The Ethics of Medical Homicide and MutilationO'Malley, Austin
Religion
The Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation
O'Malley, Austin
Medical ethics
The vital principle in a man, or in anything else, is at the end,
when it normally issues, of the same nature as it was in the
beginning. If it is at perfection a substantial primary form, it
always was such--a substantial form cannot issue from an accidental
form. If the substantial form is the form of the cells in the
completed organism, it was such before that organism was perfected,
unless it replaced a lower substantial form; but there is, we repeat,
absolutely no need for such a secondary form at the beginning. If
the cells of the embryo (not the infused germ-cells, which are
not the embryo) had a _forma corporeitatis_, or _cellularis_, or
whatever you wish to call it, the human soul when it did come would
not confer primal existence, would not be a _forma substantialis_,
but an accidental form. "In proof of which," says St. Thomas,[55]
"we must consider that a substantial form differs from an accidental
form in this, that an accidental form does not give being simply, but
such or such being; as heat does not give being simply, but heated
being. So when an accidental form comes in, a thing is not said to
come into existence or to be generated, simply, but to become such or
such an object, or to find itself in such or such a condition. So,
also, when an accidental form disappears, a thing is not said to be
destroyed simply, but only to a certain degree. A substantial form,
however, gives being simply; and therefore by its advent a thing is
said to be generated simply, and by its recession to be destroyed
simply. If, therefore, it happened that any substantial form other
than the intellectual soul preëxisted in matter, by which the subject
of that soul would come into actual being, it would follow that
the soul would not confer being simply, and therefore would not
be a substantial form; also that the coming of the soul would not
be a generation simply, but only _secundum quid_--all of which is
evidently false." Again, St. Thomas says:[56] "Some tell us the vital
acts that appear in the embryo are not from the soul, but from the
soul of the mother, or from the primitive force in the semen. Both
these statements are false."
[55] I, q. 76, corp.
[56] Ia, q. 118, a. 2, ad 2.
An application of the opinion offered here--that is, that the human
soul is infused at the instant of conception--to multiple and
monstrous embryos offers no real difficulty. There are two kinds of
human twins--those from two distinct ova and those from one ovum. Two
ova may come from one or different ovaries, or even from one Graafian
follicle, be fertilized at the same time and develop synchronously.
If the ova are placed at some distance apart in the uterus, two
placentas appear; if the ova are near each other the placentas may
fuse, but their circulations do not. Each child will have its own
fetal envelope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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