Life & Death: When does life begin?
Recently in the news, a man killed another man because the victim was a doctor who performed abortions, and the killer believes that abortions are murder. Therefore, believing murder is bad (especially for the unborn child) the killer made himself the chosen weapon to enforce the “eye for an eye” philosophy.
For a moment, lets ignore the illogical idiocy of the killer’s philosophy that murder begets murder, or even any moral judgement upon his actions for that matter. Instead, I would like to focus squarely upon the central thesis that abortion is murder.
Disclaimer: this is a lay-persons interpretation of the process of conception and birth, not based upon any research other than popular knowledge. But, seeing as how the killer himself was not a doctor, then its likely to approximate his own basis for his abortion thesis. I will tidy-up this inherent problem in the end of this discussion.
First, lets start with an egg within a woman’s womb. If the egg is of and from the mother, then it is a part of the mother until it becomes something more. Through fertilization (skipping the messy details here), the egg’s DNA and the sperm’s DNA merge and through some simple, yet complex, forces the material begins a progressive series of cellular changes that result in a parasitic, yet symbiotic co-evolution of tissues within both the mother and the resulting tissue mass.
I started with “if the egg is of and from the mother” purposefully since technically a 3rd party contributed egg would constitute a foreign material not originating with the mother and therefore beginning its journey as more of a parasite than a part of the host. Since this complicates this story excessively, I’ll just stick with the more traditional 1-man, 1-woman theory of procreation and we can cover the less common cases another day.
So, back to my story;
We have a woman, an egg of mixed DNA that has evolved into tissue, and newly formed tissue within the mother’s womb to encapsulate and protect the mother from the intrusive egg. Immediately after consuming the initial egg contents and growing beyond its confines, the evolved tissue attaches itself to the host in a parasitic manner and begins acquiring its nutrients from its host.
At this point, if you were to take an ultrasound, x-ray, MRI, or other form of introspection tool of choice, you would see exactly a tiny, squishy, non-human appearing blob of goo. Is this life? Is this a child?
At this point, if a miscarriage occurred, I cannot imagine anyone conducting a funeral for the resulting bloody mass that would result. Why? Because its not cute enough yet? Because its not born yet?
No. Because at no point has this tissue mass become conscious of itself, its surroundings, nor in any way has it become something we would recognize as being remotely human.
But, what about Ayn Rand’s theory that existence precedes consciousness? “I exist, therefore I am”
The tricky part about existentialism and objectivism is the “I” presumes an identity. And if you cannot yet recognize the tissue’s form as distinct from the host, and the tissue is not yet conscious of anything, then how can there be an identity or an “I”?
Now, back to our anti-abortionist. His argument that abortion is murder is much more sound as the tissue makes its journey into fetus and fetus turns into unborn-child. Somewhere in this process, the “blob of goo” begins to resemble the form of a human, and ultimately develops neurological pathways that upon reaching a certain level of complexity begin to achieve consciousness.
But, at what point along this path do we recognize the unborn as being human, and therefore the abortion as murder? Is it merely the existence of tissues that are arranged in a shape that humans can recognize as human-like? Or, is it at the point of neurological activity preceding or culminating in consciousness?
It seems a bit shallow to say human-form equals life. If you stare at clouds long enough, I’m sure you will spot many human-shaped vapors, but that does not make them human, nor alive. In addition, there have been many malformed children and creatures in this world that we would recognize as alive even if their form was unrecognizable. So, lets say that form does not equal life. Therefore, it must be something else that we should use to define as the beginning of life.
Theology suggests the concept of a “soul” being the fundamental basis of a human life, and that by destroying life you are making the soul leave the body/temple. In this case, when is the soul delivered to the life-making tissue? Is the soul in the egg prior to or upon fertilization, or does it arrive later? If so, when?
Again, lets set theology and “soul” searching (pun intended) aside and focus upon what we can actually measure. What if one day we could use technology to record the entire process from egg & conception through birth in extreme micro-second increments and through this technology identify the point at which the pre-fetile material achieves the necessary neurological complexity to begin perceiving things or itself to the most infinitesimally tiniest degree. This at least sounds theoretically possible and would at last give us a clue to the earliest point at which the egg transforms into conscious life - and therefore the point at which death would be logically for anybody construed as murder.
I think such scientific research would be worthwhile if for no other reason than to give would-be crazies good reason for their lunatic ideas of when to murder abortionists rather than the current theologically-based reasoning that anti-abortionists base their beliefs upon today. I’d far rather have murder conducted based upon sound philosophical reasoning than based upon a theoretical religion-derived reasoning that is self-reinforcing through faith and a fair bit of imaginative deduction.
Having said all of this, I do think the anti-abortionists have some decent logic to their argument that abortion is murder, but they are so darn non-specific about at which point an abortion is an abortion. However, its this very stubbornness about being ambiguous on the details that causes them to be perceived as these poorly reasoned crazies that are exactly the type of person to believe that the only solution to murder is yet another murder.
