Why “Life Begins at Conception” Is Simply Not True

“Life begins at conception” is an attempt to make something simple that is in fact complex, and something unambiguous that is uncomfortably blurry.

As I have pointed out before, on the one hand, life begins before conception. Sperm and egg cells are alive. It is not “life” that is the question. It is when we are dealing with human personhood. And the example of identical twins (and triplets and other multiple identical births) shows that it is not feasible to claim that individual personhood begins when the ovum is fertilized. That cell that is formed by the union of genetic material from father and mother has the potential to become a person, but has the potential to become more than one person.

If the individual cell is already a person, with whatever is meant by an individual soul, then that leads to all kinds of implications that no one who holds this view would accept. Do identical twins have a single soul between them? Are they in fact the same person? If someone gets married to an identical twin are they married to their sibling as well? If they have sex with the sibling is it not adultery because these are the same person?

Don’t Be Ridiculous!

Now, you’re probably shouting at the screen saying “of course these adults are not the same person, don’t be ridiculous!” Good, I’m glad you agree that this is ridiculous. That is the point. You said that at conception their human personhood began as a single cell, a single human life. If you don’t believe that one person can split into two people, then you have to accept that at least one of these individuals – and more likely both – were not individual persons at the moment of conception, but it happened later. In other words, the most straightforward way of treating this example is to say that a fertilized cell has the potential to become one or more human persons.

If you want to advocate for treating that potential for personhood in a morally respectful way, that’s wonderful. The point is that it is not murder to prevent that which has the potential to become one or more human beings from doing so. If it were, then you’d have to be able to know that a single cell would become one or two or three individuals and treat the abortion as a double or triple homicide as appropriate. Once again, you’ll probably say that’s ridiculous, and that’s the point. Claiming that a fertilized human egg cell is not just a potential person or set of siblings, but a full-fledged person, leads to all sorts of untenable consequences.

I understand that this is confusing and disconcerting. The moment of conception seems like the only place that provides a potentially clear-cut line to draw so that human persons can have their rights protected. The blurriness of human development, with the fertilized egg becoming one or more persons over a long process, is much more morally ambiguous. Alas, that is the reality of life. As an imperfect analogy, there is no obvious moment when one can say that every human person transitions from being a minor to being a responsible adult, yet we need to make laws that take the ambiguity of human maturation and impose on it a standardization that cuts across the fact that some can probably vote responsibly before age 18 while others will be lacking maturity for some time after that.

Better than Biblical!

So let’s develop different language for the respect for potential personhood. Plenty of people across the political spectrum will support that. Let’s throw out the inflamed misrepresentation of those who defend the legitimacy of abortion in at least some cases at any early stage as “baby killers” and “murderers” which they are not, and instead work together to achieve what most people want: freedom for individual women to make the decision that seems right to them in consultation with medical professionals, family, and/or their own conscience, and protection of fully-developed human beings prior to but also after birth and throughout their lives.

If the biblical view that is still normative in Judaism, that an individual life begins with the first breath, seems much too late, you’re not alone. The biblical authors had no knowledge of embryology. Here too there is a crucial point. Stop pretending that your stance is “biblical” when in fact you are addressing things that the Bible does not address explicitly, as well as when you’d like biblical principles to be applied differently than they were by the biblical authors. We know things that ancient people did not, and it is appropriate to have a different understanding of the cosmos, of human personhood, and many other subjects.

Demonization is Demonic

Thankfully, when pushed on actual concrete issues, many Trump supporters actually hold more moderate views than their slogans and rhetoric indicates. The core problem is that everything has been turned into a dichotomy. Either Donald Trump or his opponent must be evil, if you believe that politics is a spiritual battle for the soul of the nation, and exclude the possibility that neither of the two major parties may represent your own personal and community values. So the support for a deeply flawed candidate is judged preferable to working to give voters more options.

Having recently visited Australia, I talked with many people who find American “democracy” baffling.

• Why not have mandatory voting?
• Why maintain a system that is based on something other than the popular vote?
• Why treat only two parties as viable so that extremists are forced to gather under those umbrellas in the interest of winning?
• Why treat two parties, both on the right of the political spectrum, as though they represent the ideological extremes of “Right” and “Left“?

Make America Better Than it has Ever Been

We do not have to accept the way things are. We can change the system, just as we changed it to eliminate slavery and to give women the right to vote. Even the Bill of Rights represents an alteration to the Constitution, even if a very early one.

But we can start with simpler changes.

• Just turn down the rhetoric.
• Stop demonizing those you disagree with, since this typically represents a far worse evil than the stance you are opposing.
• If you are a Christian, then by all means view those whose morals are not your own as enemies, but then love your enemies.

Conclusion: Don’t Be Evil

Few people believe they are evil. Few think critically about their beliefs so as to recognize when they are problematic. Yet that’s the only way to avoid being one of those crusaders for what they are sure is right who turns out to be a tyrant promoting things that harm. The partisan political rhetoric that pretends that there are only two possible options, and treats one’s own side as the champions of pure goodness against forces of evil, causes more loss of human life than legal abortion does. Don’t believe me? Look into it yourself, so long as you don’t just listen to sources that support what you’d like to be true.

How to research and fact check will have to be a topic for another time…or, you know, you can consult any of the many library tutorials available, assuming of course you haven’t demonized public libraries in your “us vs. them” misrepresentation of the world.

Let me end with an appeal to both experience and a core teaching of Christianity. The dividing line between good and evil does not follow any national, ethnic, or ideological border. It runs through each of us. If we are honest, we have all been loudmouthed and wrong on some occasion. The only way to defeat evil is to take a close look inside ourselves and question our own assumptions and motives, as well as the hostilities towards others that they generate.