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The Moral Status of Human Zygotes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
A little-discussed aspect of the “conservative” position on abortion involves the claim that human beings exist at all stages of gestation — that even the human fertilized ovum (zygote) is a human being. There are good reasons of both a practical and theoretical nature why this particular idea has received so little attention in the abortion controversy. On the practical side there is the fact that zygotes are rarely if ever the subjects of abortion decisions; and on the theoretical side, there is the prima facie implausibility of the idea itself — an implausibility stemming from the fact that human zygotes possess none of the features that distinguish clear-cut examples of human beings from other living things.
I would like to suggest, however, that there are good reasons — again both practical and theoretical — for examining with some care the idea that human zygotes are human beings. For even if this idea is not central to the abortion controversy, it has clear relevance to the morality of using intrauterine devices (I.U.D.'s) as a means of procreation control.
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1 There are no doubt those who would try to make something of the fact that normal human zygotes contain the same number of chromosomes as the normal somatic cells of adult human beings; but in fact this similarity in chromosome count is simply irrelevant to whether human zygotes are human beings.
2 Strictly speaking the term “fetus” applies only after three months or so of gestation, but in ordinary usage the expression is not restricted in this way. As it is being employed here, “fetus” quite clearly corresponds to ordinary rather than technical usage.
3 For descriptions of these experiments and others referred to below see, for example, Berrell, N.H. and Karp, Gerald Development (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976),Google Scholar ch. 16.
4 For example, if a starfish S is divided into two, each half will develop under appropriate conditions into starfish (call them S1 and S2). It does not seem reasonable to identify S with either S1 or S2, and yet this fact is clearly irrelevant to whether S is itself a starfish. But this kind of case is entirely different from the sort occupying us here, for the plausibility of regarding S as a starfish depends on its own characteristics and not on its relation to either S1 or S2.