Catholics on Abortion and Conscience:

Address to the Thomas More Centre Summer School, 1991
(by Anthony Fisher, O.P. — paper read in his absence)

Ch. 1 Catholic Teaching on Abortion

From time to time we hear it suggested, even at times by Catholic politicians and academics, that Catholic teaching on abortion is unclear. Yet in its earliest teachings and down through the centuries to modern times, the Church has consistently and unequivocally condemned abortion as a grave moral and social wrong. The Church argues its position on clear philosophical grounds, rather than any special revelation private to Catholics.

From a high view of the human person—shared by people from many philosophical, religious and humanistic traditions—comes the basic principle that every human being must be respected as a person, and accorded rights and dignity equal to all other persons. A long list of basic human rights has thus been enunciated and codified in United Nations conventions and other places—of which the most basic right, upon which the others depend, is the right to life. The direct taking of innocent human life is therefore almost universally deplored. Thus Catholics join others in resisting disrespect for and threats to human life in many situations: violent crime, murder, child abuse, embryo experimentation, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, genocide, killing of non-combatants in war, starvation etc..

Abortion is a case of direct killing of an innocent human being – a violation of the rights of the youngest members of our society and the human family. It is, thus not just a matter of personal choice, religious opinion or women’s rights, but a basic human rights and social justice issue. All human beings are called to respect (and, if they are in a position to do so, protect and nurture) human life at all stages, and to ensure a society where crimes of violence are as far as possible prevented. Thus the Vatican Charter on the Rights of the Family (1983, #4) declares:

Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. Abortion is a direct violation of the fundamental right to life of the human being.

In taking this position the Church is not proposing an eccentricity. Even entirely secular government committees have soundly concluded:

The embryo is a genetically new human life organised as a distinct entity oriented towards further development as a biologically individuated member of the human species… It commands such a degree of respect as to prohibit destructive non-therapeutic experimentation.

Australian Senate Committee on Human Embryo Experimentation (1986)

From a biological point of view, there is no argument as to when life begins. Evidence was given to us by eminent scientists from all over the world. None of them suggested that human life begins at any time other than conception.

What should be recognized, therefore, is that `pro-lifers’ including Catholics are concerned about the abuse of the youngest members of the human family’. They are not seeking to impose some personal religious opinion on the rest of the population any more than those who oppose other forms of violence and discrimination, such as rape or the killing of aborigines.

Some object that the Church has changed its position on abortion over the centuries. It is true that there have long been disputes among philosophers and theologians over the status of the early human being. Parallel traditions developed, some arguing that the human being has a `human soul’ (rational and immortal life-principle) and `personhood’ from conception, others arguing for a later date (`delayed hominization’). Penalties attaching to abortion varied from time to time and from place to place. But right from the beginning the Church insisted that abortion was gravely wrong, whether or not it was actual homicide (the direct killing of a human person), recklessly risking homicide (directly killing what might well be a human person), or intentionally killing an already human person-to-be.Even those who argued for delayed hominization did not use the time of ensoulment as a moral dividing line between permissible and immoral abortions.

From the earliest centuries the Christian Church was noted for its opposition to all abortion and most Christian theologians taught that abortion at any stage was homicide. For instance, the earliest Christian document outside the Scriptures declares “You shall not slay the child by abortion or kill the infant already born” (The Didache, c. 80 AD). The influence of Aristotelian biology led some theologians to argue that the human soul only entered the `formed’ or `animated’ foetus at 40 to 90 days after conception. Philosophical and scientific developments gradually led the Church to abandon this distinction. For the last century the popes, bishops, and an ecumenical council have taught unequivocally that human life must be respected from the first moment of conception, and that abortion at any stage is a grave evil. Thus the Second Vatican Council, aware of the debate over ensoulment, declared that:

All offences against life itself, such as murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, and wilful suicide… are criminal. They poison civilization, and they debase the perpetrators even more than the victims… Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.

Some academics still argue about when the embryo first has a human soul—and the Church does not purport to referee that dispute. But precisely because of this controversy the only prudent course is to treat the unborn as an actual human person from conception. Just as a farmer seeing something moving in the distance which might be a kangaroo or might be a child cannot responsibly take the risk of shooting it until he knows for sure, so there is no stage of development during which the unborn can be `safely’ destroyed without risking killing a human person. The most recent Vatican statement on this matter concludes:

The fruit of human generation, from the first moment of its existence (i.e. the moment the zygote has formed), demands the unconditional respect that is morally due to human beings in their bodily and spiritual totality. The human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and therefore from that same moment her/his rights as a person must be recognized, among which the first is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life.

Of course some people will still say that unborn human beings are not fully human persons. It is difficult to see by what revelation or dogmatic authority this position is asserted. The slaughter of Tasmanian aborigines was once justified on the basis of their not being human too. What is the unborn before it is morally human? Have we not improved on ancient biology and mediæval philosophy which regarded them as `metaphysically vegetable’ with animal and rational souls popping in somewhere between 40 days (for males) and 90 days (for females) after conception? What kind of magic makes the unborn suddenly become human?

Some have argued that a being must `qualify’ for the status of moral person by developing capacities such as the ability to survive if separated from the mother (`viability’ – which is really a matter of how far medical technology has progressed), rationality, motility, consciousness or social relationships. But why are these the tests of moral worth and who chooses them? How are these qualities to be measured and can they possibly yield a consistent answer as to who is a person? After all, if we are to embrace this approach we must face the fact that it excludes from respect and protection a much wider group than just embryos: all unborn and newborn children, the handicapped, senile, comatose, unconscious, drunk…

Sometimes it is argued that these decisions are private ones for the woman concerned, that she should have control over her own body. But in its teaching on abortion the Church is not contesting the woman’s right to personal autonomy (although even non-pregnant women do not have an absolute right to do what they please with their bodies); rather, the Church is pointing to the proper limit to any freedom, which is respect for that same freedom for others (in this case, the child in the womb). Here we meet the rights and needs of another human being, clearly distinct from the mother even if (like newborn babies) very dependent upon her. As such the child has the same rights to life and bodily integrity as the mother.

The focus on rights in this area—by both sides of the debate—is often unhelpful because of the difficulty of resolving conflicts of rights and the individualistic, property-minded underpinnings of much rights language. A more wholistic approach to moral responsibility will also address responsibilities to others and out stewardship over our own bodies and creation. Abortion has been found to have ill-effects not only on the children (for whom it is fatal), but for many of their mothers who are physically, psychologically and spiritually wounded by the experience; to adversely effect existing family, future children, health care workers, and would-be adopting parents; to dangerously devalue the currency of human life and change both medical ethics and social mores; to contribute to the rapid aging of Australian society, which is among the highest per capita aborters in the world. Time precludes exploring these effects—and many more—at greater length: suffice it here to say that there are grave reasons to question the morality and prudence of `the abortion solution’ even if one does not regard the rights of the child as a preminent consideration.

Catholic faith only magnifies these concerns. Belief in a Creator God who is the author of human life and who greatly dignifies it, deploring and forbidding the killing of the innocent, adds to Christian concern for all human beings. Belief in a Provident God who creates human beings with a vocation and a destiny even in the womb, who treasures all children and grants them as a blessing to their parents, and who cares about the deaths even of the youngest, amplifies Christian regard for the youngest human beings. Belief in an Incarnate God who himself `took flesh’ as a human embryo in the womb of Mary, who was heralded while still an embryo by his foetal cousin and developed from embryo to foetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult, and in his mother as one free from sin `from the first moment of her conception’, intensifies Christian love for the weakest of these his embryonic brethren. Catholic faith does add another dimension to the purely philosophical and social moral argument outlined above. But primarily it is that concern for the fundamental dignity and inviolability of human life which Catholics share with people of good will of all religions and none, and which has been basic to the Australian legal system and international law, that underlies the `pro-life’ cause.

Catholics do not pretend to judge the subjective guilt of women who have abortions. They too are so often victims of a cop-out by men and an exploitative industry, victims of an evasive, aborting society which provides women with little real freedom and information on this issue, and offers abortion as an `easy way out’ with no alternatives. Concern for human life and for pregnant women has put Catholics at the forefront not only of lobbying for the legal protection of human life, but of efforts to create a more just and compassionate society in which couples and single women distressed by pregnancy are supported in every way possible through their pregnancy and the years of child-rearing ahead; a community in which pregnancy is not a source of disadvantage and distress to women, and in which resources are directed toward helping the distressed rather than killing their children.

Ch. 2 Catholic Teaching on Conscience and Dissent

Catholics recognize that there is profound disagreement in the community about the abortion issue. This does not however reduce the issues to ones of personal choice. The morality of the killing of the Tasmanian aborigine or of the system of apartheid in South Africa have been the source of considerable disagreement: but this does not mean that these hard issues should be left to the `personal’ decision of those involved.

Some have suggested that the issues of abortion and the respect due to unborn human life are best left to the personal consciences of the women concerned. The Catholic Church has always held to the primacy of conscience and taught that individuals must follow their consciences even when they are wrong.
None the less it is important to understand the difference between conscience and personal preference or arbitrary private intuition. Conscience is the inner core of human beings whereby, compelled to seek the truth, they recognize the objective standards of moral conduct, indeed the dictates of God’s law, and make a practical judgment of what is to be done here and now in applying those standards. Thus the moral character of actions is determined by objective criteria, not merely by the sincerity of intentions or the goodness of motives, and all people are called to form their consciences accordingly.

Deep within their conscience human persons discover a law which they have not laid upon themselves but which they must obey. Its voice, ever calling them to love and to do what is good and avoid evil, tells them inwardly at the right moment: do this, shun that. For human persons have in their hearts a law inscribed by God… the more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by the objective standards of moral conduct. Yet it often happens that conscience goes astray through ignorance which it is unable to avoid, without thereby losing its dignity. This cannot be said of the person who takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.

How then do we form a right conscience? Catholics seek to inform their consciences according to reason and revelation as guided by Church teachings. They believe that by “their faith, aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (magisterium), and obeying it, receives not the mere word of human beings, but truly the word of God.” It is to the pope and the bishops that this teaching authority is entrusted. As the Second Vatican Council put it: “in matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful, for their part, are obliged to accept their bishops’ teaching with a ready and respectful allegiance of mind”. Thus for a Catholic to disagree with what the Church teaches on abortion, he or she would need to have very clear reasons and convictions. These could only follow a genuine search for meaning through docility to church teaching, reading, prayer, taking counsel, developing the virtue of prudence, and so on. Any conflict would then be within the person’s conscience, rather than between conscience and some alien magisterial authority.

In forming their consciences the faithful must pay careful attention to the sacred and certain teaching of the Church. For the Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth. It is her duty to proclaim and teach with authority the truth which is Christ and, at the same time, to declare and confirm by her authority the principles of the moral order which spring from human nature itself.

It is sometimes rightly pointed out that no pope has proclaimed the Church’s teaching on abortion in a specific ex cathedra statement declaring it as an essential matter of faith and infallibly true, and that there are degrees of authority in magisterial pronouncements. But Catholics believe that even when he does not speak ex cathedra the pope’s authoritative teachings must be accepted with respect and sincere assent, and that the consistent teaching of the Church must be adhered to “with the loyal and obedient assent of faith” (to quote Vatican II).The Church’s teaching on abortion has been unfailingly proposed throughout the centuries by popes, bishops and theologians, and restated in the clearest possible terms by the Second Vatican Council of all the bishops, as well as by all the popes of modern times and the bishops’ conferences of many countries (including almost annual statements by the Australian bishops). The gravity with which the Church views this matter is demonstrated by the fact that the procurement of abortion is one of the few offences which still incurs an automatic excommunication under the new Code of Canon Law.

Sometimes it is said that a person might publicly dissent from Church teaching on a matter like abortion and still remain a bona fide Catholic. But those who do are, of course, dissenting from a grave teaching of the Church. Scholars and teachers may withhold assent provisionally from non-infallibly proposed teaching under certain stringently defined conditions; they may still debate such issues as `ensoulment’; and they may wish to clarify and re-present Church teaching in this area in contemporary terms. But they do not serve the Church as authentic teachers if they publish views contrary to the Church’s unambiguous, explicit and highly authoritative teaching. The vocation of other Catholics, such as politicians, is a fortiori to take the initiative in civilizing and making more humane and moral the affairs of human society.
Thus the Catholic Church today is clearly the most outstanding spokesman for the rights of the innocent and defenceless unborn, and many ordinary Catholics suffer the `martyrdom’ of sticking to their often inconvenient and unpopular principles on this matter which they believe is the greatest human rights issue of our time. They do so because they believe, to quote the Australian bishops, that:

From the moment of its conception human life must be guarded with the greatest care. Abortion is an unspeakable crime.

And they do so because they care about what kind of Australia we are building for the twenty-first century. They dream of a society where nobody’s conscience will allow them to kill the weak and defenceless of whatever age, state of physical or intellectual perfection, address or social class, a society in which well-informed conscience rules, and thus justice, compassion and truth.