Abortion and the Beginning of Life

Abortion is one of those words that when used in public causes a universal grimace.  In the enlightened 21st century this cringe is mental and not usually visible, but there was a time in the memory of many living when its utterance was taboo.

When I first heard and understood what it meant, I was reminded of my first taboo word that wasn't for cussing.  It was uttered in a Reader's Digest magazine article that I read in early adolescence,  provocatively titled, "A Stunned and Shocking Word."  After an appropriate buildup, the word was revealed as masturbation. I made sure Mother didn't notice what I was reading. 

Surprisingly, the author declared that flogging the fella was okay.  And in time the "sin of Onan"  and its feminine equivalent (popping the button?) became no longer the stuff of superstition and myth, but an accepted alternative when a sexual partner is absent, indisposed or not yet found.  Case closed.

Both words bring up the unromantic side of sex.  Masturbation was once thought a perverse way to enjoy its pleasures that was, you might say, always immediately at hand.  Abortion, more seriously, was deemed the killing of an unborn and unwanted child.  Both words named acts condemned as unnatural and sinful.  The origin of these attitudes is so lost in the mists of prehistory as to make them seem instinctual. 

It took longer for abortion to be found legally a woman's sole right and responsibility, at least in America,  by the Supreme Court's "Roe v Wade" decision, of nearly two score years ago.  Though still highly controversial, abortion is legal to varying degrees in many if not most countries, and mere mention of it is no longer taboo.

But,still, there is that inner cringe when we say the word.  And the case is still open for endless arguments, frequent demonstrations and the occasional riot.  At the heart of the controversy is the question of when life begins.  Arguments have been marshaled for every way station from ejaculation to birth.  About all the two camps agree on is that nobody is for the official killing of babies once they are breathing, although some local Chinese authorities have come close to enforcing infanticide and some Indian societies are ambivalent about baby girls. 

The pro-choice position can be summed up as that "nature is indifferent so it's up to a woman to decide." The pro lifer's rejoinder: "God will really get you for that!"  "That,"  encompasses every intervention from condoms, foams, pills before and/or after, D and C,  vacuuming and wire hangers to the hybrid "partial birth" dissection.

Some of the words in that litany are slogans, others can be defined.  Before we go further, we need to define our terms, at least for the stages of procreation.  Let's begin with the fun part.

Coitus.  The sexual coupling of two humans, limited for today's purpose to one male and one female of the species. No knot or ass holes need apply. When this behavior, which as every one past puberty knows, or imagines, is fun to do (recreation), was linked logically with making babies (procreation)  is not known.  To imagine the future consequences of present pleasure is something even modern humans can fail at, despite the example and urging of generations of priests and parents. 

Ejaculation.  The spurting of male semen into the female vagina at the climax of the sex act.  Viewed under a microscope, the male sperm looks lively, a miniature tadpole moving with purpose to a destination.  In a crowd  they mimic a running of the Boston Marathon.: off with a bang, jostling for position, keeping a steady pace before sprinting for the finish line.  A beckoning egg previously moved into position (ovulation) will reward the winner with its embrace. 

Fertilization.  One sperm only is elected to be the daddypole.  He fertilizes the egg (ovum) and all the thousands of others are  frustrated also rans  They wiggle a while longer and die, their lovely life's potential wasted by a callus nature, or nature's God, depending on what you believe.  Either way we humans are either indifferent or relieved at their fate, not anguished over the loss of multitudes of potential fellow creatures too late to the egg.

Implantation.  "The attachment of a fertilized ovum (zygote) to the wall of the uterus."  That's the way my dictionary puts it.  The happy couple has found a home in the womb.  Two sets of genes have formed a unique join, and "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder."  That fine sentiment notwithstanding, spontaneous abortion occurs frequently, most often in the weeks that follow.

Division.  Cells, the basic unit of life, divide and multiply.  That's not all they do.

Differentiation.  At some point the cells began to specialize into the multitude of the kinds of cells it takes to turn a blob into a human.

Gestation.  The period between implantation and birth, which Barny Frank has said is that part of a child's life of the most interest to Republicans.  (But what does he know?)  The zygote once implanted is termed the  blastocyst.  It's cells divide,  proliferate and specialize until after the fourth week after fertilization when it is sufficiently formed to be termed an embryo   After the eighth week the evolving infant is technically a fetus ( foetus in the old spelling), and keeps the title until birth.  By then most women have a pretty good idea that they are preggers.
 
Conception.  The alert reader will have noted that this term so far has no place in the technical terminology of reproduction.  Coitus begins the train of events that is usually unstoppable absent contraception.  Ejaculation by a fertile male into the unprotected female takes the decision out of their control.  Fertilization joins two sets of genes into a unique whole. Implantation provides a home for the consequent cell.  Gestation nurtures the dividing cell into an infant able to live outside the womb.   Perhaps conception begins when the happy couple decide to "make a baby" (or just make whoopee) and ends when the cord is cut, and is thus more of a term of art than of scientific nomenclature.

Back to the question: When does life begin?  Both medical and legal considerations are behind the division of the gestation period into trimesters.  The first trimester ends, arbitrarily, after 12 weeks.  The highest risk for spontaneous abortion is deemed over.  The second trimester ends after about 28 weeks at the point of viability or "quickening."  The child is "at term" after 37 weeks and is considered  "full term" at 40 weeks, at which time it is okay for husbands to wonder when "you are going to have that thing" because "it's been a while!"

So when does life begin?  After much scientific harrumphing the honest answer is, "who knows?"  There are those who say, "Life begins at forty."  Perhaps the only answer is legal and political.  The Supreme Court's decision is increasingly divisive but has proved to be a practical answer, balancing the promise of the baby against the state of the mother, well as as any.  That it is judge made law with a tenuous grounding in the Constitution is not to the good, but the USA isn't the only society to reach similar conclusions in recent times.

Life is a continuum after all and it is hard to find a point in the process of procreation when non-life becomes life.  The right of a woman to be equal in law and society to a man enters in.  While a modern invention it is not lightly to be tossed aside.  Consensual sex would seem to be the first prerequisite, even though women should be free to accept a child conceived by rape or incest if they decide to for whatever reason. 

The "rights" of fathers need not concern us here.  They enter the picture once a child is born.  As an active male I have no idea how many children I may have conceived, and mostly like it that way. Other men may disagree, even while seldom if ever turning down chances for an extra curricular romp in the hay.  Our inherent nature makes it difficult to consider consequences at a time like that.  Gentlemen of course do what the lady says.

That nature, and nature's God, should it exist, is indifferent is manifest in the number and frequency of ways that gestation is interrupted and/or goes tragically astray.  It is also proven by the fossil record of the number of species, including of primates much like ourselves, that have become extinct.  We have already preempted Darwin's precept of natural selection with other animals we have domesticated, well before Darwin's time.  Why not do the same thing for ourselves?

One answer is that we don't know how, as is evident by the horrible mess we have made when we have tried.  The eugenics movement and the Nazis are indeed cautionary tales. But we will never reach the stars in our present form.