When does life begin? At conception, at birth, or somewhere in between?
A classic question, and I’m not well-informed enough in medicine to have an opinion. That hasn’t stopped a lot of people, it seems. But the name of the blog is Good Reason, and as such, I’m open to anyone’s opinion as long as there’s a Good Reason for having it.
So let’s start with the proposition that life begins at conception, and that includes all the little embryos at fertility clinics. Maybe so, maybe no. But I have a question that I like to ask before I tackle the Big Issues:
Is this a testable proposition? If it is, let’s hear what the test is, run it, and get an answer to the question. If, however, the proposition is not testable, it’s dumb to believe it because there’s no way to settle it one way or another. It could just be some dumb idea, and you’d have no way of checking it or telling it from a good idea. If it’s not testable, that is.
If we decide that the question is not testable, then we can’t really appeal to facts. We have to use argumentation instead. And that’s okay; just a bit weaker. But I’d like to suggest that when we argue for one side or the other, we ask another question: What are the likely effects of this or that decision, and do we want those effects? We can guess at the effects of decisions, unlike… for example… ‘what God would want’.
So is it really workable to prevent the deaths of embryos? If so, we have quite a job on our hands.
John Opitz, a professor of pediatrics, human genetics, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah, testified before the President’s Council on Bioethics that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in women’s normal menstrual flows unnoticed.
Holy crap! We’re dealing with loss of human life on a massive scale! Why isn’t something being done about this? This is bigger than Iraq and Katrina combined!
You may not be surprised to find that this man with the hat has an opinion on this vexed question.
God sees embryos as “full and complete” humans, Pope Benedict said on Wednesday in an address that firmly underlined the Roman Catholic Church’s stance against abortion and scientific research on embryos.
“The loving eyes of God look on the human being, considered full and complete at its beginning,” Benedict said in his weekly address to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
If I understand this correctly, he seems to be saying God conveyed this view to him. But then he doesn’t come out and say it directly, so I’m not sure if he’s making that claim. Too bad. It would settle the whole question of God’s existence if he would be so kind as to arrange a press conference or a book signing or something.
On the other hand, if he got the idea from reading the Bible, I’d downweight the idea. Reading the holy texts through your own biased lens is an old, old game.
Maybe the man in the hat is right about the blastocysts. But he has given no good reason to think so.
I find myself asking my students a certain question when they come to me with tough questions: How could we find out the answer? And we sit down and see if there isn’t some kind of test we could run to settle the question one way or the other. The best policy is to observe the facts, and not say more than we know.
1 March 2006 at 11:50 am
This is a point I considered with my wife during the pregnancies of our two children – already, in the womb from an early date, they both had very different ‘personalities’, in terms of their patterns of movement, reaction to sound etc., which subsequently corresponded with their personalities after birth. It’s also said that language is developed in the womb, because an unborn child is able to hear the cadences and patterns of speech through the amniotic fluid. So I would say that the personality appears in the womb. At what point is a rather bigger argument. Any thoughts what happens at the other end? What happens to our personality when we (poetically) leave our physical being behind. My 4 year old asked this when a relative’s dog had to be put to sleep. I gave an erm, well, I don’t know, sort of answer. Not very convincing!
2 March 2006 at 1:34 am
Hi, phil. Nice to see you in comments.
Any thoughts what happens at the other end? What happens to our personality when we (poetically) leave our physical being behind.
A year ago, I would have given some answer like, “We go to the spirit world,” or some such. And I would have thought I had good reason to say so.
But now I realise that that proposition isn’t really testable. So you can have whatever opinion you want, and I’ll just say, “Maybe…” in a cryptic way.
The default is that what happens after death is… what appears to happen, which is nothing. Which is a far scarier possible reality than I was brought up for. But in the absence of a better (testable) theory, it’s the one I’ll have to provisionally accept.
Any evidence to the contary is welcome, but it had better be good.
By the way, your answer to your child was the most honest answer anyone could give.