"It appears to be true that a significant strand of thought in the early Christian Church did not primarily address abortion in terms of the language of personhood, and the killing of persons. Indeed, in the early Church, there is sometimes no sharp distinction between contraception and sterilization, on the one hand, and abortion on the other. This was neither because the Church wished to downgrade the evil of abortion, nor necessarily to elide the distinction between contraception and murder in the sense in which the fifth commandment prohibits it. Rather, both contraception and early abortion were looked upon as grave contra-life sins. Practically speaking, however, there could have been little profit, as the work of Aristotle and Aquinas inadvertently reveals, in speculation about the nature of the early embryo or even fetus, given the paltry biology at hand."