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Human Being

Conception begins with just two united cells (in the laboratory or womb) and culminates with the infant's birth; this fluid development is why moral perspectives on the difference between the embryo and infant can seem arbitrary. Gestation is an ambiguous state of existence, and before we consider whether certain types of stem-cell research are right or wrong, we must ask the question "what is a human being?"

By today's standards a human being is an individualized animate form and experiences life tactile-kinesthetically. The body might be paralysed from the neck down, or the brain might be impaired, but so long as a person is not brain damaged with the need for life-support, there is usually no argument as to whether a person should be considered a human being. A human being is an individual who can live, experience, and think as humans are basically capable. An individual human being can do and feel most of the typical things that human beings can generally do and feel - or they can learn, as an infant or recuperating injured person does. A human being is able to be human in these fundamental ways. Those who are extremely dependant and need the constant attentions of machinery and human helpers are characterized as vegetative, a body without a brain, existing without meaning other than the pressure of biological exigencies - they cannot be human in a fundamental sense. In response to incapacities and resulting dependancy, human altruism and medicine can lead in opposite directions for the same compassionate reasons. For example, a person can be euthanized, for the sake of dignity and mercy, or they can be kept on life-support and nursed until they die, because even a little life is thought to be better than none.

The embryo is in a similar position - to a point. The embryo is living in a typically human way because all humans begin life this way. But it is totally dependant and needs life-support provided by others (either medical technology or the womb). Therefore, the embryo is defined by a similar ambiguity to that of a human being on life-support. Moral evaluations and decisions regarding the embryo echo those made regarding euthanasia: either the embryo may be allowed to live regardless of biological or social problems, or it might be killed for the merciful reasons of aborting a pregnancy or harvesting for therapeutic stem-cell medicine. Often though, mercy-killing is suspect, especially if there is reason to believe that the killing is one of convenience rather than kindness. To kill for convenience is to fail to take human life into serious moral consideration. But the other extreme, that of life regardless, is also open to suspicion; for example, the people who keep a loved-one alive despite their vegetative state and respirator brain may also be thinking of their own feelings, not willing to be bereft and grieving. The pro-life position is equally unreasonable in demanding life regardless and lobbying for enforced gestation. After-all, which members of pro-life groups are willing to adopt unwanted babies themselves, or act as surrogate mothers to the thousands of embryos currently in storage, or reproduce in an uncontrolled and prolific manner?