Amendment 62, known as the Personhood Amendment, is destined to be soundly defeated by Colorado voters, as was its predecessor 2 years ago. Regardless of the fate of this proposed amendment, perhaps it is time that we step back and reflect upon the biologic and moral status of the human embryo.
What is this early life form? Merely a clump of cells? An organism that may become a human being but doesn’t yet have the characteristics needed for us to call it a human being? A human being? Something other than human? Let us consider this issue strictly from a biologic viewpoint, leaving the matters of ensoulment and imago dei to the theologians for now.
Certainly a human egg is not a human being. A sperm is not a human being. Neither has the capacity in and of itself to ever become a human being. The embryo is something different altogether.
After fertilization occurs, the resulting embryo contains all of the information needed to develop progressively through pregnancy, infancy, childhood, and adulthood. That is far different from an egg, sperm, or other tissue cells in culture.
Of course a permissive environment is required, and during the first few days of development that environment may simply be a petri dish, culture medium, and incubation in the case of in vitro fertilization. It is truly incredible to watch an embryo thrive and grow in that environment without any external stimulus. In most cases, however, development takes place within the uterus, invisible and often unrecognized. Because it cannot be directly observed, many of us find it hard to believe that there could possibly be a human being present at this stage. That was certainly the case historically, throughout the periods of time that our written law was being formulated.
It is a fact that without this nutritive environment, whether it is in a laboratory or in a woman’s uterus, the embryo will cease development and will die. Embryos are not alone in their helpless condition, being completely dependent upon an outside source of support.
Consider those of us at the margins of life: newborn infants and the infirm elderly. Likewise those who are severely physically or mentally impaired. Does this need for sustenance and the inability to support oneself make the embryo or impaired persons any less human? In a liberal democracy such as ours human beings are respected equally, regardless of physical or mental capacity, age, size, talents, or the ability to form relationships. They are given moral agency for what they are – human beings, also known as persons. Anything less threatens the worth credited to each one of us.
There is no point beyond fertilization at which the developing organism becomes something that it was not the day before. After fertilization of a human egg by a human sperm, the organism is nothing other than human. It isn’t a chicken, a pig, a horse, or a cow. It is human, and nothing less.
There are those who argue that human embryos have not yet attained the status of human beings because of the high rate of embryonic death due to inherent abnormalities, such as chromosomal defects. That fact does not change the inherent nature of the embryo, however. Consider developing countries which suffer from high infant mortality rates. We still recognize infants in those cultures to be human beings with moral worth exactly that of any other human being, regardless of the fact that many of those infants die.
For reasons that are in conflict with our assertion of human equality, we in the United States now attribute full human rights to a child upon his or her birth, but not one week, one hour, or one minute beforehand.
While birth may be a constitutionally convenient milestone, it flies against any sense of reason and biologic truth. Isn’t it time that we rethink the faulty premises upon which our current laws are based?
It has been said that the Colorado constitution contains 20,000 references to the word “person,” suggesting that it would be just too inconvenient to consider an embryo as a person because of the effort involved in reconsidering our laws, even if they are based upon faulty assumptions about basic human life.
If we indeed decide that our constitution was framed in ignorance of current biologic truth, especially truth about the individuals it is supposed to protect, we should be more than willing to correct any number of errors; it is our moral obligation. This can absolutely be done in such a way that most current fertility treatments and contraceptive methods are unaffected, as well as the care of women who suffer from miscarriage and tubal pregnancy.
Our state constitution should be based upon truth and the moral standards of our culture, not the other way around – regardless of how inconvenient that truth may be.
Sam Alexander, M.D., lives in Denver. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
