St. Thomas Aquinas: Pro-Choice?

A friend of mine recently referred to the book “Good Church, Bad Church” by Tom Kane, a former Catholic priest. I read the synopsis on Amazon and read the extract on the author’s website.  In the extract, a couple came to Kane while he was still a Catholic priest and he counseled them to have an abortion, calling upon St. Thomas Aquinas as justification:

“The great Catholic theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, whose theological reasoning is the foundation of Catholic morality, said that a fetus does not contain a soul until several months because there is not enough development yet to hold a soul, so the fetus, Thomas says, is not a person,” I said. “Yet the Vatican and the Vaticans of Protestantism would sacrifice an endless number of lives for a miniscule embryo that resembles an amoeba.”

“But the fetus has life,” he said.

“Yes, but what kind of life? Plant life? Animal life?” I said. “A fetus has a very primitive form of life—not yet a human life.”

I’m not sure if Kane offered any more of a defense in the book, but after reading the above extract, some problems with what he said immediately come to mind…

Problem #1: Aquinas’ theory about ensoulment was based off Aristotle, who asserted that something becomes human when it has “human form”. Limited to observations by the naked eye, it was thought that this took place after about forty days.

It is important to understand that Aquinas’ suggestion was made within the context of the primitive state of embryology of the 13th Century.  However, embryology has come a long way since then, and we now have instruments such as the microscope. Thanks to genetics (courtesy of a Catholic monk, Gregor Mendel) we now know that the unborn have a unique human genetic code from the very moment of conception. It is not possible to assert that “A fetus has a very primitive form of life—not yet a human life”. If it has human DNA then it’s human and if it’s growing, then it’s alive… human life. If Aquinas knew what we know today about embryology and DNA he would certainly revise his thoughts concerning ensoulment.

Problem #2: Aquinas’ opinion was not the teaching of the Church and he would have been horrified to find that someone was using his writings against the Church which he loved so much.

Problem #3: Most importantly though, despite his thoughts concerning ensoulment, “the great Catholic theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas” still held that abortion was gravely wrong, even prior to forty days. This was in accord with explicit teaching of the Church dating back to the First Century (see The Didache, Chapter 2).

I think it’s safe to say that St. Thomas was pro-life 🙂