Tuesday, April 18, 2006

If abortion is murder redux

Ohio is poised to make it a felony to leave the state to have an abortion.

It makes perfect sense. If the fetus is a person then abortion is murder, no different from infanticide, no different from shooting someone in the head. Abortion is cold-blooded, premeditated murder. Driving someone out of state for an abortion is no different from kidnapping a baby to be executed. Of course it should be a felony.

If abortion is murder. If the fetus is a person.

And what about all those frozen embryos? If life begins at conception then embryos are people too, and so letting an embryo thaw out without being implanted in a woman's uterus is murder. Cold-blooded premeditated murder. Why should not a woman who undergoes in-vitro fertilization not be required by law to carry all of the resulting babies to term? If life begins at conception, isn't the embryo a person? Isn't refusal to implant an embryo tantamount to abortion, tantamount to murder?

Am I the only one feeling a little queasy here?

The answer is that embryos are not people. Fetuses are not people. It takes more than a full complement of human DNA to make a person, more than a beating heart. It takes a functioning brain. That is why we recognize the concept of "brain death" (most of us anyway).

Life may begin at conception, but personhood doesn't start until much later. If we do not recognize that, we are headed towards a very unpleasant future.

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