In addition to a 17th-century Dutch theologian (Petrus van Mastricht) and the King James bible, one of the authorities cited by Alabama chief justice Parker in his ruling on IVF is the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Parker's ruling cites Aquinas six times.
As someone with an M.A. and Ph.D. in historical theology — from a Catholic university — I know a little about Aquinas. Here are some salient points:
• Aquinas' neoscholastic theology was long the foundation of Catholic theology in general.
• Aquinas' natural-law theology, which draws heavily on the philosophy of Aristotle (and on Aristotle's biological assumptions), remains foundational for official Catholic teaching about sexual morality.
• This theology teaches that "nature" demonstrates, if we think about it, that the purpose of sexual intercourse is reproduction.
• Therefore anything — anything at all — that interferes with the "natural" purpose of human reproduction is deeply sinful. Whether that "anything" be masturbation, homosexual sex, contraception, coitus interruptus: anything.
• With this line of reasoning, Aquinas taught that for a man to rape a woman is less sinful than for a man to masturbate. Rape at least does not thwart the "natural" purpose of sexuality, while masturbation does.
• Hovering in the background of this thinking is the assumption — here Aquinas is indebted to Aristotle, who knew nothing much about the actual biological facts of reproduction — that sperm is sacred. Sperm is life itself, in this way of thinking. Wasting sperm militates against life itself.
• Aristotle and Aquinas thought that reproduction involves the penis placing in the passive receptacle of the womb a "little man," a homunculus.
• In pregnancy, a woman is merely an incubator for what really matters in the process of reproduction, the "little man" that the male, as the active agent of reproduction, places in the passive receptacle provided by the female.
• Sperm, what happens to it, where it goes, what it does, whether its potential to create life is respected, is supreme in this sexual ethical system. Males count supremely. Women are…just there.
So OF COURSE Alabama judge Parker would be a fanboy of Thomas Aquinas, since what he and his party want to do with their attacks on abortion and IVF and, in all likelihood soon, contraception, is to control women.
What Parker et al. are about is finding ancient authorities imbued with patriarchal, pre-scientific assumptions, to impose as "the" authorities on 21st-century thinking about human reproduction.
Parker et al. intend to impose those ancient, pre-modern, pre-scientific, misogynistic authority figures —by way of highly selected texts — on all of us, and to claim that these highly selected texts represent "the" tradition set in stone for all eternity. Take it or leave it. "The" tradition says. And law now says, as it cites these authorities.
Reject this and call it nonsense, and you're rejecting God and calling down "His" wrath.
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