The presentation we had last Thursday was amazing. It was wonderful to see how can the speaker explained to us the life and believes of Saint Thomas of Aquinas in such a dynamic way. The last part was the most interesting for me; when she started to talk about what did Saint Thomas believed about abortion and women. Therefore I decided to make some more research about it, and this is what I found:
Saint Thomas did not have enough information about the difference between men and women. The Greco-Roman view of procreation stated that just one sex which had two forms existed. So, what created the main difference between men and women was the heat or “vital spirit”. Saint Thomas believed that men, who had enough heat for producing another being, implanted their seeds in their partner’s womb and if the heat was sufficient, a male will be produced. However, if there was a lack of heat, a female will be produced. So basically, a woman is born because the fetus could not be a full man. He stated: "A female is deficient and unintentionally caused. For the active power of the semen always seeks to produce a thing completely like itself, something male. So if a female is produced, this must be because the semen is weak or because the material [provided by the mother] is unsuitable, or because of the action of some external factor such as the winds from the south which make the atmosphere humid" (St. Th. I, q. 92, 1, 1) "Thomas saw woman’s deficiency confirmed in her inferior intellectual powers. Living in a state of subjection to man, woman is not fully and image of God, as every man is." (Wijngaards, p20)
Saint Thomas did not have enough information about the difference between men and women. The Greco-Roman view of procreation stated that just one sex which had two forms existed. So, what created the main difference between men and women was the heat or “vital spirit”. Saint Thomas believed that men, who had enough heat for producing another being, implanted their seeds in their partner’s womb and if the heat was sufficient, a male will be produced. However, if there was a lack of heat, a female will be produced. So basically, a woman is born because the fetus could not be a full man. He stated: "A female is deficient and unintentionally caused. For the active power of the semen always seeks to produce a thing completely like itself, something male. So if a female is produced, this must be because the semen is weak or because the material [provided by the mother] is unsuitable, or because of the action of some external factor such as the winds from the south which make the atmosphere humid" (St. Th. I, q. 92, 1, 1) "Thomas saw woman’s deficiency confirmed in her inferior intellectual powers. Living in a state of subjection to man, woman is not fully and image of God, as every man is." (Wijngaards, p20)
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