Beginning of human personhood - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The beginning of human personhood is the period in an individual's life when he or she is recognized, or begins to be recognized, as a person

Person

A person is a human being, or an entity that has certain capacities or attributes strongly associated with being human , for example in a particular moral or legal context...

. The precise timing and nature of this occurrence is not universally agreed upon, and has been the subject of discussion and debate in science, religion and philosophy. The question of when and how personhood begins in an individual's life has played a significant role in the political, philosophical, and religious aspects of controversial issues such as the abortion debate

Abortion debate

The abortion debate refers to discussion and controversy surrounding the moral and legal status of abortion. The two main groups involved in the abortion debate are the self-described "pro-choice" movement and the "pro-life" movement...

, the stem cell controversy

Stem cell controversy

The stem cell controversy is the ethical debate primarily concerning the creation, treatment, and destruction of human embryos incident to research involving embryonic stem cells. Not all stem cell research involves the creation, use, or destruction of human embryos...

, reproductive rights

Reproductive rights

Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:...

, and fetal rights

Fetal rights

Fetal rights is a term used in some countries in reference to legislation that grants legal rights to fetuses. The term is used most often in the context of the abortion debate, as the basis for an argument in support of the pro-life stance....

Scope

Traditionally, the concept of personhood has entailed the concept of soul, a metaphysical

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

concept referring to a non-corporeal or extra-corporeal dimension of human being. However, in the "modern" world, the concepts of subjectivity

Subjectivity

Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...

and intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity is a term used in philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology to describe a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced but by more than one subject....

, person

Person

A person is a human being, or an entity that has certain capacities or attributes strongly associated with being human , for example in a particular moral or legal context...

hood, mind

Mind

The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...

, and self

Self

The self is an individual person as the object of his or her own reflective consciousness. The self has been studied extensively by philosophers and psychologists and is central to many world religions.-Philosophy:...

have come to encompass a number of aspects of human being previously considered the domain of the "soul." With regards to the beginning of human personhood, one historical question has been: when does the soul enter the body? In modern terms, the question could be put instead: at what point does the developing individual develop personhood or selfhood?

Related issues attached to the question of the beginning of human personhood, include the legal status, bodily integrity and subjectivity of mothers and the philosophical concept of "natality," or "the distinctively human capacity to initiate a new beginning" which a new human life embodies.

Philosophical and religious perspectives

Answers to the question of when human life begins and when personhood begins have varied among social contexts, and have changed with shifts in ethical and religious beliefs, sometimes as a result of advances in scientific knowledge; in general they have developed in parallel with attitudes to abortion

Abortion debate

and to the use of infanticide

Infanticide

Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...

as a means of reproductive control.

Neil Postman

Neil Postman

Neil Postman was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than forty years, he was associated with New York University...

has written that in pre-modern societies, the lives of children were not regarded as unique or valuable in the same way they are in modern societies, in part as a result of high infant mortality

Infant mortality

Infant mortality is defined as the number of infant deaths per 1000 live births. Traditionally, the most common cause worldwide was dehydration from diarrhea. However, the spreading information about Oral Re-hydration Solution to mothers around the world has decreased the rate of children dying...

. However, when childhood began to develop its own distinctive features (including graded schools to teach reading, children's stories, games, etc.) this view changed. According to Postman, "the custom of celebrating a child's birthday did not exist in America throughout most of the eighteenth century, and, in fact, the precise marking of a child's age in any way is a relatively recent cultural habit, no more than two hundred years old."

Ancient writers held diverse views on the subject of the beginning of personhood, understood as the soul's entry or development in the human body. David Skrbina has noted, in Panpsychism in the West, the various kinds of soul envisioned by the early Greeks.

Generally, the question of the ensoulment of the fetus revolved around the question of when the rational soul entered the body, whether it was an integral part of the bodily form and substance, or whether it was pre-existent and subject to reincarnation

Reincarnation

Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...

or pre-existence

Pre-existence

Pre-existence , beforelife, or pre-mortal existence refers to the belief that each individual human soul existed before conception, and at conception one of these pre-existent souls enters, or is placed by God, in the body...

.

The Stoics, holding a belief in the pneuma

Pneuma

Pneuma is an ancient Greek word for "breath," and in a religious context for "spirit" or "soul." It has various technical meanings for medical writers and philosophers of classical antiquity, particularly in regard to physiology, and is also used in Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible and in...

, held that the soul enters the body when the newborn takes its first breath.

Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

developed a theory of progressive ensoulment. In On the Generation of Animals he declared that the soul develops first a vegetative soul, then animal, and finally human, adding that abortions were permissible early in pregnancy, before certain biological processes began. He believed that the female substance was passive, the male active, and that it required time for the male substance to "animate" the whole.

Hippocrates

Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...

and the Pythagoreans stated that fertilization marked the beginning of a human life, and that the human soul was created at the time of fertilization.

According to Hinduism Today, Vedic literature states that the soul enters the body at conception.

Pre-existence

Pre-existence

was taught in various forms by Plato, Judaism, and Islam.

The Early Church held various views on the subject, primarily either the ensoulment at conception or delayed hominization. Tertullian

Tertullian

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...

held a view, traducianism

Traducianism

In Christian theology, traducianism is a doctrine about the origin of the soul , in one of the biblical uses of word to mean the immaterial aspect of human beings . Traducianism means that this immaterial aspect is transmitted through natural generation along with the body, the material aspect of...

, which was later condemned as heresy. This view held that the soul was derived from the parents and generated in parallel with the generation of the physical body. This viewpoint was deemed unsatisfactory by St. Augustine

St. Augustine

-People:* Augustine of Hippo or Augustine of Hippo , father of the Latin church* Augustine of Canterbury , first Archbishop of Canterbury* Augustine Webster, an English Catholic martyr.-Places:*St. Augustine, Florida, United States...

, as it did not account for original sin. Basing himself on the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22, he affirmed the Aristotelian view of delayed hominization.

St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo held the view that fetuses were "animated" (using Aristotle's term for ensoulment) near the 40th day after conception. However, both held that abortion was always gravely wrong.

In general, the soul was viewed as some kind of animating principle; and the human variety was referred to as the “rational soul”.

Ecclesiastical courts

Following the decline of the Roman Empire, ecclesiastical courts held wide jurisdiction throughout Europe. According to Donald DeMarco, PhD, the Church treated the killing of an unformed or "unanimated" fetus as a matter of "anticipated homicide", with a corresponding lesser penance required. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the official text of the teachings of the Catholic Church. A provisional, "reference text" was issued by Pope John Paul II on October 11, 1992 — "the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council" — with his apostolic...

, the following statement regarding the beginning of human life and personhood is provided:

Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life. Paragraph 2270

Common law

Although abortion in the United Kingdom

Abortion in the United Kingdom

Abortion has been legal on a wide number of grounds in England and Wales and Scotland since the Abortion Act 1967 was passed. At the time, this legislation was one of the most liberal laws regarding abortion in Europe...

was traditionally dealt with in the ecclesiastical court

Ecclesiastical court

An ecclesiastical court is any of certain courts having jurisdiction mainly in spiritual or religious matters. In the Middle Ages in many areas of Europe these courts had much wider powers than before the development of nation states...

s, English common law addressed the issue from 1115 on, beginning with first mention in Leges Henrici Primi
Leges Henrici Primi
The Leges Henrici Primi or Laws of Henry I is a legal treatise, written in about 1115, that records the legal customs of medieval England in the reign of King Henry I of England. Although it is not an official document, it was written by someone apparently associated with the royal administration...

. In this treatise, abortion, even of a "formed' fetus, was a "quasi-homicide", carrying a penalty of 10 years' penance. This was a much lesser penalty than would accrue to full homicide. With the excpetion of Bracton, later writers insisted that killing a fetus was "great misprision, and no murder", as formulated by Sir Edward Coke in his Institutes of the Lawes of England
Institutes of the Lawes of England
The Institutes of the Lawes of England are a series of legal treatises written by Sir Edward Coke. They were first published, in stages, between 1628 and 1644. They are widely recognized as a foundational document of the common law. They have been cited in over 70 cases decided by the Supreme Court...

. Coke noted that the murder victim must have been "a reasonable creature in rerum natura", in accordance with the standards of murder in English law

Murder in English law

Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another either intending to cause death or intending to cause serious injury .-Actus reus:The definition of the actus reus Murder is an offence under the...

. This formulation was repeated by Sir William Blackstone in England and in Bouvier's Law Dictionary
Bouvier's Law Dictionary
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is a book with a long tradition in the United States legal community. The first edition was written by John Bouvier.John Bouvier was born in Codogno, France, but came to the United States at an early age. He became a U.S. citizen in 1812, was admitted to the bar in 1818,...

in the United States.

The reasonableness of the creature is of some considerable weight in the legal conception of personhood. Children are not considered full persons under the law until they reach the age of majority.

Nonetheless, children have been treated as persons with respect to bodily offences, beginning with Offences against the Person Act 1828

Offences Against the Person Act 1828

The Offences against the Person Act 1828 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It consolidated provisions related to offences against the person from a number of earlier statutes into a single Act...

, although his protection did not prevent children from being sold by their parents, as in the Eliza Armstrong case

Eliza Armstrong case

The Eliza Armstrong case was a major scandal in the United Kingdom involving a child supposedly bought for prostitution for the purpose of exposing the evils of white slavery...

, long after the slave trade had been abolished in England.

Biological markers

One of the possible basic requirements for personhood is individuality, which entails differentiation between the person and its parents. Biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

offers a number of stages in the life cycle

Biological life cycle

A life cycle is a period involving all different generations of a species succeeding each other through means of reproduction, whether through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction...

that have been seen as candidates for personhood:

fertilization
Fertilisation
Fertilisation is the fusion of gametes to produce a new organism. In animals, the process involves the fusion of an ovum with a sperm, which eventually leads to the development of an embryo...

, the fusing of the gamete
Gamete
A gamete is a cell that fuses with another cell during fertilization in organisms that reproduce sexually...

s to form a zygote
Zygote
A zygote , or zygocyte, is the initial cell formed when two gamete cells are joined by means of sexual reproduction. In multicellular organisms, it is the earliest developmental stage of the embryo...
implantation, the start of pregnancy
Pregnancy
Pregnancy refers to the fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, in a woman's uterus. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets...

, occurring about a week after fertilization
segmentation, after twin
Twin
A twin is one of two offspring produced in the same pregnancy. Twins can either be monozygotic , meaning that they develop from one zygote that splits and forms two embryos, or dizygotic because they develop from two separate eggs that are fertilized by two separate sperm.In contrast, a fetus...

ning is no longer possible.
when the heart
Heart
The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...

begins to beat
neuromaturation, when the central nervous system
Central nervous system
The central nervous system is the part of the nervous system that integrates the information that it receives from, and coordinates the activity of, all parts of the bodies of bilaterian animals—that is, all multicellular animals except sponges and radially symmetric animals such as jellyfish...

of fetus is neurobiologically "mature"
the time of fetal movement, or "quickening
Quickening
Quickening is the earliest perception of fetal movement by a mother during pregnancy Quickening may also refer to:* Quickening , Final Fantasy XIIs incarnation of "Limit Breaks"...

"
when the fetus is first capable of feeling pain
Fetal pain
Neonatal perception is the study of the extent of somatosensory and other perceptual systems during pregnancy. In practical terms, this means the study of fetuses; none of the accepted indicators of perception are present in embryos....
when it can be established that the fetus is capable of cognition, or neonatal perception
fetal viability
birth
Birth
Birth is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring. The offspring is brought forth from the mother. The time of human birth is defined as the time at which the fetus comes out of the mother's womb into the world...

Fertilization

Fertilization is the fusing of the gametes, that is a sperm

Sperm

The term sperm is derived from the Greek word sperma and refers to the male reproductive cells. In the types of sexual reproduction known as anisogamy and oogamy, there is a marked difference in the size of the gametes with the smaller one being termed the "male" or sperm cell...

cell and an ovum

Ovum

An ovum is a haploid female reproductive cell or gamete. Both animals and embryophytes have ova. The term ovule is used for the young ovum of an animal, as well as the plant structure that carries the female gametophyte and egg cell and develops into a seed after fertilization...

(egg cell), to form a zygote. At this point, the zygote is gene

Gene

A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...

tically unique from either of its parents.
Many members of the medical community accept fertilization as the point at which life begins. Dr. Bradley M. Patten from the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

wrote in Human Embryology that the union of the sperm and the ovum “initiates the life of a new individual” beginning “a new individual life history.” In the standard college text book Psychology and Life, Dr. Floyd L. Ruch wrote “At the time of conception, two living germ cells—the sperm from the father and the egg, or ovum, from the mother—unite to produce a new individual.” Dr. Herbert Ratner wrote that “It is now of unquestionable certainty that a human being comes into existence precisely at the moment when the sperm combines with the egg.” This certain knowledge, Ratner says, comes from the study of genetics

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

. At fertilization, all of the genetic characteristics, such as the color of the eyes, “are laid down determinatively.” James C. G. Conniff noted the prevalence of the above views in a study published by the New York Times Magazine in which he wrote, “At that moment conception takes place and, scientists generally agree, a new life begins—silent, secret, unknown.”

The view that life begins at fertilization reached acceptance from mainstream sources at one point. In 1967, New York City school

New York City Department of Education

The New York City Department of Education is the branch of municipal government in New York City that manages the city's public school system. It is the largest school system in the United States, with over 1.1 million students taught in more than 1,700 separate schools...

officials launched a large sex education

Sex education

Sex education refers to formal programs of instruction on a wide range of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and...

program. The fifth grade text book stated “Human life begins when the sperm cells of the father and the egg cells of the mother unite. This union is referred to as fertilization. For fertilization to take place and a baby to begin growing, the sperm cell must come in direct contact with the egg cell.” Similarly, a text book used in Evanston, Illinois

Evanston, Illinois

Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...

stated: “Life begins when a sperm cell and an ovum (egg cell) unite.” Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft

Peter John Kreeft, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College, and author of numerous books as well as a popular writer on philosophy, Christian theology, and specifically Catholic apologetics. He also formulated together with Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ, "Twenty...

goes so far as to say:

Well, every biology textbook in the world, before Roe v. Wade, was not in doubt in answering the question, "When does an individual life of any mammalian species begin?" The answer is, "When the genetic code is complete." When instead of the haploid ovum and the haploid sperm, you get the diploid embryo. And at that point, something happens that is totally different, because the thing that's there seems totally different.

One objection raised to the fertilization view is that not all of the objects created by the union of a sperm and an egg are human beings. Objects such as hydatidiform mole

Hydatidiform mole

Molar pregnancy is an abnormal form of pregnancy, wherein a non-viable, fertilized egg implants in the uterus, and thereby converts normal pregnancy processes into pathological ones. It is characterized by the presence of a hydatidiform mole...

s, choriocarcinoma

Choriocarcinoma

Choriocarcinoma is a malignant, trophoblastic and aggressive cancer, usually of the placenta. It is characterized by early hematogenous spread to the lungs...

s, and blighted ovums are clearly not. Neither will every normal zygote develop into an adult. There are many fertilized eggs that never implant and are “simply washed away” after conception, though this can be answered by the fact that not every child becomes an adult; organisms die at various developmental stages.

The unique genetic identity of the zygote is also challenged. In fertilization, chromosome

Chromosome

A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also contain DNA-bound proteins, which serve to package the DNA and control its functions.Chromosomes...

s from each parent are combined in the same cell nucleus but remain independent; every chromosome in a diploid cell can be traced to one parent and not the other. Only during meiosis, in which gametes are formed, do these chromosomes cross over

Chromosomal crossover

Chromosomal crossover is an exchange of genetic material between homologous chromosomes. It is one of the final phases of genetic recombination, which occurs during prophase I of meiosis in a process called synapsis. Synapsis begins before the synaptonemal complex develops, and is not completed...

, exchanging bits of DNA to form unique genes not found in either parent, though this objection would also apply to the genome of an adult. However, gametes are not commonly considered to have personhood, perhaps because most of them are never involved in fertilization.

Vast advances in the understanding of fetal development have made it possible to develop a more sophisticated view of the physiology of the fetal brain. As biopsychologist Michael Gazzaniga has put it in The Ethical Brain:

During a discussion of stem cell research that took place while I was serving on President Bush’s bioethics council, I made an analogy comparing embryos created for stem cell research to a Home Depot. You don’t walk into a Home Depot and see thirty houses. You see materials that need architects, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers to create a house. An egg and a sperm are not a human. A fertilized embryo is not a human—it needs a uterus, and at least six months of gestation and development, growth and neuron formation, and cell duplication to become a human. To give an embryo created for biomedical research the same status even as one created for in vitro fertilization (IVF), let alone one created naturally, is patently absurd. When a Home Depot burns down, the headline in the paper is not “30 Houses Burn Down.” It is “Home Depot Burned Down.”

That a human individual's existence begins at conception is the accepted position of the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

, whose Pontifical Academy for Life

Pontifical Academy for Life

The Pontifical Academy for Life or Pontificia Accademia Pro Vita is a Pontifical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to promoting the Church's consistent life ethic...

declared: "The moment that marks the beginning of the existence of a new 'human being' is constituted by the penetration of sperm into the oocyte

Oocyte

An oocyte, ovocyte, or rarely ocyte, is a female gametocyte or germ cell involved in reproduction. In other words, it is an immature ovum, or egg cell. An oocyte is produced in the ovary during female gametogenesis. The female germ cells produce a primordial germ cell which undergoes a mitotic...

. Fertilization promotes a series of linked events and transforms the egg cell into a 'zygote

Zygote

A zygote , or zygocyte, is the initial cell formed when two gamete cells are joined by means of sexual reproduction. In multicellular organisms, it is the earliest developmental stage of the embryo...

'." The more authoritative Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , previously known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition , and after 1904 called the Supreme...

also has stated and reaffirmed: "From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth." Eastern Orthodox churches and most of the more conservative Protestant denominations also teach this view of life.

Implantation

In his book Aborting America
Aborting America
Aborting America is a book written by Bernard Nathanson on the subject of abortion. The book was reviewed by the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, the Washington Post, and The Interim....

, Bernard Nathanson

Bernard Nathanson

Bernard N. Nathanson was an American medical doctor from New York who helped to found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, but later became a pro-life activist.-Early life and education:...

argued that implantation should be considered the point at which life begins.

Biochemically, this is when alpha announces its presence as part of the human community by means of its hormonal messages, which we now have the technology to receive. We also know biochemically that it is an independent organism distinct from the mother. [Note: in writing the book, "alpha" was Nathanson's term for any human before birth.]

Segmentation

For fourteen to twenty-one days after fertilization, an embryo may segment and form twins, triplets, etc. Some argue that an early embryo cannot be a person because "If every person is an individual, one cannot be divided from oneself."

However, Fr. Norman Ford stated that "the evidence would seem to indicate not that there is no individual at conception, but that there is at least one and possibly more." He went on to support the idea that, similar to processes found in other species, one twin could be the parent of the other asexual

Asexual reproduction

Asexual reproduction is a mode of reproduction by which offspring arise from a single parent, and inherit the genes of that parent only, it is reproduction which does not involve meiosis, ploidy reduction, or fertilization. A more stringent definition is agamogenesis which is reproduction without...

ly. Theodore Hall agreed with the plausibility of this explanation saying, "We wonder if the biological process in twinning isn't simply another example of how nature reproduces from other individuals without destroying that person's or persons' individuality."

Fetal viability

Until the fetus is viable, any rights granted to it may come at the expense of the pregnant woman, simply because the fetus cannot survive except within the woman's body. Upon viability, the pregnancy can be terminated, as by a c-section or induced labor, with the fetus surviving to become a newborn infant. Several groups believe that abortion before viability is acceptable, but is unacceptable after. In some countries, early abortions are legal in all circumstances, but late-term abortion

Late-term abortion

Late termination of pregnancy or late-term abortions are abortions which are performed during a later stage of pregnancy. Late-term abortions are more controversial than abortion in general because the fetus is more developed and sometimes viable.-Definition:A late-term abortion often refers to an...

s are limited to circumstances where there is a clear medical need.

At birth

The Jewish Talmud

Talmud

The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....

holds that a fetus's life is less valuable than a woman's; if the woman's life is endangered by the pregnancy, it requires an abortion. However, if the "greater part" of the fetus has emerged, then its life may not be taken even to save the mother's, "because you cannot choose between one human life and another".

Some Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

theologians hold that ensoulment

Ensoulment

Ensoulment, in theology, refers to the moment at which a human being gains a soul, whether newly created within a developing fetus or pre-existing and added at a particular stage of development....

occurs when an infant takes its first breath of air. They cite, among other passages, Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

Other markers

There are also other ideas of when personhood is achieved:

at ensoulment
Ensoulment
Ensoulment, in theology, refers to the moment at which a human being gains a soul, whether newly created within a developing fetus or pre-existing and added at a particular stage of development....
at "formation" – an early concept of bodily development (see Preformationism
Preformationism
In the history of biology, preformationism is either the specific contention that all organisms were created at the same time, and that succeeding generations grow from homunculi, animalcules, or other fully formed but miniature versions of themselves that have existed since the beginning of...

).
at the emergence of consciousness
at the emergence of rationality (see Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...

)

Human personhood may also be seen as a work-in-progress, with the beginning being a continuum

Continuum (theory)

Continuum theories or models explain variation as involving a gradual quantitative transition without abrupt changes or discontinuities. It can be contrasted with 'categorical' models which propose qualitatively different states.-In physics:...

rather than a strict point in time.

Individuation

Philosophers such as Aquinas use the concept of individuation

Individuation

Individuation is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa...

. In regard to the abortion debate

Abortion debate

, they argue that abortion is not permissible from the point at which individual human identity is realised. Anthony Kenny

Anthony Kenny

Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny FBA is an English philosopher whose interests lie in the philosophy of mind, ancient and scholastic philosophy, the philosophy of Wittgenstein and the philosophy of religion...

argues that this can be derived from everyday beliefs and language and one can legitimately say "if my mother had had an abortion six months into her pregnancy, she would have killed me" then one can reasonably infer that at six months the "me" in question would have been an existing person with a valid claim to life. Since division of the zygote into twins through the process of monozygotic twinning

TWINS

Two Wide-Angle Imaging Neutral-Atom Spectrometers are a pair of NASA instruments aboard two United States National Reconnaissance Office satellites in Molniya orbits. TWINS was designed to provide stereo images of the Earth's ring current. The first instrument, TWINS-1, was launched aboard USA-184...

can occur until the fourteenth day of pregnancy, Kenny argues that individual identity is obtained at this point and thus abortion is not permissible after two weeks.

Ethical perspectives

The distinction in ethical value

Value (ethics)

In ethics, value is a property of objects, including physical objects as well as abstract objects , representing their degree of importance....

between existing persons and potential future persons has been questioned. Subsequently, it has been argued that contraception and even the decision not to procreate at all could be regarded as immoral on a similar basis as abortion

Abortion

Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...

. Subsequently, any marker of the beginning of human personhood doesn't necessarily mark where it is ethically right or wrong to assist or intervene. In a consequentialistic

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness of that conduct...

point of view, an assisting or intervening action may be regarded as basically equivalent whether it is performed before, during or after the creation of a human being, because the end result would basically be the same, that is, the existence or non-existence of that human being. In a view holding vale in bringing potential persons into existence, it has been argued to be justified to perform abortion of an unintended pregnancy

Unintended pregnancy

Unintended pregnancies are those in which conception was not intended by the female sexual partner. Worldwide, 38% of pregnancies were unintended in 1999 . Unintended pregnancies are the primary cause of induced abortion, resulting in about 42 million induced abortions per year...

in favor for conceiving a new child later in better conditions.

United States

In 1973, Harry Blackmun

Harry Blackmun

Harold Andrew Blackmun was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. He is best known as the author of Roe v. Wade.- Early years and professional career :...

wrote the court opinion for Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, , was a controversial landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion,...

, saying "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate."

In 2003, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act

Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is a United States law prohibiting a form of late-term abortion that the Act calls "partial-birth abortion", often referred to in medical literature as intact dilation and extraction...

was enacted, which prohibits an abortion if "either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother."

Scope

Philosophical and religious perspectives

Ecclesiastical courts

Common law

Biological markers

Fertilization

Implantation

Segmentation

Fetal viability

At birth

Other markers

Individuation

Ethical perspectives

United States

See also