A Brief, Liberal, Catholic Defense of Abortion

Rating:
Summary: A must-read for prolifers & prochoicers
Review: It's enlightening to learn the gradual ensoulment of the fetus was Catholic dogma before the 17th cent, taught by Augustine & Thomas Aquinas.After that time the immediate infusion of the human soul was taught to occur at conception. A strong case can be made for a vegetative soul, then an animal soul, preceding to the human soul in the last trimester. "the moral permissibility of abortion in the early stages of pregnancy is, AT THE VERY LEAST, an intellectually respectable view when the history of Catholic thought on abortion is considered in its relation to the history of science" the philosopher authors conclude. While some of this is difficult to follow, it is well worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting background on Abortion and the Catholic Church
Review: The authors of this book go into great detail on the history of abortion in the Catholic Church and Catholic tradition. They look at the views of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and trace thinking on abortion throughout history. They show how Catholic thinking has changed as scientific and medical knowledge increased and changed as well as looking at the views of society. Although the book can be slow in places, the author's points are very interesting and show that the abortion debate within the Catholic Church is not a simple, clear-cut issue. While the authors are not theologians, and do not pretend to be, their discussion is interesting, informative and relevant.

Rating:
Summary: Deceptive
Review: This piece of pro-abortion propaganda, charading as scholarship, is seriously misleading. Some problems:

1) The authors ignore the anti-abortion position of the early, patristic church. The Didache, Tertullian, and Athenagoras categorically condemn all abortion, regardless of what stage at which it is performed.

2) The authors rightly show that Augustine and Aquinas supported the theory of delayed animation, but they fail to show that these authors also categorically condemned abortion at all stages. Later abortion was more gravely evil than an early abortion (just as first-degree murder is more evil than second-degree murder), but all abortion was condemned as wrong. The canon law of the same period showed the same graded but clear condemnation of all abortion.

3) The authors fail to explain to the reader the absurd biology on which delayed animation was based. Aquinas (following Aristotle), thought the female fetus became "human" later than a male fetus because the woman contributed nothing to conception! He also thought that the early human fetus was some sort of vegetable! No one today disputes the fact that from the moment of conception a huam fetus is purely human. It is not a tiny grapefruit or cat that suddenly becomes human at some later stage of gestation.

4) From the beginning of its existence the Catholic Church has strongly condemned abortion at every stage. While its reasons for condemnation and the degree of condemnation have varied, its position has remained remarkably consistent. Its strengthened opposition to abortion at every stage is completely justified by new knowledge in genetics and gestation. Every human person's history has a radical beginning at the moment of conception.