Introduction
We
have seen that until relatively recently there was a wide consensus in the
Christian tradition that the life in the womb is not a fully ensouled human
until later in the pregnancy. For many that has meant what is called “delayed animation,”
meaning God imparted the soul into the body after it was sufficiently
developed. A related understanding is called “gradual animation,” meaning the
soul develops along with the body until both together are fully human. We saw
in the last post that that was the teaching of Gregory of Nyssa, along with his
sister, Macrina, who he called his teacher. It is an approach that also makes biblical
sense given passages like Job 10:11-12 and Psalm 139:12-14.
We’ve
looked at scripture and tradition for wisdom to inform our understanding of the
beginning of life and the morality of abortion. Another place Christians have
looked for wisdom is in the rest of creation. For example, according to the
great Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker (1554-1600), we should seek wisdom in
the “the glorious works of nature”:
"Some things [Wisdom] openeth by the sacred
books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works
of nature; with some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual
influence, in some things she leadeth and traineth them only by worldly
experience and practice. We may not so in any one special kind admire her that
we disgrace her in any other, but let all her ways be according unto their
place and degree adored.”
Wisdom
opened to us in the study of embryology and pregnancy reveals not just the
conception, development, and eventual birth of a new human being. It also
reveals the fundamental maternal-fetal biological connection. The gestating
mother is not just an abstraction. “Gestation is not just a temporary nutritive
dependency analogous to a patient on a feeding tube or connected to a ventilator.
The fetus is a developing human being uniquely interconnected with its mother,
within her body.”
And she is not a passive vessel. We will come back to
that.
In
this post, we will look at the beginning of life at conception through
pregnancy and what light that might shine on the questions we have been asking.
Wisdom opened to us in the science of embryology gives
us information that can help us discern when the life in the womb has developed
sufficiently to be an actual human body and soul. I am going to suggest that it
can shed light on the “gradual animation” approach which I argue is most
faithful to the Church’s tradition. I will suggest that there are milestones
along the way.
Science
Can Reveal Much, But Cannot Answer All the Questions
However
much we know from science about the process of conception, pregnancy, and
birth, it remains an awe-inspiring wonder. Two human beings come together,
giving themselves to each other in sexual intimacy, one hopes in the context of
commitment and mutual affection. And from that union, there is new life. One of
those two, the mother, nurtures this new life with her own body. It is a sacred
mystery – not because we don’t understand the biology of it, but because there
is a holy depth to it all.
Science
does not remove the sacred mystery and wonder of new life. But it also, on its
own, cannot answer the basic questions we’ve been asking in this series of
posts. It can describe the process of fertilization and conception and
subsequent development. It can describe the interplay of the life of the mother
and the life in the womb. But it cannot tell us when the life in the womb
becomes a fully human person. Or, to use the theological language, it cannot
tell us when it is fully ensouled. Nor can it answer for us the difficult
moral questions related to abortion.
This
uncertainty is acknowledged even by the Roman Catholic Church in its official
documents. In its Declaration on Procured Abortion, The Sacred Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith “leaves aside the question of the moment when the
spiritual soul is infused. There is not a unanimous tradition on this point
[whether or not the soul is fully present at conception] and authors are as
yet in disagreement. . . it suffices that this presence of the soul be probable.
. .”
But they do not make a case for why it is probable. “Probable” is a
technical term in the Christian moral tradition. But Catholic bioethicist, Carol
A. Tauer, “argues that there are fallacies in the way these documents assign
certainty to the notion of fetal personhood . . .”
When
and How Does a Human Person Develop?
Given
what we know, it actually seems unlikely that a fully human soul is present
from conception. First of all,
fertilization itself is more complicated than simply sperm meets egg and is
more of a process than a singular event. It is significant that for the first days
to two weeks after fertilization the embryo is not a stable entity. In those
early days before the embryo has implanted on the uterine wall, it is possible
for it to split into identical twins or quadruplets. Strange as it sounds, it
is possible for those twin embryos, or for two separate eggs fertilized as in
fraternal twins, to “fuse” into back into one, producing one person.
It is hard to see how the fertilized egg can be one person or one soul at this
point if it can split into two or more or, where there were two, fuse into one.
Adding
to this fundamental instability is the fact that a large percentage of early embryos
do not survive to implant in the uterus for natural causes. Though some
estimates are much higher, careful analysis of research indicates that as many
as 40% of embryos do not survive this early stage under natural conditions.
Even many who generally
oppose abortion have pointed out that it is problematic to imagine such a high
percentage of human souls never seeing the light of day. Others point out that
if we really believed these were truly human souls, we would invest lots of
money in research to determine how to save them.
Further,
about 2% of fertilized embryos end in ectopic pregnancies in which the embryo
attaches somewhere other than the uterus’ The most common place this can happen
is inside the fallopian tubes. This means that not only can the embryo not
survive, but it can also be deadly to the mother.
Given
that in the early days after conception the embryo is a ball of cells and not a
stable entity, it is hard not to agree with the majority view in the Christian
tradition that “it would not be possible to style the unformed embryo a human
being, but only a potential one.”
So, implantation is something of a milestone. It is also about the same time a
pregnant woman misses her period and may begin to feel different due to the
release of the hormones associated with being pregnant. Still, at this point,
the embryo can hardly be recognized as “formed” as a human being.
Some
Milestones Along the Way
Around
the same time as implantation, gastrulation occurs, at which point
various cells of the developing embryo begin to be “assigned” the role they
will play in the organism, e.g., part of the digestive tract. Implantation and
gastrulation make for a basic milestone on the way to being formed as a human
being. What might some other milestones be? The beginning of a heartbeat at
about four weeks of gestation is an emotional milestone for many. But, as all
but the most primitive animals have a heartbeat, it does not seem to be a
particularly significant milestone.
A
more significant milestone is reached around the fourteenth week at the
beginning of the second trimester. At that point, the fetus looks
proportionally like a newborn human baby. This is significant because our
bodies matter. We communicate with our bodies, and we recognize one another as
fellow human beings because we share the human form.
Another
important milestone occurs between weeks sixteen and twenty-one. It is
somewhere in that range that a mother first begins feeling the fetus moving. Traditionally
this is referred to as “quickening.” Due to modern scientific observation, we
know that the fetus is moving before that. But some have argued that when the
woman feels the life stirring within her something changes in their
relationship and a sort of moral covenant is formed between them. Abortion was legal in Wisconsin before"quickening" until 1858
Viability
is another significant milestone. But viability is something of a moving
target. Generally, obstetricians set viability at between 20 and 26 weeks of
gestation. The earliest premature baby to survive was born at just 21 weeks.
But a high percentage of babies born before the 27th week do not survive
and only then with extensive medical intervention. This is because their basic
organs, particularly their brains and lungs, have not fully developed.
By
week twenty-six, the end of the second trimester, the fetus’ brain has the
essential structure of a post-natal brain. We know that the brain continues to
develop from then through birth and into young adulthood. But the basic
structure is in place at this point. The fact that some babies born earlier
prove to be viable, however, suggests that the brain is developed enough
several weeks earlier.
The
final milestone is when the baby is born. It takes its first breath which is biblically
significant.
With birth the baby is physically separate from the mother.
Conclusion
Earlier,
I noted that during pregnancy the mother is not a passive vessel housing the
developing baby, doing no more than providing nutrition, oxygen, and space for
growth. Even before conception, no sperm cell would make it to the egg without
the active assistance of the woman’s body. From there on there is an intimate
interaction between the mother’s body and that of the fetus. They might not be
exactly the same body. But neither are they totally separate bodies. In any
event, pregnancy takes place within the particular body of a particular woman. Therefore,
pregnancy and the life in the womb should not be talked about without
accounting for the lived reality of the pregnant woman and her agency. I will
say more about that in the next post.
Toward
the end of the second post in this series, I wrote,
“the holy mystery of becoming fully human is a
gradual process in the womb and that the pregnant woman is not merely a passive
vessel of that process of becoming. The moral balance at first tilts toward the
agency of the pregnant woman (usually along with the father) and gradually
tilts to include the baby developing in her womb.”
It
might seem simpler to say that we are
fully human from the point of conception. But we have seen that conception
alone does not create a stable enough entity to be considered a person or a
soul. And, in any event, that has not been the teaching of most of the Church
for most of its history. It might also seem simpler to set birth as the
demarcation of when we become actual persons. Though that is closer to the
Jewish understanding, we have seen that even in Judaism it is not that simple. And
that has never been the Christian view. For most of the Church’s history some
version of delayed or gradual animation (being given or becoming a human soul)
has been the teaching.
I
believe this remains a persuasive and faithful understanding. Thus, if abortion
is ever the taking of a person’s life, it is not so in the early weeks or
months of a pregnancy. Given the combination of a body that looks like the
human form, the quickening, and the earliest point at which there is enough
brain and lung development for any hope of survival outside the body of the
mother, I would argue that 20 weeks of gestation is when we can with some confidence say
a human person is fully formed, body and soul. Before that, we are talking
about a potential human being. As such, it is still sacred and perhaps
increasing so. But until that point, the burden of deciding to bear it is
mainly that of the mother, ideally along with the father.
The
question of whether at 20 weeks and beyond the rest of society also has a stake
in protecting the life in the womb along with the life of the mother is part of
what we will look at in the next post.
