Abortion, still a controversial political talking point, really shouldn’t be much of an issue.  Whatever moral problems arise from abortion, properly conceived, stem from the fine gradient of cognitive and moral development that fetuses and children experience.  And though the demarcation between the child worthy of moral consideration and the organism without the proper cognitive status for this consideration is not clear-cut and absolute, it is nevertheless true that the extreme ends of the spectrums are rather obviously recognizable.  A zygote, blastocyst, or early embryo clearly do not possess the sorts of characteristics that qualify it for moral consideration, while the opposite end of the developmental spectrum, a normal adult, obviously does possess such characteristics.  Why people are still debating over the moral status of zygotes is beyond me.

At heart, though, even pro-lifers realize their extreme position that accords moral rights to embryos and zygotes is not unassailable.  In their zealousness to equate abortion with murder, and zygotes with fully developed human beings, they ultimately contradict their own intuitions.  For instance, if one asks a pro-lifer how an abortion doctor, or a researcher studying embryonic stem cells, should be punished in the event that abortion and stem cell research is prohibited, they frequently reply with a wide assortment of punishments that are decidedly unequivalent to the punishments we normally apply to murderers.  Some pro-lifers will even be so astonished at the question that they will simply stare at you blankly, as if the implications of the legislation they’re attempting to push had never been considered.  But in the end, few would say the punishment should be life in prison, the death penalty, or even anything longer than 50 years in prison.  The responses vary, but most betray an intuitive understanding that the death of an embryo, zygote, or blastocyst is not equivalent to the death of a small child or an adult.

In a similar manner, if you ask a pro-lifer to consider a hypothetical scenario where they have the chance to save either one child from a burning building or ten thousand children from a burning building, inevitably the staggering majority will answer that they’d save the ten thousand children rather than only the one child.  However, if you then rephrase the question and ask them if they’d choose to save either one child or ten thousand blastocysts from a burning fertility clinic, they almost invariably choose to save the single child over the multitude of blastocysts.  Of course, this response is nonsensical if they truly believe that moral personhood should be attributed to blastocysts, and it reveals a deep-seated uncomfort with the implications of their position.

Such questions give pro-lifers difficulties because their moral understandings have often been distorted and twisted by religious dogma that demands obedience rather than understanding.  But a true understanding of morality seeks to find the reasons behind our behavior.  Why should we not harm others?  Why should we behave morally toward others?  When considered thoughtfully, it becomes apparent that we should not harm others because they do not desire such treatment, because they dislike or fear the pain it would cause, and because we are capable of empathizing and understanding their point of view by considering our own reactions to the situation.  We can understand that it is wrong to steal, not because this is yelled down at us by divine fiat, hurled from God’s breath like a lightning bolt, but because we can reason that theft is unfair and would produce displeasure in ourselves and others.  That is, we recognize acts as immoral or wrong based upon the cognitive states they can induce in others (i.e., fear, pain, pleasure, etc.), and as a result of that, the capacity to have these cognitive states—to fear a potential outcome, to feel pain and displeasure, to reciprocate, and so on—is a necessary requirement for moral personhood.  An entity that lacks such states, like a stone, would not deserve moral consideration because the stone cannot fear our actions toward it, feel pain, or understand the unfairness of its plight as we pick it up and hurl it into a dark, murky lake.  This distinction explains at once why we do not accord special moral status to entities totally lacking cognitive capabilities, like rocks, plants, and bicycles.  It also neatly accounts for our moral treatment of animals, who are not treated as our moral equals presumably because we don’t think they are our cognitive equals, with those creatures that are less cognitive (e.g., insects) being given little moral regard while those that are more cognitive (e.g., dolphins, apes, and dogs) being frequently empathized with and cited as creatures deserving of rights.  It also conveniently explains the moral intuitions that guide the pro-lifers to answer the questions mentioned previously in a way that conflicts with their pro-life stance.  They’ll save a single child over 10,000 embryos from a fire because they recognize that the child can fear the fire, would feel intense pain and suffering, whereas the embryos would not because they lack the relevant cognitive traits.

How could a pro-lifer respond to such a devastating criticism of his or her position?  Life begins at conception!  Such is the cry of the angsty pro-lifer in response to irrefutable reason.  Their endless barrage of worthless platitudes and stock catch-phrases suffice when argument will not.  For whatever reason, the claim that life begins at conception is supposed to be a show-stopper in the debate over abortion, and yet it is actually a mere red herring, consisting of reasoning as poor and flawed as the other justifications for the pro-life position.

First of all, the blithely asserted “scientific” fact that life begins at conception is not exactly true.  Biologists are actually a hell of a lot more subtle than that, as they’ve learned that black and white distinctions such as that are quite difficult to draw—a fact well known to biological systematists trying to demarcate species within an evolutionary framework, where creatures often blend into each other in fine gradients.  The same is true of life itself.  Traditionally, a living organism is said to be capable of regulation of its internal state, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction, as well as possessing a complex cellular structure.  But the inclusion of these characteristics is entirely arbitrary, and leaves out many entities that have most of these characteristics, though not all.  A virus, for instance, can be said to possess many of these traits.  It cannot grow or reproduce on its own, but it can take control over a host cell and use its cellular machinery to replicate itself, just as life can.  Even fire seems to possess many of these qualities, to a degree.  It burns energy to grow and reproduce itself, it can be said to respond to stimuli in a sense, and so on.  The ultimate proof of the fuzzy distinction between life and nonlife, of course, is the fact that all living organisms were derived from nonliving replicators.  Like viruses, our earliest ancestors probably could not replicate themselves on their own, and one proposed theory has them latching onto crystals as a mechanism for replication (because unlike a virus it did not have the good fortune of existing organic cells to parasitize).  So if anything, the whole definition of life is already murky without bringing zygotes and gametes into the question.

But do scientists really say life begins at conception?  Most, actually, would think the question rather pointless.  Life is a cycle.  Humans have a diploid stage, which is the stage in which we have sets of chromosomes from both parents, and we have a haploid stage, which is when the human gametes (the sperm and egg) have chromosomes from only one parent.  In humans, meiosis produces male and female gametes with half the normal number of chromosomes, and the mitotic process that builds our multicellular bodies only begins once the haploid gametes merge to produce a diploid zygote.  Pro-lifers like to trot out the fact that our gametes are haploid to try to show that they are only “half of us” and thus not fully human yet, whatever that means.  But if chromosome number defines humanity, then I suppose those unfortunate few with chromosomal disorders, like Down Syndrome, are not human according to pro-lifers; though I’m fairly certain they also oppose the abortion of those with Down Syndrome in spite of this.  Likewise, pro-lifers would probably be fairly amazed to learn that many organisms, particularly fungus and protists, have a strange life cycle wherein the multicellular “life” stage is the haploid stage, whereas the diploid stage is reserved for the zygote alone.  In these particular fungi and protists, the zygote divides by meiosis, halving the chromosome number, and then the haploid cells divide by mitosis to produce multicellular organisms (or in the case of the single-celled protists they “live” as the single haploid cell).  With this understanding of the murkiness of the life cycle, it makes sense that scientists do not proclaim just when “life” begins in human beings, whether it be during conception, implantation on the uterus, or whenever else.  This distinction is unnecessary and pointless.  The gametes, zygote, and multicellular human are all part of the life cycle.

With all those difficulties with the claim of life beginning at conception aside, the obvious refuation is that this is just simple misdirection from the relevant moral issue.  Whether the zygote is living is irrelevant to the matter.  We frequently eat and kill living things.  Plants and insects are living as well, and we do not endow them with special moral consideration.  So the mere fact that a zygote is alive is far from any sort of justification to treat it morally.  The pro-lifer can then try to argue that we should treat it morally because it is alive and human, but once again, this distinction is problematic.  Not all living humans are accorded full moral personhood, and it is even acceptable to kill human beings in certain circumstances.  Even the most ardent pro-lifers, for instance, would acknowledge that a baby born without a brain should not be treated as if it is worthy of a right to life, and few would say it must be connected to a life support system for the duration of its empty, nonsensory life.  Similarly, a human skin cell is living and human, but few pro-lifers would be willing to assert that my continual scratching of my crotch, which results in the continual death of the skin cells down there, is tantamount to murder.  Clearly, something more is needed than merely being living and human.

How could a pro-lifer possibly overcome these impenetrable objections?  In my experience, they cannot, but not for wont of trying.  Perhaps the favorite tactic when cornered in such a dispute is to make the argument from grossness.  That is, they will try to demonstrate that abortion is immoral because it looks disgusting, and in trying to demonstrate this will link to silly websites plastered with pictures of aborted fetuses and embryos.  Strangely, of course, there is a stunning lack of images featuring aborted blastocysts or zygotes.  Presumably this is because they would not contain blood and would not be visible except under a microscope.  So the argument from grossness, it should be noted, does not apply to emergency contraception like Plan B or stem cell research, thank heavens!  Of course, the argument from grossness would equally well apply to the embryos of chickens, pigs, and cows.  It would even apply to the adult chickens, pigs, and cows the pro-lifers are so fond of eating, preferably after dipped in a nice, fried batter.  Naturally, merely because something looks gross or disgusting does not make it immoral.  If we were to witness the home video of a pro-lifer’s pregnancy, for instance, most would find the video immensely disgusting, shuddering at that huge thing ripping through such a tiny hole, and nearly vomiting when the mother puts her lips to the infant’s head even while it is covered in gooey afterbirth and placenta.  This, of course, does not make childbirth immoral.  Also, it has been confirmed for me several times that when I am constipated and taking a huge shit, and then seek out all my friends to show them the huge shit I produced, which evokes reactions like ”that shit is nasty” and “seriously, you fuck, we don’t want to see that disgusting, mile-long shit,” this is hardly proof that shitting is immoral.  And if it is, then I’m afraid we’re all going to hell.  But in the end, unless the pro-lifer is willing to remark that anything that appears disgusting is immoral, this “argument” simply fails.

The last refuge of the pro-life scoundrel, for some strange reason, is the beating heart.  Their bumper stickers, for instance, like to proclaim that near the end of the embryonic stage, a beating heart is present in the little “baby”.  Why the presence of a beating heart is considered some indicator of moral worth befuddles me to this day.  As with my other objections, many of the animals we eat have beating hearts, and yet that does not seem to provide them with very many moral rights, unless the right to be mercilessly harvested for McDonalds is a right.  And beyond that, if I were to present a pro-lifer with a hypothetical person whose heart who has stopped beating, and whose blood is being circulated by a machine, it is doubtful that the pro-lifer would therefore find it acceptable to stab and and punch this person merely because they lack a beating heart.  This is, like the appeal to life beginning at conception, nothing but a red herring.

So far, I’ve addressed some of the more ridiculous and common arguments for the pro-life position, but the last argument I’d like to address is perhaps the most respectable, as it at least attempts to produce a reasonable argument rather than a red herring, but it nevertheless fails.  Basically, the argument states that because the embryo has the potential to develop into a normal human being, it should be treated as such.  But the problem with this formulation is that even a single sperm or single egg has this potential, so masturbation could be seen as mass genocide, and a woman who has her menstrual period could be sued for neglect of her children.  Of course, there is a more potent formulation.  The more potent form runs something like this:  after fertilization, or after implantation on the uterine wall, or after the heart starts beating, the probability that the embryo will develop into a fully-functioning human being increases dramatically, and therefore we should treat the embryo accordingly, because eventually it will possess the cognitive capacity that endows it with moral personhood.  It is a more potent argument because it accounts for the probability of full cognitive development, and so sperm would not qualify, as a single sperm’s chance of becoming an adult human being is rather tiny.  The problem with the argument, of course, is that the possibility of having the qualities relevant for moral personhood is an overt admission that the entity currently does not possess these qualities, and therefore should not be treated as if it does.  For instance, it is possible that I could get a degree in science, train to be an astronaut, and then eventually operate a space shuttle and fly to the moon.  This possibility, no matter how likely, does not mean I should be treated as if I currently can fly to the moon, of course, and NASA would be crazy to therefore offer me a seat on the next manned expedition to the moon.  So this argument, like the others, doesn’t strike me as particularly successful.

In the end, pro-lifers will continue to show us pictures of cut-up, mangled babies, and they will continue to make bad arguments about beating hearts and the falsified “scientific” consensus concerning the beginning of life, but at least we can take solace in the fact that they are so horribly inconsistent and contradictory in their reasoning that they can be sort of amusing, like self-righteous clowns without grease paint.