A Brief, Liberal, Catholic Defense of Abortion

The Catholic church has always opposed abortion, but--contrary to popular belief--not always for the same reasons. This tightly argued, historically grounded study sets out to demonstrate that a "pro-choice" stance, now held by a significant minority of Catholics, is as fully justified by Catholic thought as an anti-abortion view, and may even be more compatible with Catholic tradition than the current opposition to abortion espoused by many Catholics and most Catholic leaders.A Brief, Liberal, Catholic Defense of Abortion argues that the current Catholic anti-abortion stance is justified neither by modern embryology nor by ancient church teachings. Combining up-to-date information on fetal development with a thorough grasp of the works of the church's early thinkers, Daniel A. Dombrowski and Robert Deltete expose crucial contradictions between the early and the modern church's views of abortion. Returning to the writings of two pillars of early Christian thought, Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the authors show that abortion was originally condemned by the church on the grounds of perversity, since it nullified the only permissible reason for sexual relations: procreation. Only in more recent times has the view arisen of abortion as indefensible on the ontological grounds that human personhood begins at the moment of conception.The authors demonstrate that the early church's view of fetal development--delayed hominization, in which the fetus is endowed with a human soul only when it achieves a physical human body--is diametrically opposed to the current anti-abortion stance. In fact, the authors show, the insistence on immediate hominization that provides the foundation for the current "pro-life" view stems from two seventeenth-century scientific misconceptions--preformationism and the homunculus--that have since been thoroughly discredited.By considering the history of Catholic thought in its relation to the history of science, Dombrowski and Deltete bring a new level of detail and focus to the abortion debate. Their thoughtful, measured argument provides a fresh perspective that will benefit participants on all sides of the controversy.

Daniel A. Dombrowski is a professor of philosophy at Seattle University.