talk till morning
For the Love of Ideas
- By Liam Monsell
in being pro-choice, i am pro life
Science has obliterated our understanding of what is 'alive'
Once a heartbeat determined death; now it can be restarted. Once only successful insemination meant the arrival of a baby; now medical procedures like IVF do regularly. Even insemination is not a prerequisite as asexual cloning gave us Dolly the Sheep. What I mean by this is, from a biological perspective, the clear boundaries that once defined life and death have now dissolved.
Thomas Cole's Voyage of Life: Childhood, 1842
I am not going to try and define when something should be called alive for pursuit of such a metaphysical conversation would never end. For me, the problem with the pro-life argument is that it calls something ‘alive’ before it makes sense to. I cannot try to answer when an organism should be called ‘alive’ or not. But I ask: is it best for us to regard the moment of fertilisation as that which determines new life to exist?
Pro-lifers stating an organism is alive from the moment of fertilisation - where the egg and sperm have fused -, decrees it has the right to exist from that moment. However, if you fight for the rights of an organism as ‘alive’ from fertilisation then why are you not fighting for this ‘pre-organism’s’ life before that moment?
If you call two fused sex cells (two gametes become a zygote) ‘alive’ and henceforth afford them rights of life, what stops you from doing that before they fuse? Both egg and sperm cells are ‘alive’ just like a fertilised zygote, else they would not be able to carry out their function. By this logic, if you do not attempt to continue the life of these gametes by ensuring, to the best of your ability, they are all being successfully fertilised then how does that differ to not giving life the chance to exist from the moment of fertilisation?
Simply put, if you argue life does exist at fertilisation, that you cannot deny a ‘live’ zygote’s development process once fertilised, what stops it from having the right to being alive before fusing in fertilisation? It inadvertently creates the rule that every egg and sperm with a potential to become life should be granted that potential.
If every egg and sperm has the right to be fertilised (ignoring the fact that all but one sperm naturally dies during a successful natural fertilisation) that leads to an unending obligation to fertilise every egg a woman releases during ovulation. Else, you will be halting the process of those cells developing into an organism much like a ‘morning after’ pill does. Just in this case it is through omission of action rather than carrying out a process-halting act.
On a human level, this doctrine leads to the creation of a mechanised population boomer. A machine that produces human life on such a scale, that many families cannot sustain the numbers of mouths to feed. Not to mention damaging those individuals whom are forcibly charged with sustaining that life.
Of course when someone is alive, they should have the right to sustain it. But this idea of when something is alive is the crux of the problem.
The key argument I wish to convey here is: the point of fertilisation should not be considered the point where a human becomes classified as ‘alive’.
As modern science has complicated the classification of what is ‘alive’ and what is ‘dead’ to try and agree on an objective criteria would be impossible. Instead we should aim to agree on a shifted definition of ‘alive’; one derived from compassion. For me this compassionate stance stems from the stage of the gestation process where an embryo can feel pain. The answer to this debate lies in the better side of human nature. If compassion cannot guide our hand in such matters, what can?
Most academic sources declare the end of the second trimester (generally between 22-26 weeks) as the time when a foetus feels pain in a similar way to how we do. I argue this should be the cut-off point. For the vast majority, it already is.
Abortion Statistics England and Wales from the Department of Health, published in July 2013, show 77.9% of abortions occur before 10 weeks.
Instances after 22 weeks are rare but, unless it would harm the mother or the child to continue, we should try and base our decision making on the child’s ability to feel pain.
Issues of “playing God” or it being a ‘life’ already should not come into it.
Adding to this is delineating between human and animal life? If one argues this fertilisation-based right for life surely that equates to all life? A multispecies
The first 23 days of the gestation process. Source: Zephryis
Keep Abortion Legal - Protest against “Stand for the Family” event. Source: Tony Webster
Equally criticising the establishment of a criterion to classify something as ‘alive’, known to some as “playing God”, either leads to hypocrisy and ignorance of one’sown criterion, or unsustainable population growth. This improper adherence to the aforementioned principle - calling it ‘life’ only when two gametes have fused - is establishing a criterion to determine what is ‘alive’ just like the different criterion I propose in this article. Only, in that version, it is so early in the gestation process that it ignores the needs of the mother and child.
pro-life stance would call for a stop to consuming meat and hunting ‘vermin’. With the arrival of this stance, would come the departure of overpopulation moderation. Rats and rabbits would rule the roost while white-clawed crayfish and water voles waste away. We would kiss goodbye to our ability to intervene in conservation of endangered species. Such an ethic would spell disastrous consequences for the planet with its limited capacity to sustain only a finite population.
Yet it does not fit the pro-life logic for one to specifically defend homo sapiens’ right to live, without also doing it for other creatures whom are also undoubtedly alive.
If we are instead to shun our genetic cousins of the animal kingdom, and inflict a double standard of adherence to life we do not give ourselves for whatever human-centric justification we see fit, then we may dub ourselves capricious, inconsistent and, ultimately, illegitimate in the rights to life we decide to grant.
In other words, pro-lifers who take issue with pro-choice supporters establishing a criterion that must be met to grant something a right to life, are hypocritical if they do not extend their own right to life to all beings. Only extending it to humans manifests a pro-lifer’s human-centric criterion that animals and other organisms do not meet. The alternative of awarding every member of every species that could become alive the right to life, would result in overpopulation and global catastrophe.
Ergo, granting something the right to life because it could in future develop into a living organism is flawed. Proper adherence to that principle would award rights of life to any gametes with the potential to develop into an organism. This would lead to an unstoppable conveyor belt of children in numbers that would harm them and their family.
This essay’s purpose is to propose to you a specific framework that humanity
should use to classify what is ‘alive’. One that exists with pain as its primary concern and considers the needs of both mother and unborn. To say life begins at fertilisation is to blindly subject not only the destined keeper of that life with one they may not be able to keep, but that life to the deficiencies of its raising. Human life should be protected tooth and nail. To jeopardise that which exists by giving the same rights to that which could exist is not only incredibly uncompassionate to the mother and the unborn, but also completely ignorant to the limits of this planet and humanity.
In being pro-choice, I am pro-life.
But this choice, for me, ends when pain begins.