The Catholic Church has forever condemned abortion as an evil to be stopped. Christian writers from the first-century author of the Didache to Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life") have maintained that the Bible does not support/allow abortion, just as it stops murder which abortion could be considered to be. Below is an example of this from the writings of the Fathers of the Church. As the early Christian writer Tertullian spoke out, the law of Moses ordered strict and harsh penalties for causing an abortion. It states, "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth...