The public policy of Connecticut appears to reject the notion that human life begins at conception for purposes of the civil or criminal law.
Other states not so much.
On Feb. 16, the Supreme Court of Alabama held that a frozen embryo is a child for purposes of the state’s civil wrongful death statute. The concurring opinion of the chief justice cited two of the Catholic church’s most distinguished theologians (St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine) on the sanctity of life.
Whatever Aquinas and Augustine may have thought about the sanctity of life, they most definitely did not agree with Alabama that life begins at conception.
While the Catholic church has generally condemned abortion (and artificial contraception), many of its early theologians including Aquinas and Augustine believed that life began not at conception but at a later time variously referred to as animation, quickening, “homanization,” or ensoulment.
This subject is addressed in my opinion piece in The Connecticut Mirror on April 27, 2022.
But for a short period from 1588 to 1591 under the encyclical Effraenatan issued by a pope concerned about prostitution in Rome and quickly repealed by his successor, the church did not consider the taking of an unanimated fetus to warrant the most serious of sanctions until Oct. 12, 1869 when the Italian Pope Pius IX published Apostolic Sedis Moderationi. The 1869 declaration is considered to be the beginning of the church’s official position that life begins at conception.
The papacy of Pius IX occurred during an interesting time in Italian history. In addition to his religious duties, Pius IX was the temporal ruler of a good part of central Italy known as the Papal States. But the natives were restless. In 1848, the Pope was forced to flee Rome and returned only under the protection of the French Army. In the meantime, the forces of Italian unification (the Risorgimento) were chipping away at his kingdom. The Pope’s army fought a battle against the Italian patriot Garibaldi in 1867. In 1870, the Pope lost his kingdom and he confined himself to the Vatican where he considered himself a prisoner. He condemned freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.
It seems reasonable to question whether the timing of the Pope’s 1869 declaration had more to do with Italian culture and politics than it did with faith and morals.
As it was in Italy, so it may be in Alabama. The state’s law is based on the evangelical position that life begins at conception. Some members of Congress would like to see this the national rule.
But this has apparently not always been the universal position of the evangelical community. There is evidence that prior to the 1970s some evangelicals believed that life did not begin at conception.
For example, in a piece on the HuffPost on Jan. 23, 2014, Dr. Jonathan Dudley wrote that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many evangelicals believed that life began at birth (rather than conception) and supported looser abortion policies. He pointed to a declaration of a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1968 saying that abortion may be necessary and permissible in some circumstances, a resolution of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1971 saying essentially the same thing, and a quote from a professor at the Dallas Theological Seminary saying “The embryo is not fully human.”
Dudley asserts that this view began to change in reaction to the actions of religious right leaders such as Jerry Falwell. In an article in Politico on May 27, 2014, Randall Balmer, a professor of religion and a former candidate for the Connecticut legislature, wrote that evangelicals were largely indifferent to the subject of abortion prior to and around the time of Roe v. Wade and began to change under the influence of individuals and institutions such as Paul Weyrich, the Heritage Foundation, and Bob Jones University.
As is the case with Pius IX and the Italians, it seems reasonable to question whether the timing of the Alabama position has more to do with American culture and politics than it does with faith and morals.
Which legacy has the greater weight of history: before or after 1869 in Italy and before or after the 1970s in America?
You be the judge.
Frank Hanley Santoro is a retired lawyer from Deep River. He is the product of a Catholic education.