For decades Americans have argued in circles over abortion. Perhaps the heart of the conflict is irreconcilable. Some minor skirmishes are solvable, though. The fight over the beginning of life is one of them.
Pro-choicers and pro-lifers argue whether “life begins at conception” but we already know the answer. Just follow the science: 96% of biologists believe that life begins at fertilization.1 (This belief isn’t the product of their politics: 85% are pro-choice).
That’s not the big win for pro-lifers that it sounds like. Not all life is sacred, even to the pro-life. Aborting animal fetuses arouses little opposition. Only Jainists condemn killing a fly.
We ban the ending of innocent human life not the killing of animals (generally). There’s some sacred quality in human-ness that we want to protect. That sacred something is what philosophers call “personhood.”
If abortion is murder it’s not because of the technical definition of biological jargon but because some event happens: maybe a soul enters the fetus, or the fetus becomes able to survive outside the womb. That event marks the difference between a tiny ball of life and a person.
It may sound like semantics but distinguishing between the beginning of life and the beginning of personhood clarifies the argument. It aligns public discourse with philosophical discourse. It empowers laypeople to use arguments more sophisticated than bumper-sticker slogans.
There’s a risk in being too sophisticated: an obsession with edge cases and nitpicking definitions leaves you unable to take a position at all. As lawyers say, “hard cases make bad law.” Whether we’re defining life or personhood or adulthood, nothing can perfectly capture the incredible variety of humanity.
We still need definitions, though, and some are better than others. A definition of life that has near-unanimous support among biologists is sufficient. Rejecting it is making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Moving from arguing about life’s beginning to personhood’s also connects the abortion discourse to future debates. How should we treat human-level artificial intelligence? It’s not alive but it’s possibly capable of personhood… can a soul enter a machine? Is it enough to function like a person? Or take non-human intelligent life from sci-fi scenarios like genetically engineered animals or extraterrestrials- how human-like do they have to be to gain personhood? The public debate over robot civil rights won’t start from square one: it’ll draw on the work of NARAL and the Susan B. Anthony List.
That article also debunks the claim that academia is left-wing because academics are smart. Their politics are as dumb and crazy as everyone else’s and even their wingnuts can gatekeep careers.