When Does Life Begin?

My daughter is pregnant with her second child, a girl, and we’re all quite thrilled about it. We know it’s a girl because of the ultrasounds she has had each month.  She sends us all pictures of the  baby growing in her belly but they aren’t all that attractive to be honest and I am reluctant to put them on the fridge beside the pictures of our grandson.

My grandson is also excited about the new baby coming. He talks to it through my daughter’s navel and kisses it by kissing her extended belly. It’s starting to move a bit and while he is convinced it will be a boy, he is excited to feel it move in her.

She is still eligible for a legal abortion and that begs the question. When does life begin?

I have no idea personally. I know what I believe but I am not so arrogant as to believe that my beliefs are the defining facts for determining the legal opinion. I’m not completely sure that anyone can make that determination but surely medical science is closer to having that capability than most of us.

The reason I raise this is that a Member Of Parliament in Canada has asked the same question in a private members bill. He hasn’t proposed that abortions be ruled illegal or banned. He has asked parliament  to consider forming a committee to gather experts together to examine the question of when life begins in an attempt to reach one defining consensus.

Why does he feel this is necessary? Simply because abortion remains a hotly debated issue some thirty years after they were made legal. It is clear that opinion has polarized and is based on beliefs and opinions rather than facts and it is his hope that by have medical science address the issue, it might resolve the debate so that society can move on. Of course, he is already being accused of trying to reopen the abortion debate but then that is always the first response of those afraid to look for the truth wherever it might lead.

Despite the personal attacks, he is on the record as stating that the answer may well be that life begins at birth or at some other point. It is clarity of the issue that is necessary and not just in regards to the abortion issue.

For example, if someone murders a pregnant woman, in some jurisdictions they can be charged with a double homicide; the murder of the woman and of the unborn baby. In other jurisdictions, they can only be charged with the murder of the woman. In those jurisdictions, the unborn child is not considered to be alive.

In some jurisdictions, assault on a pregnant woman resulting in the death of the unborn child can be treated as a homicide while in others, the crime is reduced to assault on the woman only.

It has led to some women being charged with endangering the life of a child because of substance abuse while they were pregnant but how is that possible if life doesn't begin until after birth? 

The simple fact is that in our polarized rush to legalize abortion, the more profound issues were trivialized and equal application of the law has had a considerable difficulty catching up. Definitions about life are inconsistently applied which has a direct impact on some women who become victims of varied interpretations of what does or doesn't constitute life . The current definition of when life begins used in Canada is almost 400 years old, a carryover from Britain.

There are more contradictions than just these. Abortion is legal up to the end of the second trimester but illegal after. Some are convinced that this is because it is unsafe to do an abortion in the final three months but that’s nonsense. The procedure would be different, more like a caesarian but just as safe as any other surgery and very easily performed. I suspect the truth has more to do with the fact that there is a fair degree of discomfort at intentionally terminating the life of a fully-formed baby and then throwing it in the garbage as now happens with aborted fetuses.

For all of our sophistication, we don’t know really when life begins. Some believe it is at conception, others at birth. Some have picked an arbitrary period in between but all are based on convenient opinion or religious belief. None are based on medical science or human ethics. 

It’s long past time that we settled that question once and for all so that we can put the hypocrisy of the debate behind us.

Hypocrisy?  Absolutely.

A recent study revealed that 85% of Canadian women are opposed to abortions based on gender selection. Why? If it is isn’t alive and a woman has the right to choose whether to carry the child to term or not, why shouldn’t she also have the right to determine what gender of child she wants to have? How do you police that? Do you take someone at their word that the abortion has nothing to do with the fact that the baby is one sex or the other?

We’re uncomfortable with that because it comes a little too close to the appearance of culling the race.

That’s the kind of stupid situation we put ourselves in when we are too frightened to drill down and seriously examine an issue beyond the superficial level upon which the ongoing abortion debate has been held over the past thirty or forty years.

The argument against illegal, backroom abortions is a powerful one. Too many women died and/or were seriously maimed by medical hacks incapable of conducting a safe procedure. None of us want to go back to that. But it is not a strong enough argument to simply demand abortion up to a certain point of pregnancy either.

It does not address the core issue. When does life begin and until we address that issue, none of us will ever really know. We’ll just continue to hold onto our beliefs, beliefs that are more about shoring up our opinion than they are about finding the truth.

For example, what if we learn that life begins at conception? How will we feel about ourselves then?  In the alternative, what if we learn that life begins with the first breath after birth, won’t that validate the decisions we’ve made?

It’s unfortunately, the way we address too many of the most serious and fundamental issues facing society today. For all of our yelling and brave talk, we are a society afraid to examine things below the surface because we are afraid of what we might find. We operate on emotion rather than fact. We form opinions and then defend those opinions against any and all examination of facts we fear might undermine them. It is the worst form of confirmation bias.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will state my personal position on abortion. Because I don't know when life begins, I am opposed to abortion for anything much beyond saving the life of the mother. But, because I don't know when life begins, I don't believe I have the right to make that decision for anyone else. I believe that it is up to each individual to make that decision for themselves. It is why I would like a better understanding of when life begins to help all of us when confronted by that decision. 

But then, I feel the same way about all of the major issues facing us today from the environment to the economy; from the justice system to….abortion.

In the end, it is polarized opinion, not truth, that is undermining  us. In the end, I believe, informed truth just might set free, all of us on both sides of each and every issue.

As a final point, I'm tired of those who scream that abortion is only a women's issue. It is an issue that defines our society, an issue that determines when life becomes life and that is not merely a women's issue, nor is it an issue of convenience. It is a very human issue and we all have a right to participate in the discussion of it.

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