Abstract
This essay serves as a brief rationale for the claim that a concept-us or human zygote is essentially a human person. I will argue that the zygote is just as specifically and truly a person as you or I, though less developed. The idea is that conception or fertilization is the point at which a person—at least one individual person, possibly more—definitely begins to exist physically in the space-time world as we naturally and normally perceive this world. This is not offered as a probable conclusion, but as a reasonable certainty. The exact time at which a given conception event or fertilization process terminates may be quite uncertain. But I will maintain that there is definitely a moment of conception, a moment when the fertilization process is fundamentally complete and a single-celled zygote is essentially first in existence.
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Notes and References
US Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973, p. 47.
American Medical Association Committee on Criminal Abortion, 1859. A resolution was adopted unanimously by the AMA, condemning abortion “at every period of gestation, except as necessary for preserving the life of either mother or child,” and urging civil protection for fetal life.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Plan Your Children For Health and Happiness, 1963.
D. Callahan, Abortion, Law, Choice and Morality (New York, 1970), pp. 497–498.
The recognition of a person involves, in part, a moral decision. This point is made effectively by John Noonan in the booklet, How to Argue About Abortion (New York, 1974), p. 10.
Even the potential to receive actuation (“passive potency”) is itself an actuality that is not had by something lacking it. There are subtle ways to overlook the actuality of potentiality in the case of personhood. E.g., Louis Dupré does so by using equivocally “person” and “personal” in his essay, “A New Approach to the Abortion Problem,” Theological Studies (1973), 481–488.
Cf. Robert and Mary Joyce, Let Us Be Born (Chicago, 1970), pp. 21–24.
N. Berrill, Person In the Womb (New York, 1968), p. 32.
An expression used by H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. in “The Ontology of Abortion,” Ethics (April, 1974), 217, et passim.
J. Lejeune, “The Beginning of a Human Being,” a paper presented to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Paris, Oct. 1, 1973. He is an eminent geneticist.
This kind of explanation is likewise recognized in the position paper of Scientists For Life, “The Position of Modern Science on the Beginning of Human Life” (Fredericksburg, Virginia, 1975), p. 18.
This phenomenon is alleged by Andre Hellegers, MD, in an article, “Fetal Development,” Theological Studies (March, 1970), 4. Thomas Hilgers, MD, et al., dispute it. Cf. T. Hilgers, “Human Reproduction: Three Issues for the Moral Theologian,” International Review of Natural Family Planning, I (1977), 115–116.
Thomas Aquinas would be the first to admit it His minimal conditions are underscored in places such as Q.D. De Anima, 2 ad 2; and 10 ad 1.
For Acquinas, not only is the soul an internal final cause (as a formal cause) of the body; but it is also united with the body as an efficient cause. Cf. Q.D. De Anima, 9 and 10. In the light of contemporary genetic evidence, the entrancing and exiting of souls logically required for the mediate-animation interpretation would seem to degrade hylomorphic theory as an integrative theory of natural identity. Perhaps the most notable attempt at mediate animation today is that of J. Donceel. E.g., see his “Animation and Hominization,” Theological Studies, (1970), 76–105. A thorough Thomistic critique of Donceel’s argumentation is given by W. Marshner, “Metaphysical Personhood and the I.U.D.,” The Wanderer, (October 10, 1974), 7.
An excellent critique of utilitarian ethics is given by G. Grisez, Abortion: the Myths, the Realities, the Arguments (New York, 1970), p. 317, et passim.
Cf. D. Demarco, Abortion In Perspective (Cincinnati, 1974), passim.
E.g., note the attempt of J. Diamond, MD, “Abortion, Animation, and Biological ominization,” Theological Studies (1975), 305–324.
In fetology, A. M. Liley is perhaps foremost in the world. Cf., e.g., “The Fetus as a Personality,” The Australia-New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, VI (1972), 99–105. Or, e.g., J. Lejeune, “On the Nature of Man,” American Journal of Human Genetics (March, 1970), 119–128.
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Joyce, R.E. (1988). Personhood and the Conception Event. In: Goodman, M.F. (eds) What Is a Person?. Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3950-5_10
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