Lecture Outline #5: Abortion and
the Question of When a Life First Begins
I. THE HISTORY OF BIRTH CONTROL
1. Birth control efforts
date back at least 4,600 years ago:
2. In 1564, Gabriel Fallopius
published the first description of the condom.
3. In 1803, Thomas Malthus
suggested "moral restraint".
4. In 1822, the
5. In 1800's, "coitus reservatus" came into vogue, especially in
6. In 1880's, the first diaphragms
were used in the
7. In 1920's, the safe period of the menstrual cycle finally
began to be understood.
8. Still, there was a variety of sources of
opposition to birth control.
a. The attitude of men: Rev. William John
Knox Little in 1880.
b. The attitude of the church: Genesis
1:26-28.
c. The Comstock
Laws:
d. Attitude of the Medical Profession.
9. Margaret (Higgens) Sanger--"Mother of Modern Birth
Control": (Biographical Summary)
(NOTE: For more
on the life of Margaret Sanger, click HERE.)
10. Alan Guttmacher,
M.D., resident physician at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution.
II. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT (Figure
showing development)
III. WHEN DOES HUMAN LIFE BEGIN???????
Is an embryo
(or fetus) a human? When does
it become a human? (at fertilization?”
A. THE PRO-LIFE ARGUMENT
1. Based on intuition and a certain ‘reverence’
for life.
2. Based on religious convictions and teachings.
B. THE BIOLOGY OF THE MATTER
1. The fertilized egg (i.e., the zygote)
is certainly alive, since it can die.
2. The fertilized egg is certainly human, since
it belongs to no other species.
3. The fertilized egg comes from human parents,
which confirms its human nature.
4. The fertilized egg constitutes a genetically
distinct human organism.
5. Do we need simply to expand our definition
of "human being" to include the zygote?
(Some people have suggested that the
zygote, embryo, and fetus simply be called the conceptus.)
C. STILL, THE QUESTION IS: "WHEN DOES HUMAN LIFE BEGIN???"
1. If you say that
human life "begins" at some specific point in reproduction, then it
must have "stopped" at some earlier point, yet eggs and sperm are alive.
2. In biological
and evolutionary terms, life is a continuum:
3. Thus, the right
question might be: "WHEN DOES A HUMAN INDIVIDUAL BEGIN???"
4. A dead fetus
can, with impunity, be thrown out, incinerated, or flushed down a toilet.
5. Is it
appropriate to use the reciprocal of when human life ceases?
6. In 1982,
Congress debated the issue again and reached few conclusions
7. N.A.S.
concluded that “science cannot verify that the term 'person' includes
"all human life,” and that “the issue must remain a matter of
moral values.”
8. Thus, “the
morality of an act is dependent on the state of the system at the time the act
is performed” (WAR)