“... However, other writings of the early period of Christianity, such as the Didache and the so-called Epistle of Barnabas, expressly condemn both abortion and infanticide. Didache 2:2, in writing about the ‘two ways,’ notes that there is a great difference between these two ways. In an exposition of the second great commandment (‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’) as part of the ‘Way of Life,’ the author makes a list of prohibitions modeled on the Ten Commandments, including: ‘Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion/destruction.’ The Epistle of Barnabas 19:5 contains the same prohibition immediately preceded by ‘thou shalt love thy neighbor more than thyself.’ According to Didache 5:2, among those who are on the ‘Way of Death’ are ‘infanticides’ and ‘those destroying the image of God.’ Apparently, then, the fetus was viewed as being a neighbor with the same rights — including the right to life — that the neighbor would have. Similarly, the early Christian apocalyptic literature reflects a moral abhorrence of willful abortion. The Apocalypse of Peter, roughly contemporary with the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, and at one time included in the canon of scripture, paints a graphic portrait of hell’s population, which includes a scene in which women who have obtained abortions are in a gorge, up to their throats in excrement, while fire shoots forth from the infants who were aborted and strikes the women on the eyes ...”