ABORTION

I will not bore everyone with an introduction to this issue. If you have considered it for very long at all, you know that the fundamental question on which abortion hinges is this : When does a fertilized egg become a person?

This is the crux of the argument; if either side can definitively answer this question, the issue becomes much less ambiguous, the proper courses of action more easily identifiable. This is the question I will here try to address, on three fronts: the logical front, the biological front, and the moral front.

First, logically. In dissecting the question, we arrive at four possibilities:

1.) that it is not a person and we know that
2.) that it is a person and we know that
3.) that it is a person but we do not know that
4.) that it is not a person and we do not know that

In option 1), abortion is benign, and akin to or even less severe than having your appendix out.

In option 2), abortion is murder, plain and simple, in 99% of the cases. There are those who would try to justify abortion even in the face of that fact (birth defects, etc.). I would submit that when we are talking about killing a human person, who is totally innocent with respect to the laws of man, there is only one arguable option to condemning the act as murder. The only logical exception would be the truly rare case of the life (not quality of life; life) of the mother being imminently (as opposed to potentially) endangered by the pregnancy, because in that case it’s self defense. Tubal pregnancies, for example, would qualify here. Even given this exception, on a strictly logical basis, the individual with the highest likelihood of survival should be preserved. This could potentially mean the child, not the mother, would be saved.

In option 3), abortion is manslaughter, for it is still killing an innocent person, without intent to murder. It is like shooting at a sudden movement in the woods which may be a deer or may be a man. If the victim is a person, you have committed manslaughter.

In option 4), abortion is criminal negligence. If we don’t know for sure that it is not a person, we have committed criminal negligence, as in the above case if it happened to actually be a deer in the woods, but the hunter did not know that, and nevertheless shot. Such negligence is instinctively and universally condemned by all reasonable individuals and societies as personally immoral and socially criminal.

Second, biologically. It will be helpful at the outset to distinguish a few terms, in order of specificity. "Life" as used for these purposes would apply to virtually any animate cell; for example, dog cells, ebola cells, monkey cells, and yes, homo sapien cells. "Human life" would refer specifically to human cells, such as epithelial cells, sperm cells, and egg cells. I trust no one brings any argument to this point. However, the next two terms might be a little more controversial: "person" and "human being".

"Person" could apply to more than human beings, and is therefore the more broad term. For example, rational extra-terrestrial life could be persons. One might consider a few of the more remarkable primates or even dolphins to be persons. God would be a Person. (I realize that atheistic thinkers who also disbelieve in extraterrestrial life might fault my argument here. I offer no defense to them at this point, as this is not an argument for the existence of God. I simply include this to point out that if you wish to classify properly, and also wish to retain the possibility of God and/or E.T. you must put "person" before "human being".)

"Human being" then has to be the narrower term, falling logically under "person" and, therefore, all human beings are persons. The real difficulty here is that most will balk at aborting a "human person", but not a "potential human being", as the fetus is often defined. If, though, personhood precedes the position of even "potential human being", then we are left on the horns of that very dilemma, aborting what we know to be a person.

To which one might say, "Hold on! That still doesn’t prove anything. One might easily place a zygote in the ‘human life’ category, which precedes ‘person’ and neatly sidesteps the problem." True, but then we are again left with a classification problem: At what point does "human life" give way to personhood?

Birth and viability are the two most frequently suggested answers, but both of these are fatally flawed. Birth is simply a change in geography with no real personal internal significance. It also ignores the facts of viability altogether, which are quite compelling when compared to birth. Viability, for it’s part, is heavily influenced by external forces. It should be obvious that the level of technology that exists outside the womb cannot determine whether a fetus is a person or not.

Carl Sagan suggested as the answer the earliest point at which thought is possible, or somewhere around six months. This sounds reasonable, since complex thought is the thing which most obviously differentiates humans from other animals, but it too has it’s problems. The argument for thought is a functional one; that is, it argues for personhood based on the subject’s active or conscious performance of those traits which are considered to be uniquely associated with persons. Does this then mean that someone in a coma is not a person? Or even someone asleep? Or an extreme case, like someone born with no brain, where thought is impossible?

Perhaps the answer would be that a person is someone who has a history of performing personal acts. Except that if this were the case, there could be no first personal act. Or perhaps a person is one who has the future potential for personal acts. This would seem to skew toward the pro-life position, until one realizes that a dying person could not be considered a person by this definition.

All this to illustrate the weakness of all functional arguments. Another example would be the "quickening", or mother’s feeling of first movement by the baby, which used to be the standard in early America; also, the "homunculus", or the point at which the fetus starts really "looking human", which was used even earlier. To argue functionally is to say that only achievers, only successful functioners, only sufficiently intelligent performers, or even more subjectively, those with a sufficient resemblance, qualify as persons and have a right to life. And who is to say what "sufficient" is? We must not confuse being a person with functioning as a person.

To return to the theme of this section, what arguments remain from a biological perspective? The strongest remaining arguments point to conception. The most basic unique identifier of the individual, DNA, comes into being at this point. That is to say, at conception, the "genotype" — the inherited characteristics of a unique human being — is established and will remain in force for the entire life of this individual. At this point, the individual fulfills the four criteria needed to maintain biological life: (1) metabolism, (2) growth, (3) reaction to stimuli, and (4) reproduction. This point is the clear genesis of the process which, given the correct circumstances, will result in a baby being born. This is why French geneticist Jerome L. LeJeune, while testifying before a Senate Subcommittee, asserted: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence." There is no decisive break in the continuous development of the human entity from conception until death that would make this entity a different individual before birth. This is why it makes perfect sense for any one of us to say, "When I was conceived..."

Conception. Why is one able to perform personal acts, under proper conditions? Only because one is a person. One grows into the ability to perform personal acts only because one already is the kind of thing that grows into the ability to perform personal acts, i.e., a person.

(to be concluded in Part 3...)