[8-cell human embryo]
Is an embryo a person?
Given the title of this blog, it seems entirely appropriate to consider this Sliver. What is personhood? Is it something intrinsic, or is it something given to us (tho' these 2 need not be mutually exclusive)? Is it consciousness? Is it more than that? Is it unique to our species?
Although yours truly has considered previously some characteristics of humanity, and whether we're just a container for genetic (+/- cultural) replicators, there hasn't been consideration of when our humanity might begin. Slicer has long had difficulty with assumptions held and promulgated in some quarters of the Church.
In the last few days, North Dakota State has been doing some new law-making, and some of the elements are bugging Slicer:
Click here to access the short article. Slicer invites you to comment on it here. The issues are sometimes complex. Without thoughtless re-iteration of "rights of women" v "rights of fetuses" (and, yes, both have their merits) what do you think?
It is frustrating when folk will not look to see what their pre-suppositions are, and whether they're actually valid or not. It's also frustrating when terminology is muddled, perhaps consolidating those same pre-suppositions before any serious thinking can occur. The Huffington Post seems to have confused embryos with fetuses (the latter being a later stage of development). Or perhaps they're merely reporting accurately the confusion of the legislators:
This is something which can get in the way of serious consideration of the subject.
However the whole legislative attempt seems to be a real horlicks:
- it declares “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and defended.” In doing so, it presupposes what is a human being without defining such.
- the goal is to restrict abortion in North Dakota but, rather than tackle this directly, those behind it are legislating to enforce a philosophical/religious pre-supposition.
Don't get Slicer wrong, he does think embryos and fetuses deserve respect, and protection, especially when they're implanted as part of an ongoing pregnancy. He has distaste for induced abortion, but also distaste for oversimplification of the issues, particularly where ideology gets in the way of compassion. Slicer notes that some of those treating infertility have been concerned that, in the UK, gametes (sperm/eggs), and in vitro embryos have historically had greater legislative protection than embryos and early fetuses in vivo.
But do those who assume fertilised oocytes are humans ever stop to think about the inconsistency between this position and what must be their position at the other end of life? We don't hear objections that human life is still present in an adult or child when the heart ceases beating and respiration stops for more than a few minutes. Yet early embryos have neither a respiratory system capable of breathing, nor a heart capable of beating. Furthermore, a legal definition of death is the absence of brain stem reflexes - we don't hear protests that this is incorrect. Despite this there is a supposition, even an insistence, that a structure with no nervous system to mediate reflexes is a living human being. (The first signs of what eventually becomes a nervous system don't appear until after 2 weeks).
In a faith context, belief that "human life begins at conception" (as if conception were an instantaneous thing, when in reality it is a process) has no rooting in the Biblical text which many Christians believe/claim they are submitting themselves to. The understanding we have of eggs, sperm, and embryonic/fetal development, were not available to those who penned the documents, and some readers find it hard to consider the subject stripped of modern biological understanding. They tend to import (a degree of) modern understanding into their reading of Biblical text. The few frequently quoted "proof texts" are actually nothing of the sort, as they are instead statements of wonder, retrospectively, about the earliest beginnings of the writer - who was one of the minority of fertilised oocytes blessed enough to make it to conscious existence. We are indeed "fearfully and wonderfully made," and the verses relating to God knowing us before we were born need to be understood in the context of adjacent verses stating that He made us in the secret place (ie point of completion not clear), and that we required some putting together in our mother's womb:
"Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139.
The implication of this and other texts is thatHe does so because He is not constrained by time, as we are. It is not designed to tell us when we became human. (The same might be said of other texts with respect to evolution). The point is that we are human, are made for a purpose, and that we have responsibilities... of which more in a bit.
Back to Biology...
Life is competitive for sperm...
... but it's competitive for embryos too. A presumption that zygotes (fertilised eggs) should be afforded the same status as an adult or child does have a problem, as the Creator God - who is the focus of the religious belief - creates more zygotes and embryos which don't result in a baby than those that do. Available information indicates that, during the normal process of reproduction, between 50% and 75% of fertilised eggs fail to result in a live baby. If a fertilised oocyte is a human being, then the majority of human life never walks the planet. What happens to it?
Furthermore, an unquestioning assumption that all fertilised oocytes are human beings, in every sense of the word, severely handicaps reproductive medicine by not 'permitting' embryologists to use the same method as the natural process (i.e. selection and natural wastage) when trying to treat a couple who cannot otherwise achieve a live baby ie the strong views based on such pre-suppositions are, ironically, the very opposite of "pro-life," and seems to be markedly at odds with a creation ordinance to "be fruitful and multiply," and with much Old Testament imagery of transformation of barrenness into fruitfulness, and despair into hope.
There are words that tend to get bandied about in this context, often without due thought as to what they actually mean, or should mean. Sanctity is one example, sacred another (its misuse parodied memorably by Monty Python). Dignity is yet another. Each of these is important throughout human life, including at its end - sometimes a challenge in Slicer's line of work.
One of the things Slicer doesn't understand at all, among some of those who are most appalled at the 'wrongs' done to embryos and zygotes (whose humanity is at least disputable), is the seeming lack of concern for beings nearby, or several thousand miles away, whose humanity is not in question.
Fat man lookin’ in a blade of steel
Thin man lookin’ at his last meal
Hollow man lookin’ in a cottonfield
For dignity
Wise man lookin’ in a blade of grass
Young man lookin’ in the shadows that pass
Poor man lookin’ through painted glass
For dignity
Chilly wind sharp as a razor blade
House on fire, debts unpaid
Gonna stand at the window, gonna ask the maid
Have you seen dignity?
Footprints runnin’ ’cross the silver sand
Steps goin’ down into tattoo land
I met the sons of darkness and the sons of light
In the bordertowns of despair
Got no place to fade, got no coat
I’m on the rollin’ river in a jerkin’ boat
Tryin’ to read a note somebody wrote
About dignity
Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed
Dignity never been photographed
I went into the red, went into the black
Into the valley of dry bone dreams
So many roads, so much at stake
So many dead ends, I’m at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it’s gonna take
To find dignity
There is a terrible stereotype of ivory-towered Western Evangelical Christians pontificating (deliberate word choice) on the status of a bunch of cells (having learned of their existence from the scientific community), but immune to, and inactive on, the living hell and premature death of countless children and adults (personhood not in question) through inequity of access to healthcare - heck, food and clean water!
Slicer doesn't align himself with the principles above because Amnesty says they're good (he's not that much of a "Lefty"). He aligns himself with them because they sound more than a little Biblical. Is it not noteworthy that those who are theologically wedded to the idea of Jesus being "fully human" appear to miss the fact that it was necessary for him to walk the earth rather than just be a supernaturally fertilised oocyte (of interesting, if unknown, chromosomal constitution!)? And that this was necessary so that He might "release the prisoners," commute death sentences, bring justice; and change the practice, inform and fulfill the Law of a nation. More than that, we're invited to be part of his body, to join him in bringing in such change for the better.
Hence Slicer is pleased to see people of faith (including Evangelicals), and those not professing faith, collaborating in the IF campaign - working to reduce world hunger.
And I'm thinking about home
And I'm thinking about faith
And I'm thinking about work
And I'm thinking
How good it would be
To be here some day
On a ship called Dignity
A ship called Dignity
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