The Sanctity of Human Life
A Reasoned Approach
Every few years—every election year, to be
precise—there erupts a flurry of excitement over various issues
pertaining to the sanctity of human life. The issues typically
involve birth control, abortion, stem-cell research, and euthanasia,
but they also pertain to capital punishment and war. This
isn't to say that such subjects are discussed only in election
years, for they're perennially hot topics. They just become
all that much hotter when there are political axes to be ground, and
records of performance in office to be veiled behind a convenient
smokescreen.
But most people are genuinely concerned about human life, and that's both good and
natural; it ought to be a topic of honest and thoughtful discussion.
Unfortunately, most discussion on both sides of this issue is
emotionally charged and not particularly lucid. This essay
attempts to demonstrate another approach to the
topic. We'll examine both sides of the issue in light of fact
and reason, rather than mere belief and gut feeling, and dispense
altogether with name-calling and pot-shots.
It would appear that religious belief
plays a major role in this debate. Some have remarked that it
seems to be Christians who are the main contributors to arguments
for the sanctity of human life. However, this might simply be
because in the United States there are currently more Christians
than anyone else. So, regardless of the topic, we Americans might expect to hear more
Christian viewpoints than any others.
In fact, we also hear from time to time from non-Christians—Jews,
Deists, Pantheists, atheists, and others—reflecting similar views
about the value of human life, whether that value is characterized
as sanctity, preciousness, uniqueness, mutual regard, or something
else. So it isn't only Christians, or only believers, who
hold such views. The idea is pervasive, and transcends
boundaries of faith. It would be hard to find anyone—except
perhaps a serial killer, a suicide bomber, or a warlord—who
disagrees that human life is something especially valuable.
So where's the disagreement? It
would appear to be bound up in differences over exactly what it is
that we consider so valuable about human life. What form does
this value take? When and how does it come into existence, and
when and how does it either cease to exist or become transformed
into something else? It is questions such as these—and a
perennial shortage of consistently verifiable answers for them—that
lead to honest differences of opinion. Evidently our
disagreements hinge mostly, not on the immorality of willfully
ending the life of a human being, but rather on just what
constitutes a human being. For some, the answer seems simple
and obvious; for others, it's a serious question that deserves a
serious answer, and a serious answer requires serious effort to get
at whatever truth might lie hidden in the shadow of the seemingly
obvious. After all, that the earth stands motionless at the
center of the universe might seem obvious, yet thorough observation
and disciplined reasoning reveal this isn't true. Indeed,
differences over what a human being is are as pervasive as the
intensity of the topic of human life as a whole, with Christians
taking different sides of the issue, and likewise non-Christians and
non-believers. So it seems prudent to ask at what stage
of development a fetus acquires all of the characteristics that define it
as a human being. That, in turn, depends
on just what those characteristics are, and that turns out to depend
on whom we ask.
One criterion on which we could probably all agree is: "It's alive."
People often ask, "When does life begin?" It seems a
pertinent question. Yet in fact, the beginning of life isn't an
event in the world of today. Whether we credit
natural causes or miraculous ones for our origin, life on our planet
began eons ago, and all life since that time has been a continuation
of the processes started in that ancient beginning. At no point in the human
birth-growth-reproduction cycle is there a non-living phase.
We know that every human individual alive today developed from a
living fetus, which developed from a living embryo, which was formed
by the union of two living gametes, which were produced by the living
gonads of two other living human individuals, with no gap in the
life process at any point. Thus, we can see
that although each individual has a beginning, the life that
animates any particular individual is simply the latest drop in a continuous
stream that began in the distant past. Since that time, there
has been no beginning of life, but only a continuous
cycle of life.
So, we
might more meaningfully ask, "When does a human individual begin to
exist?" Now, that's a very good question. It's been
answered many ways, but usually not with any clear and convincing
allusion to any indisputable factual reference. The
Judeo-Christian Bible
asserts
that God breathed the breath of life into the first man, Adam.
(Other creation legends offer similar accounts.) So it was widely
accepted for thousands of years that the beginning
of one's existence as a human individual corresponds to one's
first breath, which for every human (except the legendary Adam and his mate, Eve) has occurred
at the moment of birth. Even if this claim is unproved, it's credible, for although
the newborn remains entirely dependent on its parents, it has become
physically separate from its mother and is henceforth an individual. However, another popular view holds
that a human becomes an individual sometime before birth, at
the time of quickening, when the prospective mother first feels the
physical stirring of the fetus in her womb. Although the fetus
remains within, and attached to, the mother's body, its ability to move independently of
the mother's will seems to indicate assertion of itself as an
individual—even if its gyrations at this stage are reflexive, and
not the product of conscious will.
More recently, with the support of major religions, it's become a
very popular notion that a human individual comes into existence at
the moment of conception, when it is allegedly endowed with a soul. Yet,
despite its immense popularity, there's a fundamental problem with
this view: identical twins. During the first two weeks of gestation, the
human embryo remains a mostly undifferentiated blob of replicating
cells, a blob that might or might not split into two or even more
blobs, each of which might then develop into a separate individual.
If we assume that an embryo acquires a soul at conception, we must
then ponder the question of what happens to that soul if, during the
next fourteen days, the embryo subsequently splits into two
individuals. Do these two individuals share a common soul that
binds them together forever? Or does the soul split between
the two individuals? And if so, does it split evenly, or does
one twin sometimes get a distinctly better share of the
bargain than its sibling? We could cite anecdotal evidence to
support any of these views, and still remain unconvincing to anyone
who holds a differing view based on different anecdotes.
Now, we might well expect some to interject: "All this talk of sharing or splitting soul
is absurd!" But we'd
have to respond that speculating about what happens to soul when
twinning occurs is no more absurd than arbitrarily claiming that
soul must originate at conception. To assert the one is to
open the other to conjecture. There's no hard evidence for soul itself; it's never been empirically
detected or measured. And unless that becomes possible, the matter
remains confined to the realm of speculation, not fact. In the meantime,
though, we could simply skirt the problem of twins by supposing that soul doesn't enter the picture until at least
the third week of pregnancy, when the period in which twinning can
occur has passed, and the identity of the individual is physically established.
(Incidentally, this is the time limit currently accepted by stem-cell
researchers.)
Those who are content, or even eager, to believe in soul, or
else who are simply too incurious to care about looking into the
matter any further, may be
satisfied with this view. But what about others who aren't
persuaded, who insist on basing their opinions on something tangible,
something more convincing than an unsubstantiated belief or a
convenient assumption?
After all, the only distinguishing characteristics of a third-week
human embryo are that it is (1) alive and (2) an individual—a broad enough description to apply to any multicellular organism, be it a lizard or a
larch. If human beings are truly special, then there
must be more to it than that. So what is it, precisely, that we so value in human beings that we
suppose their importance to exceed that of all other living things?
It's definitely a tough question; but there are some things we can
logically rule out. It can't be their human genetic content, for we
routinely discard human tissue—hair and fingernail trimmings, wisdom teeth, ruptured appendixes, inflamed gall bladders,
shattered limbs, and liposuctioned fat—without
a trace of worry about even
the partial destruction of the being to which they'd been attached. And it can't be their
general human form, because we don't value things that merely resemble
humans—dolls, mannequins, sculptures, or images—nearly as much as we value human beings
themselves. What is it about human beings that elevates them
alone above all other creatures?
Perhaps a clue lies in our insistence on calling ourselves, not just
humans, but human beings. Part of this is surely
attributable to anthropocentric vanity: as humans, we're simply inclined
to rate our own species superior to all others. Superior, but
not necessarily supreme, for we also imbue our deities with the
same essence: being. So what do we and our gods have in
common? Why do we reserve this special distinction of being
for our own species, and perhaps for a divine entity, but not for
any other creature? Some may call it spirit, assuming it to be detachable from
the physical body; others may call it soul, assuming it to be
immortal. But in the interest of keeping disputable
complications to a minimum in this discussion, let's agree to refer
here to
our shared yet (presumably) species-unique experience of conscious
self-awareness and reasoning thought as mind. We may disagree
about its attributes; but inasmuch as we each personally experience
mind, we
can hardly deny its existence. And it's arguably the only
significant feature
that distinguishes us from other creatures that we routinely cage
for our amusement, harness for our convenience, or slaughter for our food.
So now the question becomes: "When does mind begin?" We
left our new human individual, the embryo, at the beginning of the
third week of gestation, when it was simply a microscopic blob of
undifferentiated cells. Aside from its genetic makeup, a human
embryo isn't distinguishable in form, chemistry, or behavior from
embryos of any other vertebrate species—tiger, tortoise, toad, or trout. By week eight, however, cell differentiation has become
evident, and the cerebrum has begun to form out
of an as yet disorganized web of randomly firing nerve fibers. At this stage,
the embryo advances to the stage of fetus, and is thus henceforth
categorically excluded from embryonic research of any sort.
But the emergence of mind is still a long way off, for the
physiological hardware to support it just isn't yet there.
Much later, at week
twenty-three, the fetus has developed to a point that it could
survive, with life-support, outside the womb. There has been
brain activity for some time, but still not at a level that could
give rise to consciousness. The mental state of a fetus at
this stage is essentially vegetative, barely comparable even to that
of an advanced-stage Alzheimer's victim, whom we could reasonably
consider a candidate for humane removal of life support. In
the fetus, however, this is the stage at which brain development is
on the verge of dramatic transformation. (It's also the stage beyond which
the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled
out arbitrary abortion.)
At about week
twenty-eight, fetal brain development accelerates to a furious
pace. Nerve cells multiply, connections are made, glands
secrete, activity intensifies and becomes orderly. Eventually,
rudimentary consciousness begins to fade in, followed by primitive emotion,
and the behavior of the fetus becomes human-like. It
exhibits recognizably human responses to pain, pleasure, comfort, and boredom.
Even so, exactly when it becomes self-aware is still a matter of
speculation. Indeed, some psychologists have quite reasonably argued that self-awareness
doesn't emerge until after birth, perhaps even as much as two or
three years afterward—about the time permanent memory appears. But whenever it is that the emerging
consciousness acquires an experience of self, an awareness of
being, that's when we can confidently say it has truly advanced from
a merely potential being to an actual being in any meaningfully
human sense
of the word.
Now, we could also approach the issue from the opposite
direction, from the standpoint of decline and degeneration rather
than growth and development. We could argue that someone who's
catastrophically brain-damaged—whether by disease, by physical
trauma, by drug abuse, or simply by advanced atrophy and
deterioration—to the extent that the neural structure of
the brain has become permanently incapable of supporting a level of
activity corresponding to conscious awareness, is no longer a
being, since it is no longer capable of sensing and appreciating that it is.
The eyes may stare, but there is no longer any I behind them. We might also argue further, on behalf of the terminally ill, that
even conscious being isn't worth sustaining if the only prognosis is
an existence of unrelenting agony. But let's consider the
point well enough made, without the need of exploring those
distressing byways in detail.
Upon reflection, we observe that reverence for life isn't the
sole issue. Where human beings are concerned, the existence of mind
is a key consideration beyond that of mere biological activity.
But although we've pointed out a practical difficulty with the ensoulment-at-conception
view, nothing else has been proved or
disproved by what we've discussed. Thus, our compassionate
concern for human beings is logically mandated only when an
individual's brain is capable of giving rise to a conscious sense of
being after 28 weeks, and the 23-week limit set by the Supreme Court is more than
ample to safeguard that threshold in a developing fetus. We
are, of course, entitled to observe more restrictive limits in our
personal lives if we so choose, or if we subscribe to a belief
system that requires us to do so. But we aren't entitled to
demand that those who don't share our beliefs and preferences must
nonetheless abide by them—even if ours happens to be a majority
view. For opinion doesn't shape reality; it merely expresses
our views of it, colored by personal experience and preference.
In addition, there's a
related philosophical point we might wish to consider when making
our choice: The
value of sanctity reflects the value of that upon which it is
bestowed. If reserved for something (presumably) unique to our
species—mind—then sanctity is correspondingly exalted. If
bestowed upon mindless embryos and early-term fetuses by mere virtue of their being alive,
then it's conceptually cheapened to the level of the livestock and
crops upon which we feed. It's a choice we may make freely,
but we ought to be aware of the implications of our choice.
That is, does sanctity actually signify something special, or
is it just a pretty word we toss about in an effort to justify our
opinions? Those who hold that human
personhood applies at the moment of conception are entitled to their
opinion; they have their beliefs. Those who think of
the minimum criterion for a human being as something significantly
greater than that for an orchard tree, a barnyard animal, or a
household pet are likewise entitled to
their opinion; they have their reasons.
The question remaining is whether we can learn to behave as the
rational beings we claim to be, to tolerate each other's views, and
to grant each the right to conduct his or her own life accordingly,
without insult, coercion, moralistic posturing, or political
grandstanding.
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