Recently, Joe Scarborough suggested that because abortion was common in the Roman world, and Jesus never said anything about it, He must have been pro-abortion. When that same reasoning is applied to any other moral issue, it is obvious how ridiculous it is. Jesus never said anything about slavery or torture or the sexual abuse of children, so He must have been for all of those things? 

The argument from silence doesn’t work, and it ignores historical facts. The Jews in Jesus’ day opposed abortion, as both the testimony of the Talmud and Roman critics of the Jews attest. Jesus did not address abortion because it wasn’t an issue among Jews in the Holy Land.  

But from its earliest days, the Church did—starting with the Didache, one of the oldest surviving Christian documents outside of the New Testament. Wherever abortion was practiced, the Church condemned it and must continue to do so today.