The Central Question
I'm sure I don't have to tell you that abortion is a very
controversial subject in America today. There is a great deal of discussion
about women's rights, privacy, deformed babies, child abuse, back-alley
abortions, and so on. But surely the central question is, Is this a human life?
If the unborn child, at some point in its development, is not a living
human being, then there may be any number of valid reasons for destroying this
"thing". On the other hand, if the unborn child, at some point in his
development, is a human being, than destroying him is killing a person,
and it is difficult to imagine any circumstances that would give someone the
right to kill an innocent human being.
So when does human life begin?
Viability
Some people say that life begins when the unborn child reaches
"viability", the point where he or she can survive outside the womb.
For example, the picture at the top of this page shows Kenya
King. A normal (although exceptionally cute) baby? Yes and no. She was born June
16, 1985, at just 21 weeks into her mother's pregnancy. That's over four
months
premature. She weighed just 1 pound, 2 ounces when she was born, and in the
weeks that followed her weight dropped to 13 ounces. This picture was taken when
she was able to go home with her mother, Lisa, a healthy, adorable, five-pound
little girl.
This is Kelly
Thorman, born in March 1971 in Toledo, Ohio, also at 21 weeks. This picture was
taken three weeks later. It shows just how tiny she was. Do you see that
bracelet around her wrist? Well, it's not really a bracelet -- it's the nurse's
wedding ring. Kelly weighed just one pound when this picture was taken.
When does a developing child become "viable"? That is, what is
the earliest a child could be born and still have a chance to survive? Fourty
years ago doctors put the age of viability at about 30 weeks into pregnancy, or
ten weeks premature. Twenty years ago it was 25 weeks. Today it is 20 weeks.
Both of the children pictured above were born at 21 weeks and survived. I know
of four other survivors under 22 weeks, and five survivors who weighed less than
one pound.
But viability used to be 30 weeks and is now 20. What's
changed? Have babies changed? Have mothers changed? No, what's changed is the
medical know-how of the doctors and the sophistication of the life support
equipment available to them. Fourty years ago doctors didn't have all the
high-tech medical equipment they have today, so babies who would have died back
then can now be saved. So what is "viability" measuring? It is a measure of the
state of medical science and technology in a particular place at a particular
time; it does not tell us anything about the baby.
Quickening
For several centuries the most popular belief was that life
begins when the unborn child begins to move. This was called "quickening", which
actually means "becoming alive". I suppose this is not too irrational. After
all, what's the most obvious sign that someone is dead? Surely it's that he's
lying on the floor not moving. (Like, duhh?) Of course this test is not totally
reliable, but if you kick him a few times and he doesn't get up or make a sound,
that's a strong clue that he's dead. So if someone is dead when he stops
moving, perhaps we should say that he is alive when he starts moving.
Anyway, back then they didn't have ways to see into the womb to really tell when
a baby starts moving. By 18 weeks the baby can kick hard enough for the mother
to feel it, but of course he's moving before then, though they weren't sure
exactly when. Today we know that babies start moving at about six weeks, the age
of the baby shown here.
Brain Waves
Of course today we're more sophisticated than the simple "not
moving" test. Today we usually declare someone to be clinically and legally dead
when we can no longer detect brain waves using an electroencephalogram (EEG). So
if we say that someone is dead when brainwaves stop, perhaps we should
say that he is alive when brainwaves start. When do brainwaves start? We
can meaure them at 6 weeks.
Heartbeat
Before the idea of "brain death" came along, we used to
declare someone dead when his heart stopped beating. So if you're dead when your
heart stops
beating, perhaps you're alive when you're heart starts beating. When does
this happen? At just three weeks after conception. (Sorry, I don't have a
picture this early.)
Our Story So Far ...
What we've just said is something of a quick summary of
development in the womb -- albeit in reverse. So let's summarize some highlights
of fetal development:
- At 20 weeks the baby is viable.
- At 6 weeks we can measure brain waves.
- At 6 weeks he begins to move his arms and legs.
- At 3 weeks his heart begins to beat.
A Single Cell
But each of us began life as a single cell. A single cell does not look much
like what we normally think of a human being looking like. Some say that clearly
this is not a human being, because it doesn't look human. But can we
judge entirely be appearances? (Beauty is only skin deep; perhaps humanness is
too ..) What really makes someone human?
A Plan for a Man
These are human chromosomes. They are found in every cell of your body. Every
one is a copy of the set found in that single cell that you began as. They make
up the complete plan, the blueprint, for a person. Modern science is only
beginning to understand the code that this plan is written in, but a skilled lab
technician with the proper equipment could examine these chromosomes and tell a
few simple things.
I'd hate to have you read this article and go away without
learning something practical. So I decided I could show you something useful:
how to tell boys from girls. This may come in handy next time you're thinking of
asking someone out on a date.
Chromosomes come in pairs. Just take the chromosomes and put together the ones
that look the same, like I've done here. I literally made this picture by
cutting up the previous picture and gluing the pieces back together -- no magic,
no high tech. (Hint: The easiest way to match chromosomes is by simply looking
at the length.) If every one has a match, then this is a girl. If you end up
with two that don't match, like here, then this is a boy.
There are supposed to be exactly 46 chromosomes. If you have
too few or too many, than this person has some serious physical deformity.
Downs' syndrome is caused by an extra chromosome.
With some recent advances, it is now possible to do chemical
tests to determine if this child will have certain hereditary diseases, like
Huntington's disease or sickle-cell anemia.
The government presently has a huge project underway, the
"Human Genome Project", to decypher the code that this blueprint is written in.
Perhaps in time people will figure it out, and with the proper equipment one
could examine chromosomes like those pictured here and determine what hair color
this person will have, his height, his favorite salad dressing, whatever. (Or
maybe the idea of someone being able to tell all that about you from a tissue
sample disturbs you, but that's another subject.)
Suggested Answers to the Question
So when does human life begin? A number of answers have been
proposed.
Some have tried to find an answer in a religious belief, such
as suggesting that human life begins when the soul is created. Others object
that such answers cannot be used as a basis for law, because that would be a
violation of "separation of church and state". But I'm not going to bother
debating this point, because the objection is largely irrelevant. There is a far
bigger problem with such a definition of life: no one knows when the soul is
created, and it is difficult to see how we could find out. If someday, someone
invented some kind of machine which could detect and measure a soul, this might
become a useful definition. Until then, it can only be a subject for
speculation.
There have been a number of suggestions which could be
referred to as philosophical arguments. For example, Human life begins when
their is consciousness of self. But what about someone in a coma? Is he no
longer human? Indeed, each of us spends about 8 hours a day unconscious, while
we are asleep. Do we cease to be human? And like the "soul" definition, this one
may be philosophically interesting but is of little practical use, as it is not
at all clear how we could determine when someone first becomes conscious.
Or consider, Human life begins when one is capable of giving
and receiving love. This brings to mind Planned Parenthood's famous slogan,
"Every child a wanted child". It sounds very profound and romantic, but think
about what it really means. There are many unloved people in the world:
refugees, the homeless, minorities. Would you say that because these people have
suffered misfortune or oppression, that that makes them no longer human, and no
longer entitled to human rights? Suppose a man was accused of murdering his
wife, and in court he admitted that he had done it, but he explained that he
didn't love her anymore, and so he figured that as she was unloved, she was
useless and had no right to live. If you were the judge, would you accept such a
"defense"? It is surely a tragedy if a person is unloved and unwanted, but that
does not make them any less human.
No discussion of a person's state of mind, or how others feel
about them, has anything to do with that person's essential humanness. It seems,
then, that the question of when human life begins is not really a religous,
moral, or philosophical question at all, but a scientific one. When does
physical, material, biological life begin? So we should really turn to medical
science for an answer.
Some suggest drawing a line at some presumably crucial point
in the unborn child's development. As I have mentioned, some would use
viability, the age at which the child can survive outside the womb. For at least
several centuries the most popular theory was that life began at quickening,
when the baby begins to move. In the Middle Ages a popular theory was that the
baby becomes human when he or she has recognizable sex organs. (And you thought
it was just the 20th century that was obsessed with sex ...) Our Supreme Court
has ruled that a person is alive when he takes his first breath. The point when
the baby's heart begins to beat or when he first has brain waves seem like
significant points, though I don't know of anyone pushing for such a definition.
The problem with all such "developmental" definitions, though,
is that they are essentially arbitrary. Note that I've just rattled off half a
dozen plausible choices. How do we decide just which development is the crucial
one, whose "completion" means that this is now a living human being? What makes,
say, breathing more important that heartbeat? How do we decide?
Can we point to one event as being truly unique? Is there one
magic moment? Some time when we can really say that before that point, you did
not exist, but after that point, you did?
Yes.
Medical science has given us that answer. The magic moment is:
conception. It is at that moment that the unique combination of chromosomes that
define you
first came into existance. Before conception, that blueprint did not exist
anywhere; after conception, it did. From that point on, your body grew and
developed, but -- unless you get an organ transplant or some such artificial
addition -- nothing new is added except food, fluids, and oxygen.
Scientifically, biologically, and medically, life begins at conception.
Much as I might like to claim credit for brilliant deduction
and originality, I did not figure this out myself. It was first theorized by the
medical researcher Karl Ernst von Boar in 1828. Over the next several decades
doctors and researchers were able to observe the process of conception in the
laboratory, first in animals, later in humans, and by the 1850s this was
well-recognized scientific fact.
An acquaintance of mine who is a doctor once commented that
when his grandfather went to medical school in the early 1900s, he was taught
that life begins at conception. When his father went to medical school in the
1920s he was taught that life begins at conception. When he himself went to
medical school in the 1950s, he was taught that life begins at conception. Now
his daughter is going to medical school, and she is being taught that no one
knows when life begins.
How have we become more ignorant, when medical science has
advanced so far in almost every other way imaginable? Did new medical
discoveries somehow bring the old conclusions into doubt? Hardly. Ultrasound,
intrauterine photography, genetic engineering ... all have confirmed and
reconfirmed what was discovered in the 1800s. What's changed is that the medical
establishment has changed its "knowledge" to conform to the prevailing political
winds.
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