In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Trent Horn to discuss the claim that St. Thomas Aquinas promoted abortion.
Transcript:
Caller: Hey, gentlemen. Good afternoon. I’m pro-choice because I don’t think that it’s a person at conception, and I think that I’m in good company. The famous church doctor Aquinas also believed in delayed animation, and he believed it so strongly that the Catechism of Trent also agreed that Jesus was the only person ever to have a soul at conception. So if it was moral, then you believe that? I think it’s moral and reasonable to conclude that.
Trent: Now, did Thomas Aquinas think that abortion was okay?
Caller: He thought that it was not a person yet because he thought it didn’t have a soul until I think it was 40 days for a male and 80 days for a female.
Trent: That’s not my question. My question is, did Thomas Aquinas think that abortion was okay or not?
Caller: I don’t know what he said on abortion. I don’t know what he said on contraception. I do know that he said it was not a person.
Trent: Okay, well, what I’ll say is that in the tradition of Church history, in the 2000-year tradition of church history, abortion has always been condemned. Always by every Church father, by every saint, every ecclesial writer, always has been condemned. And for them, it did not matter at what point when the soul entered the body. For example, St. Basil the Great in the fourth century said, “The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us, there is no nice inquiry as to its being formed or unformed.” So you’re putting a moral framework on here that Aquinas and others didn’t follow. None of them were ever in favor of abortion, though there were questions about ensoulment. And the Church does not have an explicit teaching about when the soul enters the human body. However, that’s not the basis for the Church’s opposition to abortion. The Church opposes abortion today by simply saying that we know from scientific inquiry the unborn is a human being and we shouldn’t kill innocent human beings, and that’s sufficient. I would say that Thomas Aquinas would agree today that if it could be shown the unborn is a rational body that belongs to a rational species, that is, that it has a human body with a human rational nature, he would also be opposed to abortion. Aquinas believed in delayed animation because he believed in delayed animation. He thought that in the womb you started out as a vegetable body, then an animal body, then you became a rational body later on. But modern biology shows you’re a human body through the whole process. So do you think that we should follow modern science and affirm that the unborn from conception on is an individual member of the human species?
Caller: No, I don’t think so. For other reasons besides that. But just when it comes to personhood, I think that Thomas Aquinas is right, that it’s not yet a person, depending on gender.
Trent: Okay. Why do you think Aquinas is right?
Caller: I think it’s right because it is not yet a sentient being. And it’s not… what’s it called? Viable.
Trent: It’s not viable. So you think that personhood… So would you agree then, that the unborn from conception onward is alive and has human DNA?
Caller: I would say that it is in possession of human DNA, yes.
Trent: Is it growing? Is it alive?
Caller: No more alive than the components were before, which were the sperm and the egg.
Trent: Okay, so it’s just as alive as sperm and egg, and it has human DNA. Is it a whole organism that’s developing? It’s an individual member of a species.
Caller: Eventually it is, but it’s in pieces, it’s in parts.
Trent: Are you in parts?
Caller: I am a whole that is made of all the parts.
Trent: Well, why isn’t that same? Wouldn’t that also be true of a human embryo or a human fetus? It contains parts and it’s growing and developing like you or I.
Caller: Right. So when I was a single cell zygote, I also wasn’t a person.
Trent: Okay, but there was a human body there. So you’re saying that personhood begins when the embryo is sentient?
Trent: Well, a rational response or just a response? There’s a rational response or a physical response. For example, a pigeon feels pain, but it doesn’t have rational responses. It has no rational thought.
Trent: I would think that it has a rational response to feeling pain. It has the capacity to use reason.
Caller: Yeah, I think it does. I mean, you can teach it things. You can learn to avoid things and overcome those things later so it can override its previous learnings.
Trent: So are rats and pigeons persons that have a right to life?
Caller: I think they deserve not to be killed for just any reason.
Trent: If someone kills a rat because they’ve infested their home, are they guilty of murder?
Caller: They’re guilty of killing an innocent entity.
Trent: Have they killed…
Caller: A murder is defined by…
Trent: I’m just asking you, did they kill a person?
Caller: No, they didn’t kill a person.
Trent: I thought you said that having rational… I thought you said having rational responses is what makes you a person.
Caller: No, that’s one of the criteria. I didn’t mean to pigeonhole myself by saying that is the only requirement.
Trent: Sure, whatever it is, we’ll just talk about rational response and pain. We’ll just use sentience as a catch-all word here. You say a person is something that’s sentient. But I said if somebody kills a rat, and rats are sentient, you said they’re not killing a person because it’s more than just sentience. So along with sentience, what do you need to be a person?
Caller: Off the top of my head, I would have to say that you need the ability to live on your own outside of another organism.
Trent: Okay, so rats, life support would still…
Caller: Keep you a person. All the…
Trent: Okay, so rats can live on their own without other help. They infest places. So under your definition, rats are still people.
Caller: I was getting there. You also need human DNA to be human.
Trent: Let me stop you right there. Human DNA to be human. But do you need human DNA to be a person?
Caller: No, I’m sorry. Actually, my mind is kind of flipping on that because I can’t quite grasp the terms right now. I got stuff on my mind. You need to be a person.
Trent: Okay. Why?
Caller: Because we draw the line, what is ourselves and we say, “I can’t breed with that rock, I can’t breed with that bird.” We must be completely different species.
Trent: Okay, well, here’s the thing. So your definition of a person is… It seems to me your definition of a person is any human being that’s not a fetus.
Caller: No, I mean, because I believe like the day before they are a person, the day before they’re born, two weeks before they’re born, they’re a person. So I think that there is some arbitrary cutoff.
Trent: Okay, so… Okay, then I’ll rephrase it. A person for you is any human being that can live outside of a uterus. And here’s my definition. A person is any human being.
Trent: Why is your definition preferable to mine?
Caller: Because yours is ambiguous with human being. We haven’t nailed that down yet here.
Trent: A human being is an individual member of the species Homo sapiens.
Caller: Based on what?
Caller: Based on DNA? Based on respiration, based on heartbeat.
Trent: Based on being a functioning organism that has human DNA.
Caller: Any biologist, even that would qualify cancer cells. That would qualify HeLa cells.
Trent: Cancer cells and HeLa cells are not qualified. They’re not organisms.
Caller: Cells inside my cheek for a limited amount of time.
Trent: What is an organism?
Caller: An organism is a cell or collection of cells that perform all the necessary mechanics for life. They consume, they respirate, they turn food into energy, and usually they excrete.
Trent: Okay, do fetuses do that? So then fetuses are organisms?
Caller: Yes, fetuses are organisms.
Caller: Then sperm and an egg are…
Trent: Sperm and egg are not organisms. They’re organs. They’re sex cells.
Caller: All of the cells in your body are organisms.
Trent: I would highly recommend that you go check out a biology textbook because by that, if you say every single cell is an organism, then that would mean every organism is made up of millions of other organisms, which is biologically untrue.
And I’ll just leave it to our listeners to decide whose view is more rational: the idea that every human being should have a right to life and is a person, or just that every human being who can live outside of the uterus can. I think one definition is rational and consistent and the other is self-serving and biased against the unborn. But I’ll leave that to our listeners to decide.
Nate, thank you very, very much for your call. Why are you pro-choice is the question of the hour. If you’re a pro-choice person, you’re welcome to call 888-318-7884. We go now to David in Alabama. David.