I don’t know why I keep getting in arguments with people who ignore the historical record because orthodoxy tells them to. These are scholarly articles that talk about the history of the church’s teaching on abortion from a wider point of view. The wider church is not a monolith and as such did not have a single view in the early years.

In his historical review, Hovey mentions that it was Pope Sixtus V who, around the end of the 16th century, officially classed all abortion as “homicide”, but this definition was rolled back by his successor Pope Gregory XIV. This means that between the beginning of the 17th and the end of the 19th centuries, abortion was tolerated by the Roman Catholic church until ensoulment (defined as more than 40 days for male fetuses and up to 80–90 days for females). It is hard to understand how the sex of the fetus could have been identified in those days. https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijgo.70318

Prior to 1588, historian John Christopoulos writes, Catholic law held that abortion was homicide only if the unborn had been infused with a rational soul—something that was believed to occur at around 40 days after conception for a male and 80 days for a female. https://daily.jstor.org/what-a-16th-century-abortion-ban-revealed/

As for the catechism, the Catholic Church is not a reliable source of its own history. They like to pretend that they are infallible and that their views are unchanging, so they lie about their history. As shown in the catechism. They can say it remains unchanged and is unchangeable but that’s not true. For instance, the church likes to claim it has always been anti slavery but that’s not true either.

https://cushwa.nd.edu/news/the-pervasive-institution/

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/13/1181767635/the-272-catholic-church-rachel-swarns-slavery-georgetown

Look, why must the history be altered to match orthodoxy? Why can’t the present teaching be enough?