When does a person become person?

The Jewish position on abortion, as I was taught it, is this: "A fetus can be aborted at any time until it completes law or medical school." Some mothers hold a child can be aborted until it produces a grandchild. Others believe "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out." I don't think that the Supreme Court would agree. Certainly the "right-to-life" crowd would not.

1.
The right-to-life group argues that says abortion, from the moment of conception, is always murder and must not be permitted. The strongest argument to support that view goes like this:

1. The act of conception (sperm meeting egg) produces a new human being.
2. An unborn human being is innocent of any crime.
3. Killing an innocent human being is murder (killing someone who is guilty of a crime -- including the crime of fighting your army --  might be permissible)
3.  Therefore abortion, which kills an innocent human being, is murder.

QED.

Calling the thing you killed a zygote, a gastrula, a blastula, an embryo, or a fetus doesn't change it. No matter what you call it, what you are about to kill is still a unique human being, and killing it is murder, and murder is a crime, which must be prevented and punished.

Some argue that a zygote is not yet a human being, but is it? Once an egg is fertilized by a sperm you've got something new and unique. It's not its daddy. It's not its mommy. It's itself. Given time and the right environment, it will be a human child. Since we can't identify any point in the development process where the zygote transitioned from not human to human, it must be true be that the moment at which the zygote came into being is the moment at which human life and personhood begins.

And if that's true, then ending the life of a zygote or at any stage of its development is equivalent to ending the life of a human being.

And that is murder.

Pro life people aren't trying to deny women control of their bodies. They just want to preserve the rights of unborn human beings, and stop murderers from murdering them.

So is the thing growing in a woman't body actually a human being? A person? If you believe in souls, does it have one?

2.
Pro-lifers argue that it is a human being.

This article, which uses Scripture as a basis, goes through what we know about embryology, and ends up by using Biblical authority:

A purely scientific examination of human development from the moment of fertilization until birth provides no experimental method that can gauge humanness. Stages of maturation have been described and cataloged. Chemical processes and changes in size and shape have been analyzed. Electrical activity has been monitored. However, even with this vast amount of knowledge, there is no consensus among scientists as to where along this marvelous chain of events an embryo (or zygote or fetus or baby, depending upon who is being asked) becomes human.

Since science can't tell us when a baby becomes human we must rely on other sources:

The Bible contains numerous references to the unborn. Each time the Bible speaks of the unborn, there is reference to an actual person, a living human being already in existence. These Scriptures, taken in context, all indicate that God considers the unborn to be people. The language of the text continually describes them in personal terms.

The article cites a dozen passages from Scripture that make such references.

Then it argues:

Since the Bible treats those persons yet unborn as real persons, and since the development of a person is a continuum with a definite beginning at the moment of fertilization, the logical point at which a person begins to be human is at that beginning. 

The Catholic Education Resource Center makes a similar argument, without recourse to Scripture. The analysis is done on the basis of moral logic.

The reason we should love, respect, and not kill human beings is because they are persons, i.e., subjects, souls, Is, made in the image of God Who is I AM.

... development is gradual-after conception. Conception is the break, the clear dividing line, and the only one. I am the same being from conception on. Otherwise we would not speak of the growth and development and unfolding of that being, of me. I was once an infant. I was born. I was once in my mothers womb. My functioning develops only gradually, but my me has a sudden beginning. 

And what is that beginning?

No other line than conception can be drawn between pre-personhood and personhood. Birth and viability are the two most frequently suggested. But birth is only a change of place and relationship to the mother and to the surrounding world (air and food); how could these things create personhood? As for viability, it varies with accidental and external factors like available technology (incubators).

Less is more. The best argument that I've found comes from a Blog called Pro Life Philosophy. does not depend on Scripture. It does not depend on the existence of a soul. The author argues:

An unborn child is not just a clump of cells (though we begin life as a cell and develop into an embryo/fetus). You could say that fundamentally, all of us born people, child and adult, are just a clump of cells. But an embryo/fetus is human. They have human DNA and are conceived by human parents. Creatures reproduce after their own kind. Two humans will conceive a human. Humans are alive or dead. They are not simply "there." An embryo/fetus grows, which living entities do, and all the signs of life that I learned in elementary school biology (e.g. cell division, response to stimuli, respiration) are all there. Doctors and scientists know when life begins; at conception. Doctors who perform abortions know when life begins. There's no denying that a unique human being comes into existence at conception. And humans, simply by virtue of being human, are valuable and should have the fundamental rights afforded to all people: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'm pretty sure there's a reason life was listed first in that famous declaration.

3.
There's are fundamental problems in all of these arguments.

Suppose I decide to create a sculpture. As its creator, I start with a block of granite. Now clearly a block of granite is not a sculpture. It has the potential to be a sculpture, but it is not one, yet. Not until I hack on it with my sculpting tools.

At some point, after I've worked on it for a while, I, as its creator, say declare that my sculpture is complete. You look at it and agree: definitely a sculpture.

The development of a person, as the first source argues, "is a continuum with a definite beginning at the moment of fertilization, the logical point at which a person begins to be human is at that beginning." Likewise the creation of my sculpture is a continuum with a definite beginning. We might argue whether the beginning is when I first conceive or my work or whether it's when I take my first whack at the stone. But it seems there is a beginning.

If you asked me the moment after I first conceived of it if it was a sculpture, I would have laughed: "No, it's an idea for a sculpture." And if you asked me after I took the first whack at it, or even a while later, I would answer: "No. It's a work in process. Not a sculpture."

I'd say that until I decided that I was finished. Work in process, until done. What gives me the right to say that? I claim I have the right, as its creator.

I don't have the same belief in God that you might, but for the purposes of this discussion I can assume that God is the omnipotent Creator of the Universe. If that's true, then a person becomes a person when God says it is a person. It a person and a soul are related concepts, then the soul enters the body when God says it does, and not otherwise.

So what does God say about the point, between fertilization and birth when God invests a soul in a body? As far as Holy Scripture is concerned, God doesn't say.

Surely there must be a point in time when that happens. It's simple logic that there would be one.

So here are some problems that science presents to people who think they can determine the divine will of God in the absence of God saying anything.

First: there is no "moment of conception." After a sperm penetrates the outer layer of an ovum, it takes some time for the nuclear material of the sperm and the nuclear material of the ovum to combine, and for the process of cell division to begin. So does God put a soul in the ovum when a sperm enters it? Or does God wait for the nuclear material to join? Or for cell division to begin. Scripture does not say.

Perhaps it doesn't matter. Whatever the case, by the time that there's something that can aborted -- murdered -- cell division would has started. But this is just a foretaste of the problems that will face those who think they know what God is up to.

The cells start to divide and the developing embryo goes through several stages. The first is the development of a morula -- a compact ball of about 32-64 cells. The next stage is formation of a blastula -- a hollow ring of cells, with a central mass of cells on once side. Until the end of blastulation, the blastula can spit and if both parts survive the result will be monozygotic -- identical -- twins.

So when does God inject the soul? If by the time that cell division start, what does God do when the blastula splits? Does God add a second soul? Or does soul division accompany cell division. The Bible doesn't give us a clue. It doesn't seem to know a lot about embryology.

To make matters worse, each of two sperms can fertilize each two eggs producing two zygotes. Suppose each has a soul, and thus is a human being. Under normal conditions, we'd get twins. Rarely, though, the masses of cells from two those separate zygotes merge. The result is called a chimera. It is a single human some part of whose cells came from zygote1 and some from zygote2. There are several reported and documented cases of human chimerism. Chimerism in other species is well studied.

So what does God do then? If God had given both zygotes a soul do chimeric individuals have dual souls, just as they have dual chromosomal inheritances? Or does God revoke one of the souls. "Sorry, guy. Wait for the next body." In which case, which soul gets sent back. The Bible doesn't help us with that, but I guess God would have an algorithm.

It's pretty clear that the simplistic idea that personhood begins at the moment of fertilization has problems. First, because there is no moment of fertilization. Second because of the problems of twinning and chimerism.

And add to that the complexities created by in vitro fertilization (IVF). Some might argue that IVF by itself goes against God's plan. But to make that argument, they must know God's plan from some source other than Scripture. I would argue that if IVF went against God's plan that God would simply not allow it to work.

4
If someone accepts the authority of Scripture, it seems reasonable to make a claim about what God says--as revealed in Scripture. But it seems arrogant to claim to know what God thinks--because God's thoughts are not revealed. And if someone believes that God is omnipotent, it seems contradictory to suppose that God can't do something, if God wants to.

God has not said when a person becomes a person. It's pretty clear the "moment of conception" argument is wrong. Here are some other times, adapted from Wikipedia's article on human personhood, when God could decide a bunch of cells was a human being, a person.

• Implantation, occurring about a week after fertilization
• Segmentation, after twinning is no longer possible.
• When the heart begins to beat
• Neuromaturation, when the central nervous system of fetus is neurobiologically "mature"[16]
• "brain birth" concepts (compare with brain death):
• At the first appearance of brain waves in lower brain (brain stem) - 6–8 weeks of gestation (paralleling "whole brain death")
• At the first appearance of brain waves in higher brain (cerebral cortex) - 22–24 weeks of gestation (paralleling "higher brain death")[17][18]
• At the time of fetal movement, or "quickening"
• When the fetus is first capable of feeling pain
• When it can be established that the fetus is capable of cognition, or neonatal perception
• Fetal viability
• Birth

and, of course:

• Bar/Bat Mitzvah
• Completing law or medical school

God's got a lot of choices. The soul could enter the body just before, or during birth. It might happen earlier. Of after medical school. As a creator of a sculpture I get to say when it stops being a work in process, and when it's a sculpture. A God who created the universe and all that is in must have at least the power that I have over my sculpture: "It's a person when the Creator says that it is a person."

5.
Unless you happen to be God, even if you believe the Bible is the literal word of God, you don't know when a person becomes a person. God doesn't say, so it's just your opinion.

But what if your presumption is not based on God. The writer of Pro Life Philosophy does not depend on Scripture. The moment that sperm and egg are united, he says, you have a unique, living being. He says his argument is scientific: it is necessarily human because DNA decides what is human and what is not.

If this is true, it would compel us to do things which do violence to our moral intuitions. Consider this situation.

A building is on fire and you have a choice: you can either save the lives of five people who are visiting the building, or 10 children playing in its day care center.  I choose the kids--ten over five. I think most would. If a choice between five adults and five children the choice is harder. I imagine I'd choose the kids but I would not condemn someone who  chose otherwise.

Now imagine the choice is between saving ten zygotes or five children.  Would you sacrifice ten human beings to save only five?

Supposing it was 50 zygotes. 100. 200. I think a reasonable person would sacrifice any number of zygotes to save even a single human child. Because zygotes are not people.

Change the situation again. Now it's still five adults -- or children -- on one side. On the other side, through some strange combination of events, there are ten women, just about to give birth to ten babies. The deal is this: you can save the unborn babies, but you can't save the moms. My choice is to save ten rather than five, because I see the ten as people, even though they aren't born and ten is greater than five. Meanwhile the lives of a thousand zygotes, even a million are not equal to the life of a single child, or baby, or unborn.

The flaw in the reasoning is the idea there must be a moment when something becomes a human being. And that is counterfactual. There are no moments when anything comes into existence. There are processes during which things change.

A baseball batter hits a baseball. At what moment was the baseball hit? It seems an instantaneous event, but we know that's not true. The bat and ball meet, and for a while both ball and bat compress at the point of impact. Both decelerate and some of the bat's momentum transfers to the ball, and off it goes in the opposite direction.

So there is no "moment of the hit." You can argue that it's the moment when ball and bat first contact one another, but that doesn't work, because there is also no such moment. Balls and bats are made of atom and atoms are not little spheres with discrete boundaries. The interaction between bat and ball is really the interaction between bat-atom-fields and ball-atom-fields. Fields are spread in space with their strength falling off with distance from a center that moves over time. So you can argue that it's the first moment when a ball-atom -field interacts, however weakly, with a bat-atom-field. But that doesn't work either, because every field in every atom already interacts with every field in every other atom in the universe all the times. The interactions are so weak that we can ignore them for all practical purposes until the atoms are very close. But the interactions exist.

Nothing in the universe happens at a discrete moment of time. Everything is a process that unfolds over a span of time. The joining of ovum DNA with sperm DNA to produce a human zygote does not happen in an instant. It happens over a period of time. Likewise the change from a zygote to a human being, a person, also happens over a period of time.

My opinion is that an embryo is not a person until well past the time that it is able to move -- probably when it is capable of cognition. It's just my opinion. I can back my opinion with reasons, but in the end, those are just reasons, and it's just my opinion.

You may choose, despite the problematic nature of your choice, that personhood begins sometime during the period of time in which the egg DNA and sperm DNA combine.  You can back your opinion with your own reasons, but in the end, they are just reasons, and it's just your opinion -- no better and no worse than mine.

If you believe in God, then what God actually thinks and does would be of paramount importance. If God says "Thou shalt not kill" then that's pretty clear. And if the Bible said: "when a sperm and an egg unite, then is a human be created" that would be pretty clear. But it doesn't say that.

I'm inclined to think that finding the exact moment is not such a big deal. If it was a big deal, and God didn't make it clear it seems a little negligent of God. If you're the Father, and something is important, and you don't tell your child that seems stupid. I could  believe in a God that didn't tell us every single things, but I wouldn't want to believe in a God that was stupid.

6
If there is a God, I am sure that there are things that God would know that I am incapable of understanding. But if I were God, here's what I would do:

I wouldn't put souls in the bodies of children who I knew would die before they were born -- either for natural reasons or by abortion. It just seems like a shitty thing to do. If I were God, I would not be shitty. And if there were a God, I'm inclined to think that God wouldn't be shitty.

I also wouldn't put souls in the bodies of children who would die young. For that matter I wouldn't put souls in the bodies of people who lived horrible lives. I'd make them NPCs, Non Player Characters. They'd be just like real people, but they wouldn't feel anything, and so they would not suffer.

God, if all-powerful could do that. Maybe there are good reasons not to, but this seems like a good strategy to me.

And as far as I know there's nothing in Scripture that says God would not do that.

But I'm not an expert.

Also not God.

7.
As far as I can see, Scripture is silent on when that which is conceived become a person. It seems pretty wrong when people attempt to force people to follow their interpretation of Scripture, while failing to do things that God has said we should do in the plainest and least ambiguous language.

Can anything be clearer than this, from the Sermon on the Mount:

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’[h] 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Seems obvious to me that even if abortionists were evil that God would have Christians not resisting abortionists and abortion clinics. Seems they would not even try to impede them, but would walk with them. Seems that if an abortionist should ask for help, a Christian should give help.

That seems completely straightforward to me, while the idea that zygotes are persons, that abortion is necessarily murder, and that good Christians should do whatever they can -- in the name of God, Jesus, and women's health or anything else they can come up with -- to make abortion as difficult as they can is just plain fucking wrong.

And downright unchristian.