Abstract
The paper dwells on the research questions as to whether abortion takes a human life and when human life begins? Thomas Aquinas’s answers on the question will be provided in this paper. But the research aims to interrogate his answers and will critically reflect on them. In doing so, the paper’s methodology opted for an exploratory study using primary and secondary data on which the author draws. The data so required will enable the research to furnish an impressionistic account of the ideas produced by the works of Aquinas, Aristotle and Plato on the one hand, and the works of contemporary philosophers and writers on the other hand. In other words, this data is going to be complemented by documentary analysis and the author’s critical insight, so as to warrant the article as to presenting new knowledge. The findings of this research will prove to have larger import beyond the specific case or instance under investigation. It reopens the issue of a revival of the implementation of the dignity of human life. The Church opposes every threat to human life from the moment of conception. The threat to human life is most intense at the point where life begins – at that stage where it is at its most defenseless. It is at this moment (pre-natal stage) when human beings are totally dependent on the goodwill and care of others. Humankind is obliged to respect life. It expresses the human persons’s relationship to other persons: and it is valid from the first moment of conception through to adulthood. The fetus also is a fellow human being and his or her rights should be respected just as the case would with every other human being. These methodological observations present an innovative, thorough and systematic attempt to address the research questions mentioned above.
Highlights
The Hippocratic Oath contains the following wording, “[...] I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy (Note 1).” Abortion was practiced in the Persian Empire, in Greek times as well as in the Roman Era
The paper dwells on the research questions as to whether abortion takes a human life and when human life begins? Thomas Aquinas’s answers on the question will be provided in this paper
Thomas Aquinas contention that an early fetus does not count as a human being until it possess a soul, moves him to assert that early abortions is permissible and do not count as murder
Summary
The Hippocratic Oath contains the following wording, “[...] I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy (Note 1).” Abortion was practiced in the Persian Empire, in Greek times as well as in the Roman Era. The Church’s outcry reverberated all over the world: “The fetus is a fellow human being and his or her rights should be respected just as the case would be with every other human being” (Note 10) Irrespective of these noble doctrines of the Church, it has never taken a position on the philosophical question of when human life begins. The Church made an appeal in the encyclical, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1987) that the human being’s dignity and rights to be protected at all times These fundamental values guarantee the inviolability of the human being’s right to life, “[From] the moment of conception until death” (Note 16). Thomas Aquinas tended here to differ with the Church’s position concerning the beginning of human life and abortion (Note 23)
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