Matters of Life and Death

Among the political issues raised by Theocons in the U.S., few have generated as much passion as the topic of abortion. For Theocons it is an article of faith, to be imposed upon the rest of the country, that a person is “alive” from the moment they are conceived. At their most extreme, Theocons would prohibit any abortion at any time for any reason. That is because, given their definition of when a person becomes “alive”, it is “murder” to terminate a fetus at any stage of development – even when there is only a fertilized human egg.

A majority of Americans, however, believe that there are conditions in which the option of abortion should be available to women. Is there a moral defense for this position? In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decided that women have a right to the abortion option based on their right to “privacy”, at least until the point of fetal "viability", i.e., when the fetus is "...potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid." Assertion of the right to privacy, however, does not challenge the Theocon argument, nor does it present an alternative moral viewpoint of the matter. I would like to suggest one.

To do so, I would like to start by considering when a person’s life can be said to have ended. The traditional standard was based on the cardio-pulmonary function: a person’s life was said to have ended when their heart and lungs stopped working. But medical developments created circumstances in which machines could maintain a person’s cardio-pulmonary functions. Medical science then declared that a person’s life ended when either the cardio-pulmonary function stopped or “brain death” occurred, meaning loss “of all neurological activity throughout the brain, including the … brain stem.” The “brain stem” is defined as “that part of the brain which allows spontaneous respiration and heartbeat but is insufficient for consciousness.” According to this definition, the brain stem functions like a machine which keeps the heart and lungs working. Given the similarity, it is truer to say that a person’s life has ended when the rest of the brain has lost its capacity for consciousness. Scientists refer to this condition as a “Permanent Vegetative State.” I’d call it a situation where “the lights are on, but nobody’s home.” The “person” is gone. Only the warm shell remains.

The process is reversed during pregnancy. From fertilized human egg until 3^rd trimester, a fetus does not have the neural “hardware” necessary for consciousness. I would call the fetus during this period a “Vegetative Fetus”. There is human protoplasm present, but it lacks the capacity for consciousness, at least until the 24^th week of gestation – around the same time as fetal “viability”. The protoplasm during the vegetative phase may have the potential to be a person, and it may look like a person, but it is arguably not a person unless and until it has a capacity for consciousness. On these grounds it can be said that removal of a vegetative fetus is not “murder”.

I’d like to note that the link I’m drawing here between “personhood” and consciousness is not new. I’m told that such a connection has been made before, by such luminaries as John Locke and Carl Sagan.

I’d also like to note that there is no necessary conflict with Christian religious beliefs. Christian sources indicate that they are chiefly concerned with the question of when the human soul can be said to enter and exit the body. Although many Christians now believe that the soul is present at conception, a number of earlier Christian theologians, among them St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas, proclaimed that human “ensoulment” did not occur until some time after conception.