyone who reads their comments about abortion itself will see that they opposed it even prior to when they believed "quickening" took place (such a view was common at that time period, and would, of course, be improved due to increases in medical science--another area where pro-abortion activists have to ignore science [other areas include gender and the benefits of nuclear power]).
Consider the following comments from Lester Bush:
Although there was no
formal statement of church policy on abortion until very recently, the reviews
of early church leaders were very clear: abortion to the nineteenth-century
Mormon mind was synonymous with murder. Polemically, at least, no distinction
was made between “foeticide,” the “destruction of embryos,” or abortion, on the
one hand, and “infanticide” or “infant murder” on the other. President John
Taylor (successor to Brigham Young), for example, spoke with some regularity of
“pre-natal murders,” or “murders . . . committed while the children are pre-natal”;
or infants killed “either before or after they are born”; of murdering children
“either before or after they come into the world.” Similar language can be
found in the related sermons of nearly all late-nineteenth-century Mormon
leaders.
Given this
perspective, it is not surprising that the church viewed those involved in such
“hellish” practices as under grave condemnation. George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency
was perhaps the most graphic: “they will be damned with deepest damnation;
because it is the damnation of shedding innocent blood, for which there is no
forgiveness. . . . They are outside the pale of salvation. They are in a
position that nothing can be done for them. They cut themselves off by such acts
from all hopes of salvation . . .” (JD 26:14-15 [1884]; see also JD 22:320
[1881])
This early commentary
was fueled largely by national agitation on the subject rather than a perceived
problem within the Mormon community. With the passing of the general ferment,
the subject largely disappeared from church commentary—for nearly a century. (Lester
E. Bush, Jr., Health and Medicine Among the Latter-day Saints [New York:
The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993], 159-60)
The following comes from a sermon preached by then-President John Taylor:
INFANTICIDE CONDEMNED
By President John Taylor
It has become unfashionable in
the east for women to have large families. I have heard remarks like this: One
lady was asked, How many children have you? One or two. Is that all? What do
you take me for, do you think I am a cow? Why no, you are not a cow, for cows
do not murder their offspring. What a horrible state of affairs is here
exhibited. And I am told that some of those iniquities are being introduced
here. I tell you, in the name of God, if you do, we will be after you. I am
told of physicians who are acting as they do in the east, as the butchers of
infants. Let us look after these things, you Bishops if you do find it our,
bring them up. As God lives we will not permit such infamies in our midst; you
will not commence your fashionable murders here. And I will say now, Woe to
this nation and to the nations of Europe, or any people among any nation, that
sanctions these things. Have you not read that no “murderer hath eternal life
abiding in him?” What shall be thought of these unnatural monsters, the slayers
of their own offspring. This revolting, unnatural, damnable vice may be
fashionable, but God will require this crime at their hands. Wo to men and to
women that are licentious and corrupt, depraved and debauched, and especially
wo, tenfold wo, to the murders of helpless innocence. I tell you this in the
name of the Lord. If these things are not stopped, God will arise and shake the
nations of the earth and root out their infamies. (Excerpts from discourse
delivered at the General Conference, Salt Lake City, on Sunday afternoon, April
9, 1882).) (N.B. Lundwall, comp., Assorted Gems of Priceless Value [Salt
Lake City: Deseret Book, 1944], 190-91)
In the footnote to the above (ibid., 191), we read:
A prophecy made by Elder Thomas
Ball at the Heman Ward meeting house January 1, 1921: I testify unto you in the
name of Israel’s God that the crime of race suicide will be the means of
bringing down the judgments of an offended God upon this nation. Beginning with
this year and in the years to follow this nation will undergo some of the
greatest punishments that she has received since her existence as a nation. In
yonder heavens there are thousands, yea millions, of bright intelligent spirits
waiting to come down here to tabernacle in the flesh. They do not ask to be
clothed in silks and satins but they desire us to prepare bodies for them so
they may gain the experience of mortality and get a chance to exalt themselves
into the eternal worlds and Latter-day Saints who are guilty of this heinous
crime, if they do not speedily repent, will sink into the depths of hell and
their Priesthood will be taken from them.
