In the recent Presidential Compassion Forum, both Democratic Presidential hopefuls, Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, were asked to explain if they believed life began at conception. Senator Obama stated that he wasn’t sure and Senator Clinton stated that she thought that the potential for life began at conception. So, since the next President will be making a lot of decisions that will directly affect the fate of the unborn in one way or another, I took it upon myself to try to help them think about the issue from another point of view (and by the way, Barry and Hillary, thank you for very much for checking out the blog. I know you guys are very busy).

So, here are the ground rules. We are going to focus on scientifically verifiable biological facts instead of having a discussion on spiritual issues. Also, instead of offering my personal opinions about when life begins, let’s use the opposite approach and list all the milestones that occur in the development of a human baby and eliminate all of the ones that can’t be the point at which life begins. Then, we can help them form more definitive conclusions on when life starts based on the things that we know don’t cause life to begin. Sound good? Great! Let’s roll.

OUR STARTING POINT (”DAY ONE”) - A NEWBORN BABY IS A HUMAN BEING. WHEN DID HE/SHE BECOME HUMAN?

Almost everybody believes that after birth, a human baby is actually human (I say almost everyone because I have talked online with very radical pro-abortion people who don’t think babies are actually people until age 10 or so). So, let’s make our starting point the agreement that a newborn baby is human. Let’s go backwards in time from this point.

POSSIBILITY 1: LIFE BEGINS WHEN OUR BIRTH IS RECORDED AND CERTIFIED (normally 38-42 weeks after conception)

Some people think that that great moment in time that makes us an official human being is shortly after birth, when we are weighed, given Social Security numbers, and given a birth certificate. These people think that being “official” and having our identities recognized by the government are the things that certify our humanity. But we all know that many people live in this country who have no official records or documentation. In fact, in the time it took you to read this sentence, another human being has crossed into the United States without having a social security number or any official documentation by the government. Therefore, we can make our first elimination. Being officially documented is not the thing that makes us human. So, a baby is already human before he or she gets “recorded.” So, let’s keep going backwards in time.

Some people have actually suggested that the issuing of a birth certificate or other legal governmental certification of birth is what makes us human and starts our lives.But many people are in this country who don’t have any documentation regarding their identity or birth. But yet they are all humans. So, documentation is not a prerequisite for humanity and we are human before we get documentation.

POSSIBILITY 2: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE ARE NO LONGER PHYSICALLY CONNECTED TO OUR MOTHERS (38-42 weeks after conception)

So, other people think that what makes a baby a human is when the baby is no longer attached to his/her mother. At this point, say these people, the baby is now a “separate person” and this distinction is what makes life officially begin. However, let’s remember that for the first moments after birth, a newborn baby is still attached to his/her mother through the umbilical cord, which is still in the mother’s body. So, a newborn baby isn’t technically physically independent of his/her mother. But a newborn baby is human. And therefore, by this counterexample, we know that physical independence from the mother is not the thing that makes life begin. Because a newborn baby, a human, isn’t physically independent from mom for at least a couple of minutes after we’ve all agreed that they’re already human. Let’s go back some more.

For the first moments after a live baby is born, the baby remains physically connected to mom through a very tough umbilical cord attached to the placenta that is still inside of the mother.But yet we all agree the live baby is a human being already. And so the physical independence from the mother’s body isn’t the thing that makes them human.

POSSIBILITY 3: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE ARE NO LONGER IN OUR MOTHER’S BODY (38-42 weeks after conception)

For many, the moment at which a baby leaves his/her mother’s body is the point at which the person becomes a human. But anyone who has either experienced a birth or seen a live birth knows that there often isn’t a “moment” but sometimes a very long set of “moments.” So, let’s consider the case of a baby who is on the way out of the womb - partially in the womb and partially on the outside. Such a baby simultaneously meets the criteria for being “part of its mother’s body” and outside of his/her mother’s body all at the same time. Is the baby a human when, for example, her head has emerged from the birth canal but the rest of her body is still inside of her mom? Or in a breech birth, the legs being out and the head still being in. Is the baby “part of the mother’s body” or an independent person? Nothing about the baby really changes between the time the baby is on the way out and when the baby is out. And since we know that when the baby is out, the baby is already a human, and the baby can’t be both an a human and bunch of cells in mom’s body at the same exact time, we can conclude that the baby is also human when he/she is on the way out. And so we know that the baby is human before the baby leaves the mother’s body. And so, a-back we still go.

If the argument is that a baby is human when outside the womb but “part of the mother’s body” when inside of it, a baby being born is both at the same time. Part of the baby is inside the mother’s body and part is outside.So, if the baby is a human when he/she is outside of the mother’s body, that same full-term baby is a human when he/she is partially inside of the mother’s body. And so we know that the baby became human before she completely left her mother’s body.

POSSIBILITY 4: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE TAKE OUR FIRST BREATH (38-42 weeks after conception)

Some people might believe that the moment at when the baby takes his/her first breath is the moment in which they become a human and life begins. However, consider the case of babies who are born very prematurely and can’t breathe on their own. These babies, who are born and whose birth and identity is legally certified by the government, sometimes need pulmonary surfactant to be administered to them and in some cases for breathing tubes to be inserted in their tracheas. Are they not yet human until their lungs develop enough to function properly enough for them to take their first unassisted breath? Of course not. In fact, their births have been certified, they are physically separate beings from their mothers, and are outside the womb. But they haven’t yet really breathed on their own. So, therefore, we can conclude that the first breath is also not the thing that makes life begin. So we’ll still keep tracing this thing backwards.

Many very premature babies cannot breathe on their own for a while after birth. But yet they are human. So, being able to breathe on your own is not the thing that makes our life begin or the thing that makes us human.

POSSIBILITY 5: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE REACH “FULL TERM” STATUS (35 weeks after conception)

So the next point to look back to is the point at which the unborn can be considered “full term,” which technically happens after 35 weeks. Is there something about this point in time that defines the line at which we make that journey from being a bunch of cells to being a human? Apparently not, because nearly four months before Amillia Taylor had reached this point last year, she was certified to be a human being when she was born at 21 weeks. And although it is very rare for babies that young to survive outside the womb (although medical advances are allowing premature babies to survive earlier and earlier), the limit of viability (the point in time at which a baby has a 50% chance of surviving outside the womb) is 24 weeks. And the point here is that reaching the status of full-term is not the thing that causes life to begin. So, we can scratch this off the list. Human life begins long before we are full term.

Amillia Taylor was born last year at 21 weeks and 6 days gestation - three months before unborn babies reach “full term” status. She survived and did not even stay in the hospital for an extended period of time. Another baby, James Gill of Canada, was born in 1987 at 21 weeks and 5 days gestation. And in general, by the time an unborn baby is at 24 weeks gestation, the baby has roughly a 50% chance of survival outside the womb (although Roe v. Wade allows for unborn babies to be aborted up to 24 weeks for any reason).This disproves the theory that becoming “full term” is the thing that causes life to begin.

POSSIBILITY 6: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE REACH THE “FETAL” STAGE (8 weeks after conception)

The funny thing about the term “fetus” (which is simply the Latin word for “offspring”) is that by the time a baby gets to the fetal stage, at about 8 weeks after conception, a whole lot of the important things that make a human a human have already taken place. The baby’s heart has started beating three weeks after conception. By seven weeks after conception, the unborn baby’s brain waves are registering on an electroencephalograph (which is used on already-born people as a test for whether their brain is alive). And by the fetal stage, every organ that the baby will ever have is already formed and in place. Their ears have begun to form. Spontaneous limb movements can be detected by ultrasound. So there is no evidence that anything special happens to suddenly make the developing baby with the beating heart and the signaling brain and the limb movements and the hair buds to suddenly become human at the 8th week or at any other arbitrary moment during the pregnancy.

There is no evidence that at any arbitrary point in the human development cycle, including the point at which we stop calling that developing being an “embryo” (from Greek “that which grows”) and start calling him/her a “fetus” (from Latin “offspring”), suddenly makes that developing being a human.

THE UNPOPULAR POSSIBILITY: CONCEPTION

There is only one biological event that every person’s existence can be traced back to and that can be identified as the trigger for every other event in the person’s life. Regardless of your faith, your race, your gender, your nationality or your age, your heart started beating 21 days after you were conceived. Your brain showed evidence of functioning starting about 42 days after you were conceived. If you were a full-term baby, you were probably born sometime between 245 days and 280 days after you were conceived. If you were born prematurely, you were probably born sometime between 153-245 days after you were conceived. You can almost figuratively set your clock to it.

If you had not been conceived you would not have been born. And once you were conceived and implanted in your biological mother’s womb, your heart started beating about a week after she missed her period and has been beating continuously since then (unless at some point later in life your heart stopped beating and you were revived).

We know a newborn baby is a human being. We also know a lot of things that didn’t cause that human baby to become a human and to have his/her life begin. Everyone will continue to have their own opinions of when life begins, including our Presidential candidates, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for a belief that life begins at some point after conception and lots of reason to believe that it does.

And although I haven’t attempted at any point in time yet to tie in Scripture verses or other spiritual beliefs into the discussion, knowing that both Obama and Clinton go to church and are comfortable talking about the faith and values they’ve learned from their churches, I will throw in one Bible verse that maybe they hopefully will ponder as they think about questions like these. It is the Scripture Jeremiah 1:5 and it reads “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you …” Since they consider themselves people full of faith and values maybe they can consider that along with all of the above.

“The Values Voter”