Life at Conception and Initiative 26 - Part I

(A two-parter on when life begins and my views on abortion. Part II is here.)

     I should start by saying that I am pro-life, just so we all know where I am coming from. If anyone says to me that a woman "should have the right to choose" what happens to her body, my response tends to be "I completely agree, and she had the choice to not have sex." I don't even think that's as strong an argument as "well what if that fetus is a girl, why doesn't she get to choose?" I think sex is the root of the argument, when people make it about "life."
     "Life." That's what's up for debate. When does a human life really begin? When does a person become a person? I am out of my league in this conversation. I have half-formed opinions from half-understood facts and statistics that may or may not be accurate. This is me thinking out loud, because I tend to understand things better when I think them out loud in my head (it makes sense). Being misinformed and out of my league has never stopped me before, after all.

      I'm going to start with the most logical approach I can. Let's say life doesn't start at conception, as this law is trying to say it does. The logical question that follows is then, when does it begin? I've heard people say that it begins when the embryos "start to look like a person." This is incredibly dangerous, because not only is it stupid (it really is), it's subjective. But more importantly, if that was the definition of human life, "looking like a person," the true outcome of that line of thinking is that we would have levels of humanity. The deformed would be less human than the non deformed. Those in their prime of life would be more human than infants or the incredibly old. A man who gets in a car wreck and loses his legs is suddenly less human than he was yesterday. This is obviously a notion that few would accept (and we tend to not thing too highly of those that would accept it). But why do we reject it?
     Why are opposed to the idea of levels of humanity? There must be something that unites all of humanity beyond how we look.

When did Wyatt start thinking? I'm pretty sure it was long
before this picture was taken.

     Maybe a person becomes a person when he or she can think. When there are synapses firing in the brain. I don't know when that happens in a human embryo (and am not going to bother to look it up), but I know at some point it goes from not-happening to happening, right? Is it at that moment little Wyatt became a human? Well, what separates human thinking from animal thinking? It can't be problem solving or language, as lots of mammals can do that, just not as well as us. Is it the ability to think abstractly? I don't know if animals can do that (and I don't know if anyone knows). But, suppose there was a human with a defect and he couldn't think in the abstract. Would he no longer be human? I don't think anyone would say that. When a person lies in a vegetable-like state, are they no longer human? I don't know. Some might say he's not. I don't think those people have the plug pulled because they are no longer human, but because their quality and hope of life are so diminished that it's in everyone's best interest. What am I talking about? Point of the paragraph: I don't think that "thinking" is what makes us human. Pretty much all animals have a brain.
     So it's not based on how people look or when they start thinking, in my opinion.
     What's left? A heartbeat? That's actually a pretty good benchmark. Once that heart starts to beat, we have a person. But really, the key isn't the heartbeat. Heartbeats have a special meaning to us because we can feel them and hear them and pretend like that's where emotions come from (despite the fact that we really feel them in our gut, right?). But the heartbeat is just a means to an end: pushing blood around to get stuff to different parts of the body. Picking "heartbeat" as the benchmark is fairly arbitrary. What if someone gets a heart transplant? In those few moments when there's no heart inside him, is he no longer human? Of course not. Or if someone has a machine pumping their blood? Still human. The heart isn't the issue, it's the whole system of bodily functions. Well damn it, those functions are starting as soon as that baby is conceived. They change and morph over the next several months, but they are fundamentally the same, right? (no really, I am asking, I don't know). Those functions are no different than a bear's or a wolf's or a rats. Rats.
     If it's not the brain, the heartbeat, or the physical appearance, what's left? Really, the question becomes "what makes a human a human," or, different from animals. That is a question of soul. Humans have a soul. Define that however you want, I don't actually care for the moment, but let's just agree to call the difference between humans and animals "the soul." (If you think humans are no different from animals, you are deluding yourself.)

     So, pretend we agree that humans are humans because they have a soul. Then, back at our original question, if having a soul makes a person a person, when do they get that soul? Conception makes the most sense. They become a human when that sperm and that egg become best friends and start growing. It just fits. If the soul came any later, you would have to assume that someone or something is giving that person a soul, and that someone or something would really have to be God by some definition, and at that point the morality and ethics of abortion are pretty much lost (if there is a more-powerful, higher being, we shouldn't be undoing its work of creating life). If the soul isn't bestowed at some point, it must happen at conception.

     This is what I do. I grab an argument or statements or assumptions and I take it to its grandest, largest extremes, and I take it to its smallest, most minute extremes. If the arguments hold up in these extremes, they are probably valid, and if the arguments break down, they are probably flawed. I do this with everything, all the time. I can't help it. So, yes, I concede that I am nitpicking notions like "life begins with a heartbeat" and that I am drawing fairly broad, grand conclusions about the existence of a soul or a God. But my logic is pretty sound. I can't prove anything, but doesn't it at least raise enough questions about the alternatives? Don't you have to question the idea that a person becomes a person at any time other that conception?

     Believing that life begins at conception is logically consistent. It is also the simplest, easiest definition. I am not going to try to apply Occam's Razor, because it doesn't really fit here, but the fact that it's the easiest point to start from is a great reason to back it, in my opinion. Get rid of those grey areas if you can.

     Unfortunately, this isn't a very convenient place to start life. It means that some effective, popular forms of contraceptive are actually killing people (because they do their work after conception), and it means that throwing out fertilized eggs when a woman is receiving in vitro fertilization is murder, and it means that early abortions are more horrible than they were before. All three of those results suck, but there you have it. You aren't going to find a very convenient place to say that a human embryo isn't a person, and convenience isn't the goal, anyways.

     If this initiative is passed, a lot of things follow. It is almost surely going to go all the way to the supreme court, which will either undermine or strengthen Roe v. Wade. It will make getting an abortion illegal in Mississippi, and it will make the process of in vitro fertilization much more complicated and less likely to be successful. It will make post-conception forms of contraception illegal. This initiative is a very big deal.

Part II is here