Masiello, Ralph J.

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The Linacre QuarterlyVolume 43 | Number 2 Article 9May 1976A Note On the Unborn PersonRalph J. MasielloFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnqRecommended CitationMasiello, Ralph J. (1976) "A Note On the Unborn Person," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 43: No. 2, Article 9.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol43/iss2/9sician, psychiatrist, and chaplain alike. By eliminating these artifi-cial conceptual boundaries, all of us can help lead medicine, psy-chiatry and religion to a holistic and unified appreciation of life, living, and humanity, perhaps the greatest mysteries, and ones we share equally with our patients. In fact, a better appreciation of our own unity may prove to be the key to comprehensive medical care. A Note On the Unborn Person Ralph J. Masiello Dr. Masiello is on the facult y of the Department of Philosophy at Niagara University in New York. Even if it be granted that the unborn child does not possess life, but only potential life-the ab-surd thesis of Justice Blackmun, in Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973 -no justification for an abortion is established either morally or legally. Granted that this unac-ceptable position did actually maintain in reality, it could only signify that the actual life of the born child would be derived from the potential life of the unborn child. A potential human being would be virtually a human being. It would have a vital principle to become human. Now the closest thing in dignity to any nature is found in the principle of that na-ture. If one destroys the dignity of the principle, how does one re-store the diginity of the nature? Among the reasons presented for a basis of decision, the Court maintained that "the unborn have 112 never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense." But the notion of person can only be understood as indivisible. What the Court wished to convey is that the rights of the unborn have not been consistently treated in civil and criminal suits. It would have been incumbent upon the Court, in arriving at so weighty a decision, to explore whether the unborn child could at least enjoy the status of a moral person. But this door they dared not open because a moral person has the right to perpetuate itself. Justice Blackmun's elaborate historical, legal, and moral maze of fact and fancy was designed to leave no avenue of escape in this direction. A more tenable position is that t he human intellectual principle establishes the human person. This principle is at first only in potency to knowledge, both be-fore birth and immediately after birth. Now, how do we establish the origin of this principle in man? Too often, of late, the man of Linacre Quarterly faith is apt to declare apodictical-ly that this intellectual principle is established at conception, when an immediate animation takes place. There are no sound theological reasons for accepting such a theo-ry. First of all, there has never been any official ecclesiastical document, encyclical, decree or canon, which endorses this theory because "the soul is not transmit-ted with the semen as though it were begotten by coitus."l In Pius IX's definition of the Im-I maculate Conception, there is the affirmation of faith that "in the very first instant of her concep-tion she was preserved from all stain of original sin." Original sin is transmitted throughout the union of seminal principles, which are ordered to the development, organization and growth of the body. This human body becomes a human being with the infusion of the soul, the creative act of God. The seminal principles nei-ther virtually nor potentially con-tain the souJ.2 But the body is in potency to receive the soul. To a Thomist, this reception takes place when the body is developed to the point of being a fitting sub-ject of the intellectual soul. If one maintains that the soul is present at the moment of conception, then he must justify how this one cell is a human being. DNA does not suffice to constitute a total hu-man being. But "nature is want-ing in nothing that is necessary for the fulfillment of its proper operation."3 This cell, whose ac-tivity is immediately directed to May, 1976 the embryonic order, does not have any intrinsic exigency for an intellectual principle. But when we witness the configura-tion of a human being in fetal development, and we recognize it to be human, then there is the exigency for an intellectual prin-ciple for it to be truly human. Traditionally, the only person who was actually conceived as a person in the womb was Christ. An immediate animation theo-ry arise as a simple solution to the problem that abortion is not permitted even from the moment of conception. But to say that the soul should be considered as pres-ent at the moment of conception is not a declaration that the soul is actually present. It is another way of saying that the newly formed cell possesses a right to survival in virtue of its dignity as a principle in human generation, which is terminated with the in-fusion of the intellectual soul. It is indeed a moral person. But to declare it a natural human per-son, a man, is not as convincing as the theory of an Aristotle or a Thomas, who never lost sight of common sense in their quest for wisdom. Professor John T. Noonan, Jr. makes an overt case for immedi-ate ensoulment at the moment of conception, with arguments which do not solve anything. "If a mo-ment had to be chosen for ensoul-ment, no convincing argument now appeared to support Aristotle or to put ensoulment at a later stage of fetal life."4 To quote an-other view of Noonan that lends 113 itself to instant animation, "A be-ing with a human genetic code is man." .' A genetic code is a bio-logical fact, an hereditary factor. While it is true to say that the matrix of the adult's personality is genetically present at the mo-ment of conception, this cannot be accepted in a deterministic sense. This only refers to man's bodily dispositions. The human person is at once organic and transorganic, with a destiny which is temporal and eternal. The de-termining principles of man's per-sonality are nongenetic, his intel-lect and will. Although intimately influenced by genetic qualities, the will is not determined by them and "the intellectual soul does not operate through any bodily organ."6 To Thomas, the person cannot be defined in terms of the body alone, or the soul alone, but they are both inextricably associated with the notion of the human per-son; and human nature is gen-erated at the moment of ensoul-ment. (That is why he does not allow the separated soul to be called a person; and he advances the exigency of the final resurrec-tion of the body so that the sepa-rated soul will be reunited to the body to become a person in eter-nity.) Man, standing on the hori-zon of eternity, is not only dignified through his soul, but his body also possess a dignity as the 114 noblest matter in all creation, from the moment of conception, in virtue of its potency to receive the intellectual soul as its very act of existing. This is the founda-tion of its natural right to sur-vival. Man is co-creator of man, and what is conceived excels in nature many legal creations of society, moral persons, and it de-serves the same title at least. By way of a postscript, it should be noted that the position of the Angelic Doctor with respect to the time of ensoulment (a mat-ter of faith and the precise mo-ment of which reason cannot place with certitude), has been unduly prejudiced because of his errol' on the Immaculate Conception. Thomas taught that Mary was immaculate from the moment of ensoulment, and not from the mo-ment of conception. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception recognizes the distinction between conception and ensoulment, and declares that it was from the mo-ment of conception that Mary was immaculate. REFERENCES 1. St. Thomas. Summa Contra Gen-tiles , II, 86. 2. Ct. Ibid. 3. I bid .. II, 83. 4. Noonan, John T., Jr., The A10r-ality ot Abortion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 38. 5. I bid. p. 57. 6. C .G ., II, 86. Linacre Quarterly 

A Note On the Unborn Person

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