Abortion is a divisive issue in our society. Many consider it the murder of “human life”, and equate “human life” (ie everything from a Nobel laurate to a cancer cell (some of which have become free living see hela cells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa)) with a human person.
They ask when does human life begin if not at the union of sperm and egg?
Unlike garden of eden proponents the data indicate human life began in some gradual way some hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. Both a sperm and egg are alive and human. They are however, not people. People have brains and can think.
Just the same way as human life began in a semi nebulous way over the course of epochs (or aeons if you trace it back all the way), so too does the development of person-hood in the concepsus. As we know person-hood is a function of the brain, so it therefore follows that before there is even the slightest trace of a brain there is no person. After a brain starts to develop the waters muddy a bit; there is no hard and fast point where you can say before here there is no person, and after here, there is, the process is gradual.
Our society has very little problem with killing entities with little neural complexity, so surely the embryo should have at least as much neural complexity as a mouse before we start to entertain notions of it's innate rights. Neural development is a process, one that does not result in a self aware reasoning being until sometime after birth.
With present and near future technology we can come pretty close to making just about any random somatic cell develop into a person. This dubious potential doesn't mean any of these cells somehow have "rights".
In medicine we have criteria for establishing brain death. Once these criteria are met a person is no longer considered "alive" and we can harvest organs from them resulting in the death of most of the rest of the carcass left behind (aside from the organs transplanted into other people).
As a fun tidbit, about 60% of conceptions do not result birth. (Spontaneous) abortion is the rule, not the exception. [PMID]7117572 *
61.9% of conceptuses will be lost prior to 12 weeks. Most of these losses (91.7%) occur subclinically, without the knowledge of the mother.
As quoted in the text above that majority of conceptions do not result in birth. The majority pass out of the body without the woman ever being aware they existed. This alone makes the idea that god, or gods (assuming you believe they are of the all powerful type) somehow view, at least early term, abortions as a bad thing immediately fail the smell test. If abortion is murder, this is positively genocide. A blastocyst has no brain or even a single nerve cell. Assigning the same level of rights to this as you do to a person and calling it a child is preposterous and has no basis outside of religion.
The practice of confusing the two has and is resulting in the death and suffering of people by holding back biomedical progress.
On to the concept of the endowment of consciousness, or “ensoulment” from a more religious perspective.
"Ensoulment", that is the endowment of a concepsus with a human “soul”, consciousness, or being, until until relatively recently, was not considered to be something that happened at or near the time of conception, even in a religious context. This was true in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. I have a copy of Thomas Aquinas' Suma Theologica sitting on my desk here. He was certain that the soul was not put into the body by god until at least the 40th day after conception, his reasoning being simply that the material form wasn't developed enough to receive a human soul until after this time. Abortion before that time was therefore no worse than contraception (which was admittedly quite a sin in Catholicism at the time). The idea of delayed ensoulment did not originate with him either, and was first brought to the Roman catholic church in the 4th century by St. Augustine, who himself borrowed it from Aristotle. It wasn't until the later half of the 19th century that this position was reversed. I'm not certain what the present Islamic take on the matter is, but they too accepted Aristotle's (and St. Thomas' reasoning).
On definitions.
Now, I generally won't debate matters regarding definitions because whatever this or that dictionary says, words are fluid phenomena. And having a debate centered around something like "murder=killing human life" according to this or that dictionary doesn't get us anywhere ethically (or morally); it is entirely a straw man. It's essentially putting Webster's dictionary in the place of god as an absolute principle on which to base all else, which is nonsense. Dictionary definitions are no basis for a discussion on ethics or morality, what is important is making sure those engaged in debate are aware of the definitions the others are using in the context of the debate.
That being said since many preceding discussion seems to center around the definition of murder, lets look at the definition from these various dictionaries.
from wikipedia
Quote:
from dictionary.comMurder as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent
from webster'sthe killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder), and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder).
Commonly accepted definitions of murder define it as killing a "human being" or a "person". So the first order of business in establishing that at least an early term conceptsus is either a "human being" or a "person". Some dictionary definitions of "human being" admittedly don't bother to define "human being" as anything other than as a member of the species "homo sapiens", others use a stricter definition which requires some degree of self awareness. Science very resoundingly comes down on the side that these clumps of cells are not remotely people or human beings if we were to use the later definition, and this is the one I use. This definition, like all definitions, is debatable. If I were to accept the former definition that would simply mean to me that the definition of "murder" includes some acts that are neither morally nor ethically wrong so I hope debates over definitions don't come up here.the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought
"Person" is somewhat clearer, though some definitions also reference "human being".
from wikipedia
The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialized context-specific meanings.
In many jurisdictions, for example, a corporation is considered a legal person with standing to sue or be sued in court. In philosophy and medicine, person may mean only humans who are capable of certain kinds of thought, and thus exclude embryos, early fetuses, or adults with certain types of brain damage. [1][2] This could also extend to late fetuses and neonates, dependent on what level of thought is required
Under what criteria do I think a human life is a person who should have rights?
Well like Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and Aristotle I would certainly want to take a conservative approach to the matter. We, like they, are not exactly dealing with zero information on which to base this decision. Indeed, we have quite a bit more information than they had. As I've stated above there is no specific point where we can point and say, here is a being with a full human consciousness and right before it there was none.
However though I disagree that there is a set point scientifically; there is a need for one legalistically (or set points for that matter, there is no reason we couldn’t have several; killing a consepsus before this point is fine, afterwards it should not be done unless there are compelling reasons, and after another point it is the murder of a human being). Rule of law needs to be maintained uniformly to have value.
In view of this I will only consider whether the presence of the neural architecture needed to maintain a human consciousness is present at all, not whether that neural architecture is being utilized (that is the presence of the hardware needed to run the software that is a human consciousness, not whether there is that software that is us actually running), so likely future science will refine this still further.
I won’t bother to go into the details of the hindbrain and brainstem as I think most of us here are aware that which allows the operation of our phenomenal consciousness and intellect is primarily a function of the forbrain, with the mid brain, pons, and medulla primarily dealing with homeostatic and regulatory functions. At 13 weeks of gestation the number of cells present in the forebrain is estimated to be roughly, well 1/13th of those present at birth, while by 22 weeks of gestation the number is about 1/3rd [Samuelsen et al]. At first glance this might make one tend to believe that a 13 week fetus has 1/13th the cognitive capability of a full term neonate (or perhaps erroneously of an adult human). However this is not remotely true. The human neuron is not as commonly believed, the fundamental processing unit of the human mind. The synapse is. And at the 13th week not only are there a small number of neurons, the synaptic density is much lower. At the 28th (that is well into the third trimester) week the synaptic density is only 1/3rd of the adult level (and 1/5th of the synaptic density at a year after birth which is actually almost twice as high as it is in adulthood (loosing many of these initial, “blank slate” synapses is an essential component to carving out the neural architecture needed for reasoning and cognition)[Johnson et al].
The development of synapses is not at all uniform in the human brain, the basic regulatory centers develop synapses well before similar structures emerge in the forebrain, and the various cortical layers develop synaptic connections at different rates as well within the neocortex itself[Johnson et al]. All of this intuitively makes perfect sense as there is virtually no need for any kind of higher cognition in the womb, however homeostatic regulatory mechanisms and visceral functioning is paramount.
At 28 weeks the synaptic density is 1/3rd of the adult level, or half the full term neonatal level, and the number of neurons even present in the forebrain is about half the full term level. This gives us 1/4th the neural complexity of a full term neonate only 10 weeks before full term. One might conclude that if this fetus was destined to be a genius with an IQ of 200 this fetus would have the IQ of 50, a mentally retarded but somewhat functioning person. Nothing could be further from the truth. IQ is not an absolute scale of intelligence; it is a relative scale of intelligence. In this case relative to other humans. At this stage the neural complexity is somewhat analogous to a rhesus monkey. An intelligent animal surely, but it isn’t going to score more than barely the double digits if that. Certainly not the level I would call a person, though also not the level I would be comfortable with the idea of killing for no reason at all. Though long term care facilities are full of humans permanently like this at a cost of 200-300k a year each to the taxpayer.
But is this the whole story? No. For that lets look at the neonate.
The neonate has a brain weight of about 1/3rd of the adult, and a synaptic density of half. This makes perfect sense as our heads are barely small enough to pass through the birth canal as it is. It became evolutionarily necessary for much of the brain to develop postnatally, (either that or women needed to develop some seriously massive booty…) evolution decided it would be better for us to take a little of the marsupial approach. Various radiations connecting distant regions of the brain together are not myelinated and functioning even at birth, which is fundamentally necessary to knit together the forebrain from many small islands of computational ability, into a conscious thinking being’s brain.
From the conclusion of “Fetal brain and Cognitive Development”, a review paper published in developmental review in 1999.
the fetus and neonate appears incapable of thinking, reasoning, understanding, comprehending, or experiencing or generating "true" emotion or any semblance of higher order, forebrain mediated cognitive activity. Rather, although capable of learning, the increasingly complex behaviors demonstrated by the fetus and neonate, including head turning, eye movements, startle reactions, crying, screaming, and rudimentary smiling, are probably best described as brainstem reflexes[R Joesph]
As I said, originally, the waters are muddy indeed. If the purpose is to arrive at a philosophical definition of when a conscious thinking being could be present, the answer seems to be sometime after birth, perhaps around the 6th month post natally. If the purpose is to arrive at a legalistic definition of when abortion should and shouldn’t be allowed, and if it would ever constitute murder my own recommendations are far more conservative than what the data seems to strictly say at this point as I don’t want to risk inadvertently allowing persons to be harmed. Killing a neonate I would therefore consider murder, and our entire biology is geared toward caring about them anyway. Also in my opinion Abortion in the 3rd trimester should not be done without a compelling medical reason, and the mother certainly should have exercised her right to choose by this point anyway.
On the other hand I see no objective reason whatever why abortion in the first trimester can’t be used as even a first choice of contraception if the woman finds that more convenient than other forms.
As an aside, pro choice folks often take the position that if a fetus can be kept alive outside of the womb, that should be the cutoff point for when an abortion could legally take place. In my opinion that is a dangerous position to take indeed. Right now fetuses as early as 21 weeks have been kept alive outside of the womb, it won’t be long before full artificial wombs are developed (I know of several promising projects in that regard). When that happens would that mean we would have an obligation to incubate even those 60% of conceptions that are never even noticed?
Grethe Badsberg Samuelsen, Karen Bonde Larsen, Nenad Bogdanovic, Henning Laursen, Niels Græm, Jørgen Falck Larsen and Bente Pakkenberg “The Changing Number of Cells in the Human Fetal Forebrain and its Subdivisions: A Stereological Analysis” Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 13, No. 2, 115-122, February 2003
Mark Henry Johnson, Yuko Munakata, Rick O. Gilmore “ Brain Development and Cognition: A Reader” Edition: 2 Published by Blackwell Publishing, 2002
R. Joseph “Fetal brain and Cognitive Development” Developmental Review, 20, 81-98, 1999
I invite contributions that further our scientific understanding, and our ethical and legal framework.
