Table Of ContentThe Sociopolitical Influence of the Roman Catholic Church on Abortion Policy in the
Dominican Republic and Cuba
Presented to
The Faculty of the Departments of Classics, History, and Political Science
The Colorado College
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Bachelor of Arts
By Charlotte H. Kaye
The Colorado College
May 2013
Chapter I:
Introduction to the Sociopolitical Influence of the Roman Catholic Church
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Introduction
Latin American history does not begin in 1492. Historically and historiographically,
however, Columbus’ landing reshaped the entire region. Cuba and the Dominican Republic
experienced comparable Spanish conquest, lore similar to many of the former European colonies
in Africa and Latin America. Christopher Columbus discovered both islands on his first
expedition to the New World. Hispaniola and Cuba were extremely profitable to the Spanish; the
conquistadores heavily exploited the resources on each island.1 The Roman Catholic Church
arrived with the Spanish, and had an even longer and potentially more formative stay in these
two countries.
The Church lost no time in implanting itself into the land, and Christianity spread rapidly
across the region. Soon, the clergy’s reach extended into Caribbean life from the remotest areas
of the islands to the big cities. Thus, much of colonial development integrated Roman
Catholicism into the culture and tradition. As the Church grew and retained its power into the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it became the agency for social well-being of the Cuban and
Dominican peoples - “the voice of the voiceless.”2
Cuba and the Dominican Republic both came under the rule of dictators during the
twentieth century. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina governed the Dominican Republic for thirty
years beginning in 1930. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was dictator of Cuba for over fifty years
starting in 1959, but had made appearances as a vocal leftist dissident in the prior decade. The
1 Alan Taylor and Eric Foner, American Colonies, (New York: Viking, 2001), 33.The Dominican
Republic and Cuba are the largest nations in the Caribbean. The Dominican Republic is located on the
island of Hispaniola or as the Spanish sometimes called it Española or Santo Domingo. The island is split
with Haiti on the western side and the Dominican Republic on the eastern side.
2 Emelio Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America : the Dominican
Case in Comparative Perspective, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 1-2.
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two dictators, despite the fact that their rules literally overlapped only a few years, were active as
well as at their peak of power during the mid-twentieth century.
During these decades of dictatorship, Trujillo chose to embrace Roman Catholicism and
incorporate it into his governmental policies. Cuba, on the other hand, went in the opposite
direction. Castro sought to almost rid the island nation of Roman Catholicism both socially and
politically. The case studies of these two nations provide a glimpse of extreme cases on the
Latin American axis of Church-state relations.
The pluralized relationship and history of the social and political influence of the Roman
Catholic Church on Latin America and Caribbean nations is a complex topic; many different
factors intertwined in the Church’s function given the institution’s extensive reach across the
population. These issues include, but are not limited to, economic and class stratification,
political strategy, gender relations, ethics, and human rights. The Roman Catholic Church is an
institution just like any other that creates its own agenda. Because of this, it effects great change
in these areas.3 Doctrine and Canon law can play into national legislation, contingent on the
influence of the Church in state affairs.4 Many potential routes regarding a national social policy
that may have been shaped by the Roman Catholic Church; I chose to focus on the topic of
abortion laws and debate as the measure of sociopolitical influence of the Roman Catholic
Church in Cuba and the Dominican Republic’s governmental policies during periods of their
histories.
3 The Church has been and continues to be vocal about its stance on human rights issues.
4Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American
Dictatorships and Democracies, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 210. Doctrinal laws
cover social matters such as divorce, religious toleration, welfare, and so forth.
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The topic of abortion, whether taboo or an accepted perspective, is multifaceted. In the
first section, I will go further in depth on how the Church relates to abortion policy; and why this
is a practical tool for measuring ecclesiastical influence. The second section will lend context to
the role of the Catholic Church in Cuba in the Dominican Republic from colonization to
dictatorship. Lastly, I will compare and contrast the role of the Roman Catholic Church under
Trujillo and Castro as told through abortion policy.
The theological and historical background of the Roman Catholic Church and abortion policy
In order to better understand the weight of abortion as a tool for measuring the influence
of the Roman Catholic Church on the state, I here present a partial background on how
opposition to abortion evolved into a fundamental doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and
how it relates to Church-state sociopolitical relations. Legality of abortion has long been a topic
of debate and conflict, but not necessarily a central topic until after the Roman Empire adopted
early Christian edict as government policy.
Prior to Christianity’s permeating the Empire, laws prohibiting abortion were rare to non-
existent, philosophers and scholars wrote and debated on the moral question of abortion, but
nothing was concluded. Until the patristic era, laws on abortion would be considered permissive
by modern standards. The Roman politicians of the time were not particularly concerned with
regulating morality and ethics through laws; the Empire functioned on the foundation of the
family as the local government. The paterfamilias, head of the household, was the sovereign
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leader of the house.5 Roman code, in fact, explicitly allowed patrefamilias to make the the
decision whether to abort, expose, or kill an infant within the house until the post-Constantinian
Empire.6 This was a long-standing tradition held over from the Roman Republic; according to
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian living in Rome under Augustus Caesar, “Romulus
granted to the Roman father absolute power over his son, and his power was valid until the
father’s death, whether he decided to imprison him, or whip him, to put him in chains and make
him work on a farm, or even kill him. Romulus even allowed the Roman father to sell his son
into slavery.”7 The paternal figure had autonomy regarding everything familial. This structure
encouraged the father to scrutinize the virtues, morals, and ethics of his upstanding Roman
family and substituted for government regulations regarding abortions, infanticide, and
exposure.8 The head of the household’s judgment ultimately prevailed, the father had - vitae
necisque potestas - the power of life and death.
Not only were decisions about family planning decided within the family, but abortion,
infanticide, and exposure were quite common occurrences in the Roman Empire. It was not seen
as unethical to get rid of a child in order to protect the family or the state.9 Much of the myth
surrounding Rome, in fact, tied heroism, fortune, and bravery to abandonment: Romulus and
Remus, founders of Rome, were abandoned as children, raised by wolves, and grew up to found
5 John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: the Abandonment of Children in Western Europe
from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 58.
6 Michael J. Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church : Christian, Jewish & Pagan Attitudes in the
Greco-Roman World, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1982), 64.
7 Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did : a Sourcebook in Roman Social History, 2ed. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 17.
8 Boswell, 58.
9 Boswell, 58.
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the great city. Giving up a child was not considered a shameful act.10 This was a practical matter
for the group. Several respectable scenarios for terminating a pregnancy or abandoning a child
existed in the Romans’ eyes.
Abortion and infanticide were common, for example, when a child was conceived at an
inopportune time. This could be related to age of the parents, a lack of resources to raise the
child, or a pressing civic need.11 Ovid, a Roman poet, told the story of Ligdus in the
Metamorphoses:
Ligdus was a freeborn man, but from a lower-class family. He was a poor man, but
moral and honorable. He told his pregnant wife, when she was approaching labor, ‘I pray
for two things – that you may have an easy labor, and that you may bear a male child.
For a daughter is too burdensome, and we do not have the money. I hate to say this, but
if you should bear a girl – I say this with great reluctance, so please forgive me – if you
should bear a girl, we’ll have to kill her.’ He spoke the words, and they both wept, he
who had given the order and she who must carry it out.12
This story demonstrates the power of the male head of the family, as well as one of the thought
processes behind infanticide. Although Ovid’s story is only a fable, the story exemplifies the
cultural acceptance of abortion; the woman in the story is not shocked or appalled by her
husband’s expectation that she will murder the child if it will be a burden on the already poor
family. They are not unfeeling people; they are depicted as weeping, but they both also
understand that such an act is best for their household. The story of infanticide and abortion is
one of practicality for the Roman poor.
10 Boswell, 84. Abandonment and abortion were considered natural in an animalistic way. An
animal, for example, would not care for its offspring if they could not or if it was malformed, if they were
not capable of caring for it, or if the offspring was weak.
11 Boswell, 157.
12 Ovid, Charbra Adams Jestin, Phyllis B. Katz, and Ovid, Ovid : Amores, Metamorphoses:
Selections, (2nd ed. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2000).
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This practice, however, was beyond the stratification of class; abortion was a universal
experience for Roman women. In his Satires, Juvenal, a well-read first century writer, explained:
“Rarely does a wife give birth on a gold-plated bed. So great is the power of the magical arts,
the potions of the woman who makes them sterile and murders the humans in their bellies for a
fee.”13 Juvenal described how women who had the means also chose to abort their fetuses
frequently. He explains that among the elite women “on a gold-plated bed,” - the women setting
the social standards, went ahead with the procedure for convenience. Ovid wrote about the social
status of abortions in the Amores as well, again highlighting abortion in a text read by many of
the Roman elite. He composed Amores 2.14 in response to his mistress, a woman outside his
familial control, who chose to abort their child: “The woman who first took aim at her helpless
fetus/should have died by her own javelin./Can it be possible, that simply to avoid a few stretch
marks,/you would make your womb a bloody battle ground?”14 Ovid mourned the loss of the
potential child. Abortion was clearly a troubling issue to him, and he was able to express his
experience publicly without shame and with only sorrow. Abortion was not a closeted issue, but
an issue continually probed and dissected among Romans in all social circles in these early
centuries.
Abortion and infanticide commonly took place as an act of loyalty to the state as well.
Roman officials promoted abortion and infanticide as a means of population control. The civil
13 Juvenal, Satires, 6.594-7 excerpted from Suzanne Dixon, Reading Roman Women: Sources,
Genres, and Real Life, (London: Duckworth, 2001), 57.
14 Ovid et al., Ovid : Amores, Metamorphoses : selections, 2ed. (Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-
Carducci Publishers, 2000), Amores, 2.14.5-8. In these two Roman texts, I think it is interesting how both
stories point to different methods of abortion. Juvenal talks about potions while Ovid says his girlfriend
used a surgical procedure. This probably indicates that abortion was so common that there were several
medical methodologies for different types and times of abortions.
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responsibility of each paterfamilias was to help control the population, especially within the city
of Rome in the first and second centuries.15 For the sake of the state, families would choose to
abort their children if civic resources were lacking. There was of a sense of mutual conscience;
the laws were not explicit, but there was a certain social pressure to genuflect to the needs of the
state. Overall, the sentiment among Romans seemed to have been that abortion was a private
decision based on loyalties to the state and the family.
By the end of the second century, Christianity was seeping into the Roman purview.
Romans were skeptical of the new cult. Christians and their beliefs disconcerted the Romans;
they did not prostrate before the emperor and they had social norms closer to the Jews than the
pagans. The rift became ever more apparent as Christians multiplied and their practices opposed
those of the Romans. Pliny the Younger, a Roman magistrate, confirmed this in a letter to Trajan
in the late first century:
Dear Trajan:
It is my regular practice, my lord, to refer to you all matters about which I am in
doubt….I have never dealt with investigations about Christians, and therefore I don’t
know what is usually either punished or investigated, or to what extent….It is said that
those who are truly Christians cannot be forced to do any of [praying to the Roman gods
or praising the emperor]….they were accustomed to meet on fixed day before dawn and
to sing in responsion a hymn to Christ as if to a god, and to bind themselves by an oath –
not an oath to commit some crime, but an oath not to commit theft, robbery, or adultery,
not to break their word, and not to refuse to return a deposit when called upon. When
these things had been done, it had been their custom, they said, to depart, and then meet
again later to dine together….16
This note demonstrates confusion and the fear that this strange cult would destroy Roman values
and traditions. The Christians, in response, needed to establish, define, and differentiate. They
15 John Thomas Noonan, Contraception : a History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians
and Canonists, Enlarged. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 85.
16 Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96, 97 excerpted from Shelton, 410-411.
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did this by establishing doctrines criticizing and criminalizing many Roman practices such as
abortion. Just as Jews had once distinguished themselves with practices such as circumcision and
adherence to the strict rules of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the Christians had their own
traditions. Although not mentioned specifically in the above letter, abortion became a focus in
Christianity; abortion was a way to distinguish the Christians from pagan Romans.
The anti-abortion theology, coupled with the infant-centered nature of Christianity,
abortion was an avenue for differentiation for Christians. Adopting abortion policy had special
resonance for Christians because of the nature of the religion’s foundation. Christianity took as
central that Mary bore a child and he was the Son of God. Thus, the religion was commenced at
conception; “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was
espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.”17
This made Christianity distinct from Judaism and paganism, and was a distinguishing factor for
early Christians. Jesus’ conception was and remains one of the most highlighted sections in the
Bible. In Luke 1:39-44 The angel Gabriel has just made the announcement to Mary that she will
conceive the Son of God...:
At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she
entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting,
the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud
voice she exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will
bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon
as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.’18
17 The Holy Bible, (King James Version), (New York: Oxford Edition: 1769) King James Bible
Online, 2008. http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/, Luke 1:39-44,
18 Matthew 1:18.
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