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Abortion and the embarrassing saint - Catholic Church's changing position on abortion
Humanist, May-June, 1994 by Stephen T. Asma
On a street corner in downtown Chicago, an elderly woman lurches toward me with pious intensity and presses a pamphlet into my hand. Such an occurrence is so frequent that one fails to register the event until later. Eventually, I take stock of the day's "literature." In fact, nothing quite lifts the spirits like perusing the abusive ultimatums and grave injunctions contained in these propaganda leaflets.
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A few days ago, I was enjoying my three-by-five-inch "Practical Guide for the Sacrament of Penance in the '90s" when an irony of the strongest magnitude struck me. The "guide" is a series, of questions, that the devotee must inquire of his or her own conscience. Just after asking myself whether I had "physically injured or killed anyone" recently, I read that "regarding abortion, check with your priest to see if you were automatically excommunicated." Apparently, canon 1398 states that persons party to an abortion are automatically excommunicated. Like most other people forced to endure the interminable discourse concerning abortion, I understand that the Catholic church forms a crucial flank of pro-life ideology. But as I read the pamphlet, Saint Thomas Aquinas leapt to mind-and therein crept the irony.
What does a thirteenth-century saint have to do with contemporary temporary debates over abortion? O ye of little faith: we need look no further than the controversial Supreme Court case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services.
The Webster case, you recall, questioned the constitutionality of certain statutes regulating abortions in Missouri. The restrictions upon abortions (for example, public facilities may not be used for abortions even if no public funds are spent) were upheld by a five-to-four Supreme Court vote. Media coverage of the dissenting votes focused around Justice Harry Blackmun's cryptic "I fear for the future" sermon. But the key passage in the Missouri law was quietly and persistently targeted by Justice John Paul Stevens. The crucial passage-actually contained in the preamble of the Missouri statute-set forth "findings" which stated that the life of each human being "begins at conception" and that "unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being." In other words, zygotes are people too.
Justice Stevens argued that the Missouri "findings" were unconstitutional, and he appealed to a remarkable (yet little noticed) argument. At first, his reasoning seems rather academic-indeed, this is undoubtedly why the media centered on Blackmun's more dramatic comments. Had we given Stevens' "illustrational" argument closer examination, however, we would have found it to expose the irony lurking just beneath the surface of pro-life ideology. And guess who Stevens appeals to in his subtle dissent? Why, Saint Thomas Aquinas, of course.
The irony, quite simply, is this: how many clinic-blocking, doctor-harassing, "pro-life" Roman Catholics know that the entire history of their church denies that the zygote is a person? Since history can be so painfully embarrassing, I suppose we should all be thankful for that most soothing of afflictions, the short memory.
The current official position of the Catholic church is published in the 1987 Vatican-issued Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation. In the Instruction, it is stated that "every human being" has a "right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death. . . ." Now contrary to most writers and readers of abortion-related discourse, I am not going to line up on either side of this insoluble question (sorry to disappoint the simple-minded dichotomy purveyors). In fact, to leap in at this point, boldly asserting or denying the personhood of the zygote and then weighing that conviction against the woman's personal rights, is precisely the move that has consistently clouded the clear argument of thinkers like Justice Stevens. What I wish to point out, as Stevens subtly attempts to do, is that the official position of the church-from the church's very conception up until Pope Pius IX's 1869 decree-held that the fetus did not become a person until late in the course of gestation. And this tradition (lasting almost two millennia) of church "findings" should give the modern Catholic some pause over the "eternal veracity" of their current findings. Ask almost any Roman Catholic if the saints believed in personhood at conception, and they will scoff, "Of course." But they would be wrong.
I wish to focus primarily on Saint Thomas, but even earlier church fathers held that "personhood" developed late in the pregnancy. Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome, for example, both believed that destruction of a fetus could not be considered homicide until the fetus had fully formed. Prior to this "full formation," the fetus held no greater moral significance than an irrational animal. That is not to say that the fetus held no moral status, for all living things, according to the faithful, are products of God's handiwork and consequently deserving of reverential respect. But this line of thinking (which Ronald Dworkin, in his new book Life's Dominion, finds more intelligible than other abortion-related arguments must be understood as quite different from the "personhood argument." It is different because the criteria for moral respect widens radically from the sanctity of "persons" to the sanctity of "life." Moreover, such a broadening of the criteria for moral respect opens the door too widely for the pious believer, who must now sin nightly as he devours his sacred sirloin.
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