Embryos: people like you and me

My friends Edd and Simon have made some good points in criticism of my earlier post citing Christian feminist Frederica Matthewes-Green which made me realise I owe a more careful explanation of why I think that embryos should be treated as human beings to whom our general belief that we should not arbitrarily end human life applies. That was the presupposition of the post, which I shall try and defend here.

Conception is the beginning of something. Before conception, sperm and eggs do not become anything else. They just are what they are. So their meeting at conception changes them, and begins something. The only really relevant question is, what begins? Is it the beginning of human life as we commonly recognise it in one another (in which case its arbitrary ending could not be justified), or only the beginning of something which will subsequently become human life? (Even if it were the latter, it would still not be at all clear that it would be acceptable to destroy something that if left undisturbed would become human life.)

It is worth noting before we proceed any further, that any argument which says 'we cannot know with precision when human life begins' is also an argument in favour of protecting the embryo from the moment of conception. This is because if it might be a human life, then the only thinkable appropriate way to treat it would be as if it were a human life. The alternative to this caution, that is, to permit the destruction of something which we think might be human but we are not sure about, would display a fairly heinous amount of indifference and carelessness. It would be like blowing up a building marked for demolition which you thought might still contain another person!

But there are also compelling reasons to assume that the embryo is a human life. The most important one is this: once conception has taken place, the embryo then possesses all the relevant characteristics of human life. It is now genetically distinct from its parents. Although it will obviously be dependent on its mother in order to grow to term, at the same time it also exists independently of the mother - as can be seen in the very fact that embryos can be fertilised ex utero and implanted into other wombs. In other words, the embryo is not a physical extension of the mother like her leg or arm but is independent of her. Even its dependence on the mother for nourishment in the womb is not absolute. It is established after the embryo has come to exist. The embryo exists, its cells divide and it grows before implantation, which does not take place until 5-7 days after conception. Even before implantation, there is something about it which is growing and independent. In short, it does not derive all its life from its mother.

Unfortunately, this argument is very controversial today, for the simple reason that people tend to add a lot of extra characterisitcs which one must possess before one is deemed to count as a human being. These might include capacity for rational thought, physical independence, ability to choose and so on. This creates far more problems than it solves, since in excluding embryos from the category of human life, it also excludes quite a lot of human beings who lack the same characteristics as embryos. The most obvious example is babies, who are just as physically dependent upon others as the embryo is since, if someone did not feed them, they would die. They are also unable to make rational decisions. In addition, it is not normally considered acceptable to end the lives of kidney dialysis patients and patients who rely on respiratory assistance, even though they are not independent, and rely on external things to keep them alive. Neither do we normally consider it legitimate to end the lives of severely mentally disabled people who lack the capacity for rational thought, or severely physically disabled people who are unable to move their bodies independently.

There is no way to exclude human embryos from the category of human life which does not exclude other human beings whom we would regard it as wrong to kill. In particular, if one believes that a human embryo only subsequently becomes human, one must consider when this might be said to happen. If one says one cannot know when it does because it is so gradual, one is stuck back at the point I made above about caution. If one says one can know when this happens e.g. quickening, or viability, one must explain why one does not also on that basis exclude human life which does not possess the extra characteristics e.g. indepdent movement, ability to exist without being plugged into something else. This makes all such points identified subsequent to conception seem rather arbitrary, adopted for convenience rather than because there is any genuinely good reason for them.

Unless there is therefore some form of convincing evidence to the contrary, we must treat the human embryo as a human at a very early stage of development. The burden of proof falls on those who wish to show that it is not a human life, in the same way and for the same reasons that if someone was about to demolish a building using explosives, and they thought that someone might still be inside, the responsibility would fall upon them to make sure there was nobody inside before pressing the plunger.

Comments

[Edd]

Well argued. However:
' once conception has taken place, the embryo then possesses all the relevant characteristics of human life. It is now genetically distinct from its parents.'
I'd be wary of taking genetics as a key point. I don't think you need to be genetically distinct from another person to not be that person. In addition, one can have parts of your body genetically distinct from other parts of your own body! It's going to cause you some amount of philosophical pain when it comes to dealing with identical twins too.

'Neither do we normally consider it legitimate to end the lives of severely mentally disabled people who lack the capacity for rational thought, or severely physically disabled people who are unable to move their bodies independently.'
I'd certainly agree with that. But once someone is actually brain dead then it's a different matter, which leads me on to, or rather back to...

'It is worth noting before we proceed any further, that any argument which says 'we cannot know with precision when human life begins' is also an argument in favour of protecting the embryo from the moment of conception.'
I don't know when precision it does begin, but if I said, for example, that it began some time after the first neuron developed then I've got a position by which I can say abortions up to some point are permissible, and ones after are not.

'The burden of proof falls on those who wish to show that it is not a human life'
Fundamentally, we're still back at the same problem. Because I can define human life differently to you, I can show it is not a human life.

[Sean Doherty]

Thanks Edd. I am not so sure that twinning makes a difference since I do not think genetic distinctness *as such* makes one a human being. The point is, conception is the moment at which genetic distinctness from parents is established, and the point therefore at which something *new* is formed. That is, the conceptus cannot be said to belong to its parents in the same was as egg and sperm do.

Practically speaking you're right that we're back at the same problem: defining human life differently. But philosophically, the question is, on what *basis* does someone say that it begins at the development of the first neuron? Why should that be morally meaningful? Before the development of neurons, the embryo is still a) human and b) alive.

[JohnS]

Not to put words into his mouth (I don't know Edd), but my understanding of his argument is that point a) in your (Sean's) comment is where things diverge: he's using as an *example* -- not necessarily a position he believes in, just a possible starting point -- a definition of "human" so as to be roughly synonymous with "a creature with at least one human neuron."

Of course all this language -- "creature"?!? -- gets awfully tortured in the attempt to say things without using emotionally freighted words!

Thoughtful -- and thought-provoking -- post, Sean.

[A Badger]

Although this disccusion so far is about whether abortion is right or wrong, I think I'd be correct in thinking that Sean therefore expects the law to change to make it illegal. Is that what laws are really for? Or are they to protect the population (I'm aware 'population' may include embryos, and thats something to argue about). Abortion legislation in the UK was brought in principally to stop abortion being the number one cause or death during pregnancy. My point (which is sketchy and needs work) is that isn't it the church's job to persuade people that they shouldn't be aborting babies, not trying to persuade the government that it should be illegal? Do laws exist to lay down what is right and what is wrong?

I agree with Sean

[Simon]

Hi

I like the reasoning, and am feeling drawn towards your line of thought.

I have a feeling that there might be a logical flaw with reasoning that extrapolates a category and finds a single example to disregard a categorisation, or perhaps it is the idea of categorisation that is flawed?

Perhaps (and I am thinking out loud) what your reasoning is doing is taking a feature of an embryo (e.g. lack of rational thought) and then placing the embryo on the same footing as a human on the basis of a lack of a human characteristic (in this case a baby and a person with a dramatic mental disability). Therefore we can categorise a human as a something that lacks a human characteristic?

What this illustrates is that there is no single category that defines what it is to be human. However there does appear to be some in built human faculty to identify another human, where we struggle with the embryo is that it fulfils none of the categories one might hope to use to justify its being a human.

Or: Cats have fur, 4 legs, pur, meow, bite simon, have claws and run along fences. In all of the above categories one can find a cat that does not do all of the above. In fact the only accurate way to classify a cat is through its genes (I think). And by that standard our cat has always been a cat, whether feotus or an evil-git-cat like Milo.

So rather than seeking the identification of a human by category you are seeking a kind of universalist definition of humanity.

I feel I am slightly drawn towards a more considered approach though more on the basis of emotion than reason.

[Lisa Severine Nolland]

my dear Sean
excellent
but this is just for you
can't find a way to contact Rob re Grove...
any ideas?
hope you & yours are well
love lisa (from Grove ethics)

[Sara Pettit]

Sean I find it problematic to frame this issue as a question of whether embryos are human life or not. It seems to me that the question of "When does life begin" is ultimately irrelevant when it comes to the two major areas in which we consider the destruction of a human embryo or fetus: stem cell research and abortion. In my mind there is no question that conception creates a distinct life or capacity for life in an absolute sense, but inevitably until birth the rights we can ascribe to that level of life are inherently in tension with the life of a sentient being, the mother.

Embryonic life

I think comparing an embryo to a baby is inapt because the baby is sentient, if not rational, but the embryo is not. The embryo has the spark of life, or at least the potential for it, but it requires a human incubator to achieve sentience. I would say that an embryo is far more analogous to the brain dead trauma victims from whom we harvest organs on a daily basis in all industrialized nations. Are these individuals still capable of carrying out the basic functions of human life i.e. breathing, circulating blood, excreting, with assitance? Yes. They are. They are also distinct, independent beings with unique genetic identities that do not require physical sacrifices by another human to continue to exist. However we consider them to be acceptable sources of organs. One might argue that unlike an embryo, they lack the potential for sentient life. However, the embryos used for stem cell research are not ripped from the bodies of women who wish to bear them. They are created in a lab and will otherwise be discarded - just as the remains of adult humans on life support will otherwise be discarded. I find that to be more of an apt comparison. We make cost benefit analyses with regard to the value of life all the time . . . what else is the assessment that self defense justifies killing? . . . but for some reason many people insist on framing this issue as if the existence of life at conception precludes the ethical nature of extinguishing that life.

Abortion

This is obviously a more controversial issue, but again, I find that we have to weigh the rights of a sentient individual over a non-sentient spark of life. Even Thomas Aquinas differentiated in degree between the sin of ending a life before and after quickening (if you want the citations i can provide them, i did my law school extended writing requirement on his and other natural law scholars' position on abortion). Perhaps by introducing a legal element I am stepping outside the bounds of your discussion, but here it seems to me that the issue is not whether a fetus is a life - common sense tells us it is - or whether the mother should carry the fetus to term, but whether the mother or the state should make that decision. It seems to me that there are too many variables and each situation is so unique that only a woman can make her decision. Take, for instance, a woman who is required to take fetus-toxic medications to function normally. If she becomes pregnant accidentally, should the state be the one to choose between her wellbeing and the fetus, which is not sentient? Although a fetus probably has a greater claim to intervention than an embryo, is it truly ethical for the state to force a woman to potentially take on a physically or emotionally harmful burden while the man who impregnated her bears no consequences? Anyway I've just discovered Sean's blog and felt like throwing in my two cents.