Human Soul and Abortion Morality

by William F. Harrison, M.D.

While watching a presidential candidate trying to give short answers to big questions on a C-SPAN political programming coming from Iowa, I had an epiphany. One questioner, noting that the candidate had characterized himself as Pro-Choice, asked two important philosophical questions pertaining to abortion prefaced by rather routine Pro-Life rhetoric that I will paraphrase: "Technological advances have allowed us to visualize the remarkable changes that occur during embryonic and fetal maturation within the mother's womb, to observe tiny emerging limbs, fingers and toes, the beating heart, and altering in facial features. If the developing conceptus, even at the earliest stages of life is not a living human being, then what is it? And if it is a living human being, why does killing it not constitute murder?"

There are two elements almost universally thought to separate human beings from all other forms of life. One of these is a chiefly religious concept, the other a conceit of a different order. The first is the widely believed religious notion that there resides within each of us a unique, and uniquely human, Soul that distinguishes homo sapiens from all other life forms. The second generally accepted hypothesis is that the self conscious human Mind makes us unique among all earth's creatures.

Certainly there seems little else in our anatomical or chemical makeup that might confer special consideration for our species on the part of nature or the Divine. As an example, all primates have limbs that end in structures much like our hands and feet, all have hearts, brains, and expressive faces. It is said that the opposable thumb is one of the unique features of human beings. But does any one believe that our human souls reside in our opposable thumbs? Or how about in the structure and the chemical composition of our "new, unique" DNA, might the soul reside there? The structure and chemistry of the DNA in all living species is simply a longer or shorter repetition of the same four chemical bases. In fact, the qualitative and quantitative differences between the DNA of a "normal" chimpanzee and a "normal" human being is much less than one percent, while considerably more DNA variation than that is exhibited between "normal" human beings and some others of us born with certain chromosomal abnormalities.

If there truly is within every person a Soul, it must reside somewhere in the exceptional consciousness, of self and of abstractions, that emanates from the living human brain. The soul, therefore -- if indeed there is one -- must be found in what we call the Mind.

If this is correct, then because of what we know of the finite time necessary for the structural and functional differentiation, growth, maturation and "hardwiring" of the cellular and organic features that make up the sensate human brain, it can be stated with almost 100% certainty that human consciousness does not begin to waken until sometime after the 24th week of intrauterine life.

It is a given that there is a unique new life in every mature ovum, perhaps in every sperm (the male and female zygotes), and when these join, they form another unique new life from the moment of conception. The question all of us should ask is this: at what point in this continuum of life does a zygote, a fertilized egg, an embryo, fetus, or newborn attain moral equivalence with the girl or woman who carries this unique new being within her womb?

Because of the things I've expressed above, I believe that the maturing fetus's status doesn't rise to a level of moral equivalence with what all too many consider its "maternal incubator" -- the pregnant girl or woman -- until such time as the fetal mind has attained a state of waking consciousness coincidental with ensoulment, which, should such occur, would be sometime after 24 weeks of intrauterine life.

However (and here comes the hard part), conceptuses of those women for whom abortion initially is not an option, must be treated by the pregnant mother-to-be and society as morally equivalent to the infants they will become unless the woman aborts prior to 24 weeks post conception. It is in validating and valuing the lives of both these, the woman and her potential child, where we who embrace reproductive freedom, and others, who call themselves Pro-Life, should be searching for common ground.

William F. Harrison, M.D., FACOG
Fayetteville Women's Clinic
1011 N. College Ave.
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Tele (479) 442-8166
E-Mail: Wharri3365@cox-internet.com

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Return to T.F.Barans' commentary: Women's Reproductive Self Determination