re: "When does life begin?"

re: "When does life begin?" (The New York Times, December 29, 2022)

Asking when life begins is the wrong question. Anyone who thought that life was what mattered would have to defend the right to life of bats, broccoli and bacteria. 

Asking when human life begins is also wrong. It begins at conception when the sperm and ovum become a single living cell with human DNA that promptly does what living things do: grow and reproduce. It is not a human being until at least a few weeks later, but that too is not what matters. 

What matters is when the living entity being becomes a human person. This is what is controversial. This is what bad-faith actors want to muddy with talk about sacredness or by writing into law that the fertilized egg is already a human person. That is legal. It is also dishonest and wrong. 

The model of a person has always been a set of characteristic abilities had by every normal adult living human being. Such persons are independent entities that include some minimal set of minimal levels of: self-awareness, desires, preferences, plans, social bonds, consciousness, and awareness of fairness in their acts. 

Whatever set of minimal conditions for personhood are decided on, if they include a living human fetus at any point in a pregnancy, they will also include every other living mammal, and a lot of other animals. 

If they were both honest and consistent, anti-abortionists would also be radical animal liberation advocates, opposing all killing of animals for food and the slaughter of rats and living beings deemed pests 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/31/us/human-life-begin.html#commentsContainer&permid=122327116:122327116