Thoughts on Ending a Pregnancy
All the arguments made against ending pregnancies usually centre around a few specific issues. Some deal with the status of the foetus while others are concerned with the morality of the termination. I’d like to make a personal response to some of these arguments.
Usually, when a man’s sperm impregnates a woman’s egg the resulting zygote will contain 46 chromosomes, half from each parent donor making a complete DNA set that would enable the zygote to eventually develop into a new and separate person. Technically, the zygote can be considered ‘alive’ as it metabolises nutrients and oxygen to use as energy in order to further divide as it travels down the fallopian tube. So, in this sense, we could say that a biological life-form does indeed begin at conception.
However, many single-celled organisms (fungi, algae or bacteria) also metabolise nutrients, use energy and multiply, they contain their own DNA and carry out most if not all other life processes in order to survive. But who would dream of fighting for the ‘life’ or the rights of fungi or bacteria in the same way some people want to fight for zygotes, simply because they are biological entities, because they’re ‘alive’. Consequently, the point about the zygote being alive seems irrelevant.
Some terminations are protested on the grounds that the growing embryo is ‘human’. In other words it carries DNA that can be identified as human DNA. That seems a significant point until we consider that there are plenty of other cells in our bodies, including saliva, hair follicles, teeth, etc that also contain human DNA. Would we defend the rights of a single tooth or a hair follicle, because it’s ‘human’. Or would we deny the human element of red blood cells because they don’t have a nucleus and therefore no DNA? Of course not.
So, although the embryonic cells do contain DNA, we can hardly call an embryo a human being merely because of that. A fully-developed, self-maintaining human is usually a person with experiences, memories, career, friends, debts, children, and so on, someone who was born and who has lived. That person is usually a self-aware, sentient and independent individual who is responsible for their actions. A young child is not fully developed and therefore to the extent of their development not fully responsible, but they are already on their way to becoming so and therefore should be free and enabled to realise that outcome.
So, although the embryonic cells do contain DNA, we can hardly call an embryo a human being merely because of that. A fully-developed, self-maintaining human is usually a person with experiences, memories, career, friends, debts, children, and so on, someone who was born and who has lived. That person is usually a self-aware, sentient and independent individual who is responsible for their actions. A young child is not fully developed and therefore to the extent of their development not fully responsible, but they are already on their way to becoming so and therefore should be free and enabled to realise that outcome.
A female host and foetus are in a symbiotic relationship. But a foetus cannot survive outside the body of the female, it is completely dependent on her for its survival, for without the life-giving nutrients and oxygen that the woman supplies, a foetus would quickly expire. What the woman does can affect the foetus and when anything goes wrong with the foetus’ development, this can pose an on-going threat to the physical well-being of the woman. That situation pertains till the day a baby is born. Rarely can a foetus of less than 24 weeks survive outside a female womb, even though modern medicine is constantly improving the chances of premature babies surviving, if it is born before 24 weeks survival remains rare. For that reason in the UK, the time limit for terminations has hovered around that 24 weeks for many years.
Of course children, the sick and elderly can be dependent as well. But that’s a social dependence (food, clothing, care, etc), not actual physical dependence that can have a detrimental effect on the host.
What a foetus certainly is, is a potential person and in the right circumstances potential is important. But it’s highly contingent. For instance, a law student is a potential judge; eggs and flour make for a potential cake; every tine we buy a lottery ticket, we become potential millionaires. But we all know that all of these potentialities rely on a host of variables that must all come together at the right time and place for the potential to come to actuality. Day in, day out, we’re accustomed to law students failing their courses; hopefuls not winning the lottery; recipes going wrong, all potentialities unfulfilled. If just one variable in these potentials is disrupted, the end result may never come into existence. And, if a variable goes wrong in a potential human or becomes risky or dangerous, it could be a mistake to nurture it into an enforced existence. Conversely, the birth of this foetus could bring a lifetime of joy and sense of fulfilment to its parents. The point is that which of these unknowable outcomes (or a combination of them) will persist.
A foetus is also a potential son or daughter. And this fact makes terminating the pregnancy a heart-wrenching, emotional decision for any would-be parent to make. Therefore, regardless of age or personal circumstances, termination can never be an easy choice. And the only one eligible to make it (in consultation with her partner) is the woman who would carry this foetus to term and be a life-long mother to the child.
It is also sobering to remember that such potential humans are quite naturally terminated in their millions every single day when the uteruses of countless women flush out their nutrient-rich linings (as late onset periods) and co-incidentally remove the minute zygotes from their support systems often even before their presence ever comes to the notice of their hosts. Science has given us the means to effect the same result in situations where the female involved considers it expedient to do so. The problem is external parties want to interfere in these private choices. Sometimes for nothing more than their personal religious convictions. And despite the situation having no detriment whatever on the lives of anyone other than the people involved, these outsiders want to impose their views and their mode of behaviour onto the lives of random women and their medical supervisors. All women should have the freedom to act in ways that constitute their own wellbeing and they should be at liberty to do so without reference to those unconnected to them. Protesters clearly imagine they are saving lives, even though there is yet no definitive life to save. Expecting women you have never met and know nothing of their private circumstances to alter their medical, domestic or social choices at your behest, cannot be a reasonable expectation.
Ten lifetimes would not be enough to grieve for all the millions of zygotes denied a life through the natural processes of uterus flushing, nor all the comfort humans could ever muster compensate those millions of babies brought into the world only to endure a life of endless misery because their parents could not afford or did not otherwise have the wherewithal to provide them with a dignified upbringing.
Ten lifetimes would not be enough to grieve for all the millions of zygotes denied a life through the natural processes of uterus flushing, nor all the comfort humans could ever muster compensate those millions of babies brought into the world only to endure a life of endless misery because their parents could not afford or did not otherwise have the wherewithal to provide them with a dignified upbringing.
Terminating a pregnancy can however be justified on the grounds that the mother is already a fully fledged human being, a person with full human rights for her protection. The physical aparatus that can enable foetal development is hers, and any risks to her future health or welfare that the growing foetus may cause should be hers to accept or deny. From the second of birth, each human has one body, and each body is allocated its own set of rights. The owner of the body owns the rights and there can be no competing for them. Given this simple arithmetic, the woman who already has a life and a set of rights must be free to make any decisions regarding the medical integrity of her physical being and any threats to it. She must decide on any future lifelong obligations that will be entailed on her by facilitating the production and entry to the world of another human being. These are her choices to make and to live with.
To terminate a pregnancy is simply to disrupt some potential for a good reason - and the more developed the embryo, the more serious will be the reason. Terminating a pregnancy close to birth, eg 39 weeks would to any thinking and humane person seem like infanticide and therefore only contemplated in the direst of circumstances. Likewise where the choice of termination rests on frivolous idiosyncrasies in favour of one sex or the other should never be encouraged, but politically, socially and morally discouraged.
But these cases aside, to hurl emotive accusations of murder towards woman who after serious deliberation, make the choice to terminate is thoughtless and cruel and it's pretentious. Because people murder other animals every day - and eat them. We murder other people in wars or by turning a blind eye to their plight of poverty or famine; we murder prisoners because we judge they have done wrong, even though sometimes we are badly mistaken. We murder living, breathing, viable life-forms in myriad ways wherever and whenever it suits us and when we think we can justify doing so. Evacuating a microscopic zygote or an undeveloped embryo that simply has potential, just doesn’t compare, so outsiders should mind their own business.
June Maxwell
Al Karak, Jordan 1998
