Politics: history of abortion in the Catholic church

It only takes patience and about 20 pages of Google search to find what you're looking for sometimes.

I'd always heard that the Vatican's position on abortion-as-homicide and life beginning at conception were new developments in the grand scheme of things, stemming from circa Vatican II. Here's a history of abortion in the Catholic church.

Highlights:

Abortion has always been a sin, but more for its effect of covering illicit sex or birth control than for doing anything wrong to the fetus.

Circa 8th Century: "But it makes a great difference whether a poor woman does it on account of the difficulty of supporting [the child] or a harlot for the sake of concealing her wickedness."

The consistent thread through Catholic history has maintained the theory of "delayed humanization," which states that, as "Aquinas had said the fetus is first endowed with a vegetative soul, then an animal soul, and then — when its body is developed — a rational soul."

Only since 1965 has abortion been condemned on the basis of protecting life.