In the case of the embryo, I find that
notion preposterous.
But setting any other standard is, IMO, equally preposterous. Saying that the embryo is a person on, say, day 95 but not on day 95, is preposterous, as though the turning of a clock one second should have any bearing on whether a life is or is not a human being.
If you find that the point of conception is not the point at which the created life should be considered a legal person, at what point DO you make that distinction? That, for me, is the critical problem, and I see no justifiable alternative to either saying the infant is not a person until it is actually born, or saying it is a person at conception. Any other position may have political acceptability, but no moral justification.
Some people suggest that the point should be the moment when the fetus is viable outside the womb. That has, or course, several serious problems. One, how do you know on, say, day 127 whether the fetus would or would not be viable? Two, whether a fetus is a protected human life depends on whether the mother is. For two fetuses at the identical stage of development, if one is in a well equipped ER it would be viable, while the other, whose mother is holed up on a remote cabin in the Alaska wilderness without phone or radio, is not.
Again, if we merely want a political solution, we can pick a day, any day, and declare that to be the day, as we do with making people legal adults at the stroke of midnight on a certain day -- one second they are legal minors, the next they are legal adults. But while that may be a politically acceptable answer, it has no moral integrity, nor does it try to. |
