Let's say you have an oogonium. These are the cells in the ovaries that can either go through mitosis, to produce additional oogonia, or can enter meiosis and end up as an ovum (egg (yes, singular)). So you have an oogonium. It has 46 chromosomes (because it has not yet undergone meiosis). I think at this point most people can unanimously agree that this oogonium is not a life. If you argue that it is, then every time a woman menstruates she's killing a baby, so stop reading now and go play with your toes, because your brain means nothing to me. So this oogonium is not a life. We can do what we want with it. We can kill it, poke it, jab it, abuse it, encourage it to multiply, etc. So let's say we coax this little oogonium to multiply a few times, then coax it and all it's sisters into meiosis, so we end up with some eggs, each with 23 chromosomes. Again, these eggs are not lives.
Now we introduce some sperm. Oop. Our little egg sisters have all been fertilized! Now is the point when many people will argue that the resulting zygote is a life. But... what if there is no way that it can develop into a viable fetus? What status does it have? Is it a person until it reaches the stage in cell division when it will spontaniously abort? Is it never a person? In nature, those who believe a zygote is a life and a person would treat everyone zygote as a person, since there's no way of knowing that it might not survive. But what if you knew for certain? What if, say, it had been genetically modified so that it was missing a vital DNA sequence so that it was impossible for the fetus to live? 'Easy,' one might say, 'if you've modified this fetus to make it inviable, then you've taken a life and ended it.' But wait. Let's rewind. Let's step back to before our zygotes were zygotes, before our eggs were eggs. Let's go back to that first little oogonium. This is not a life. It's not even an egg. It has a full set of chromosomes and can undergo mitosis. It's a cell.
It alone does not have the potential to be a life, as a zygote does. Again, if you argue that destroying an egg or an oogonium is killing a life, you're being stupid, and you need to go play with your toes. Millions of eggs are lost every day when millions of women across the world menstruate. If you're going with the God thing, He designed it this way, it's cool. If you go with the nature thing, we evolved this way, it's cool. So we have a oogonium. It is not a life. It is not a potential life, and harming it is not killing a potential life, as one might argue that killing a zygote is. So we take this oogonium, and we homogeneously (on both copies of the chromosome) delete some gene that is essential for a fetus to develop. Now we go through our steps again: the oogonium goes through mitosis, then it and its sisters go into mitosis, and now we have our eggs. These are not lives. These are not potential lives. Now we let loose with the sperm.
Now. We have a zygote. This zygote will never live. It will spontaneously abort due to it's own checking system. It will self-destruct. Is this zygote a person? Does it have a soul? If we kill this zygote, are we killing a person? If we don't kill the zygote, it's going to die. It does not have the genetic structure to live.
I raise this question: would it be ethically ok, in the minds of those who believe zygotes are people, to use these zygotes for embryonic stem-cell research and therapy? (Let's assume that the deletion, while preventing the zygote from forming a child, would not prevent the zygote from dividing into a blastocyst and the cells that make up this blastocyst (stem cells) from becoming heart cells, liver cells, etc. independently.) I emphasise again: This zygote
never had the capability to be alive. Never. Never ever. It was ruled out from becoming another person back before it was a life. Back when it was an oogonium. In this line of cells,
there was never any chance that another life would occur. There was never any chance that a live baby might be brought into the world.
By deleting the gene did we kill a person? Did we end a life? True, we did prevent a life. The same way we could have prevented life with non-modified eggs by never introducing sperm. The same way abstinence prevents life. Preventing life does not seem to be a moral issue, that seems to be ok. So is this ok?
Another question: do decisions on whether it's a person or not change depending on at what stage of development the fetus will abort? If they abort at 100 cells, are they a person? If they abort after they take the recognisable shape of a human, are they a person? Remember: nothing has changed but the passage of time, and the organization and specialization of the cells. From zygote to 100 cell cluster to fetus, it is still not alive, and it still is doomed to abort. Does it matter if it aborts after the first brain waves are detected? Is it a person if it aborted after it started producing brainwaves?
Another question: is this clump of cells a person by their DNA? Are they a human by their DNA? Is something that has the DNA of a human but not the DNA to
ever be alive, a human? A person?
Does God only give souls to zygotes that he know will live long enough to be born? What about babies that have genetic defects that allow them to live only a few hours after being born? Does exiting the uterus decree life? If we could look at that genetically defective zygote back when it formed, we could know it was going to die. It has no potential for life: it will die. But it will die later. After leaving the womb. Many would say this is a life. What if it's going to terminate while still a ball of cells? Is that a baby dying? Is that a life ending?
What is life?
