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The Personhood Debate in Abortion: Toward a Reconciliation
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20509 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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5 / 1992 |
6,279 Words |
| Author
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Rosemarie Tong
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For centuries the process of procreation was most mysterious: the fertilized egg, zygote, morula, blastocyst, embryo, and fetus were hidden from the adult world. Only at the moment of birth did the product of gestation emerge as a "miracle." As a result of such technological procedures as IVF (in vitro fertilization), GIFT (gamete intra-fallopian transfer), and ZIFT (zygote intra-Fallopian transfer) and such diagnostic advancement as ultrasonography and fetoscopy, today's adult population can view a member of the human species through its developmental states. No wonder that the moral status of the fetus is more of a question for us than ever before.
To ask what the moral status of the fetus is, is to ask not simply when it starts to live but when it becomes a person. The question "When during gestation does 'human life' begin?" says philosopher Frederick Jaffe, needs to be restated as the question "When does a fetus become a 'person' who merits protection equal to or greater than the woman in whose body it is located and without whose body it would cease to exist?" Like many other philosophers, Jaffe suggests that a human being is not necessarily a human person. Biological existence, the kind of existence associated with human life, is to be distinguished from fully human existence, the kind of existence associated with personal life. The abortion debate is not so much an argument about when human life begins--presumably it begins at conception--as an argument about when personal life begins--that is, the kind of human life that merits "the value, rights, and protection due the human person as such."
The Extreme Conservative View Of Personhood
Although most theories believe that there is a distinction between having human life on the one hand and being a human person on the other, extreme conservatives insist that, from the moment of conception, the fetus is like an adult human person in most, if not all, morally relevant respects. This view is sometimes expressed as the opinion that human life begins at conception, though, to avoid confusion, it should probably be expressed as the opinion that human personhood begins at conception.
There are two types of arguments for this position: theological and philosophical. Conservative theologians begin their arguments on behalf of the fetus' personhood with premises about God's and the soul's existence, identifying conception as the time at which a developing member of the human species acquires a
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