The Right to Life

One of my favourite movies of all time is ‘Children of Men’. The film is set in the near future with the basic premise that humanity has lost its ability to produce children and so is slowly dying out.  There is huge sadness whenever somebody dies as that means there is one less person on the planet. Suddenly and unexpectedly a woman becomes pregnant for the first time in many years. The film is really about how one man responds to the challenge of protecting the woman and her child.

I apologise to anyone who has not seen the film (it is really worth watching in my opinion) because here is a major spoiler.  At one point in the movie, the totalitarian administration is trying to quell an armed insurrection and the woman and her child get caught up in a street battle. It is then revealed that she is pregnant and for a brief moment everyone stops fighting to protect the woman and her unborn child from harm. It’s a moment of pure genius as the mists part ever so briefly to allow the world to take stock of what is going on and to realise what is a priority. The woman and child leave the battlefield and the fighting resumes.

I truly wish we could see the conception of every child from a perspective like this.  

My wife is an incredible inspiration to me. She has seen much more of life at the cold edge of having to survive than I have and despite that (or maybe because of that) she is one of the most caring people I have ever met. 

When it comes to issues of what actually matters I deeply trust her intuition.

This article really begins with a conversation that we had a few weeks ago. She said to me that even though we have so much more resources here in Ireland versus her home country of Kenya she understood why women struggled with having children here. Back in her home country, having a child is always something to celebrate because society is setup to support you (be it through family and friends and extended community). There are always people there as you bring your baby into the world, even if you have no money, no partner and even if you have health issues.  The bringing of children into the world is almost always seen as something tremendously positive.

When we discussed it further she made the observation that the bringing up of children is seen as secondary to other aspects of Irish society. Careers, status, wealth generation are seen as more important than nurturing the next generation. Families are broken up between generations, children are looked after by child minder services, and mothers and fathers are encouraged to earn money to support this model.  Essentially this means that we have adopted a much more short-term view of society albeit to seek greater gains as individual members of a society. 

John Moriarty took the view that western society was regressing from an evolutionary perspective particularly when it came to raising children. There is far more emphasis now on individual pursuits rather than on more collective pursuits (like raising a family) and even though those pursuits can bring great benefits in individual intellectual development they can lead us astray when it comes to creating a caring and inclusive society.

I really believe my wife is right. It genuinely has become difficult to have children in the western world. You only have to look at the aging population crisis that almost every country (Ireland excluded interestingly) in the western world is experiencing. The bottom line is that we are not producing enough children to sustain the kind of society we have created.  And the society we have created has made it difficult to produce the very children it needs to survive.

I think this is at the heart of a fundamental societal problem in what we have come to call the ‘developed world’. 

The consequences of making it difficult to have a child have convinced many people that abortion is a basic human right rather than seeing it as something that is gravely and fundamentally wrong.

I am against abortion once a process known is implantation has been established. Implantation takes place about 1-2 weeks after conception. Once implantation takes place all the necessary elements to create a human being (or human beings) are in place.  For me there is no moral justification for terminating a pregnancy after this point unless it genuinely is the only option to save a mother’s life. And if a termination of pregnancy is necessary then every effort should be made to ensure the baby delivered has a chance of survival.

One of the main reasons that I am against abortion is that as soon as you allow the deliberate killing of an unborn child you cross a Rubicon.  That Rubicon is the point where the convenience of taking the life of an unborn child is weighed against the responsibility of bringing the child into the world.  Evidence from around the western world suggests that once you cross this Rubicon, even with the intention of only allowing an extremely limited form of abortion, you open the doors of possibility to a much more liberal form of abortion.  There are some countries in the world where abortion is considered a form of birth control right up to the end of pregnancy.  The true horror of abortion becomes really apparent in this context when you realise that premature babies can now survive after being delivered at 20 weeks.

I honestly believe that most human beings would agree that the deliberate killing of a child is abhorrent and utterly wrong.  I say most and not all because there is a sickeningly growing element in society who agree with abortion knowing full well what abortion is. You only have to look at the recent court case in America where a doctor knowingly killed children in the most barbaric way after delivering them alive.

And this brings me to the principle reason that I am against abortion. I am totally convinced that abortion is the deliberate killing of a child when it is in its most fragile stage of development.  I am convinced of this because of the scientific evidence that is now at our disposal with modern imaging techniques and the understanding of cell biology.

So what is the scientific evidence that tells us that abortion is wrong?

Firstly, modern screening technologies over the last 20 years like real time ultrasonography and foetoscopy have advanced considerably and given us deep insights into the child’s physical and mental development during gestation. Studies of the foetal ECG (electrocardiogram – electrical activity of the heart) and the foetal EEG (electroencephalogram – electrical activity in the brain) have demonstrated the remarkable responsiveness of the human child in gestation to pain, touch, and sound. There is a deepening awareness that the stage at which a child has full functioning capacity to interact with its environment (even the limited sensory experience of the womb) happens at a much earlier stage in gestation than was previously thought.  And when I say earlier we are talking about the time when the child is only a couple of centimetres long.

Medical evidence also tells us that once cell division takes place in a fertilised egg secure in the wall of a womb that the physical makeup of that person is defined. And we know that it is only a matter of time that a living independent entity based on the blueprint in that cell division process will emerge. Everything that determines the individuality and originality of a person is established at conception. The first single cell contains the entire genetic blueprint in all its complexity. That is truly remarkable as a fact in its own right.

I would argue though that even though the blueprint for life starts at conception that life starts a little later.

At conception the sperm and egg unite in one of the fallopian tubes to form a one-celled entity called a zygote (sometimes there is more than one zygote). Each zygote has 46 chromosomes — 23 from the mother and 23 from the father. These chromosomes will help determine the biological makeup of the baby. Everything from eye colour to personality traits is contained in this chromosome mix.

Soon after fertilization, the zygote travels down the fallopian tube toward the uterus. At the same time, it will begin dividing rapidly to form a cluster of cells resembling a tiny raspberry. By the time it reaches the uterus, the rapidly dividing ball of cells — now known as a blastocyst — has separated into two sections. The inner group of cells will become the embryo. The outer group of cells will become the membranes that nourish and protect it.

On contact with the uterus, it will burrow into the uterine wall for nourishment. This process is called implantation. The entire process takes about a week.

Shortly after implantation the placenta, which will support the baby throughout the pregnancy, begins to form.

Researchers estimate that a high percentage of all naturally occurring conceptions fail because the zygote never becomes properly implanted in the uterus.

In the abortion world, the argument is often made that an abortion is just the removal of a bunch of cells from the woman’s body.

Up to implantation I agree with this (7 days after conception). Without proper implantation in the uterus wall then a foetus cannot form.  From an ethical perspective there is a still a possibility of the zygote splitting so that identical twins are formed and that is not yet completely determined before implantation.  So in my opinion, contraception, morning after pills and interventions in the first week to avoid implantation are permissible and ethically justifiable.

However, once implantation takes place then you are dealing with a lifeform that has a right to life.  Implantation takes about a week. The 21 days after conception marks the beginning of the embryonic period. This is when the baby's brain, spinal cord, heart and other organs begin to form.

The embryo is now made of three layers. The top layer — the ectoderm — will give rise to the baby's outermost layer of skin, central and peripheral nervous systems, eyes, inner ear, and many connective tissues.

The baby's heart and a primitive circulatory system will form in the middle layer of cells — the mesoderm. This layer of cells will also serve as the foundation for the baby's bones, muscles, kidneys and much of the reproductive system.

The inner layer of cells — the endoderm — will become a simple tube lined with mucous membranes. The baby's lungs, intestines and bladder will develop here.

By the end of this week, the baby is likely to be about the size of the tip of a pen.

I agree that I have used the terms cells in the above sentences. However, the difference here is that cell division is working to a blueprint in a process that is still not completely understood (except that we know the obvious outcome – the formation of a human being over time).  Yes we are dealing with cells but we are also dealing with them at a time when we know a human being is growing. Every human being ever created starts like this.

The heart starts beating somewhere between 18 and 25 days. It takes this amount of time for the circulatory system to be a closed loop and at just 28 days after conception, the neural tube along the baby's back is closing and the heart is pumping blood. Basic facial features will begin to appear, including passageways that will make up the inner ear and arches that will contribute to the jaw. The baby's body begins to take on a C-shaped curvature. Small buds will soon become arms and legs.

Electrical brainwaves have been recorded at 43 days on an EEG. If the absence of a brainwave indicates death then the presence of brain wave activity indicates life. It is still feasible that brainwaves could be discovered earlier as more sensitive recording instruments become available.

The brain and all body systems are present by 8 weeks and functioning a month later.

At 8 weeks, the baby will wake and sleep, make a fist, suck their thumb, and get hiccups. The fact that the baby sleeps is a clear indicator that cerebral development is taking place.

At the end of 9 weeks, the baby has their own unique finger prints.

At 11-12 weeks, the end of the first trimester, the baby is sensitive to heat, touch, light and noise. All body systems are working. 

They weigh about 28g and are 6-7.5 cm long.

In other words they are fully developed before the mother's pregnancy is even noticeable. They are just very fragile and in need of a growth and strengthening stage to make them less dependent on the placenta and the mother. How can anyone claim that an entity with the above attributes is not a child?

It is important to stress again that these are medical facts.

What is also truly remarkable is that in this incredibly short time frame a human being has gone through all stages of evolution, from single cell composition right through to a functional human being in a truly miraculous snapshot on how our species has evolved over 3.5 billion years.

That we cannot revere this amazing aspect of who we are is deeply saddening to me.

Even with the medical facts above, many people are convinced that abortion is a right. 

Most abortion regimes in the world allow for the termination of pregnancy after the first trimester.

And so a much deeper argument as to why abortion is fundamentally wrong is required.

It is not a moral argument (although there is a very strong argument here) – it is based on an evolutionary argument that goes back many millions of years to the period of time when we became placenta based mammals.

All life evolved from basic life forms. This means that at one stage in our distant past (about 3.5 billion years ago) the basic building blocks of the human body were the building blocks of microbial life on Earth. Our ultimate genetic ancestors were single celled entities. In many ways the ‘conception’ of the human species started at this point.  

Over that 3.5 billion years life has evolved from single cell microbial life-forms (Archeon and Proterozoic geological periods – about 3 billion years long), through life-forms living underwater (Cambrian period – 150 million years long) then through Amphibian life-forms capable of living under water and on land (Carboniferous period – 50 million years long), and then through Reptiles that laid eggs on the land (Permian period – 35 million years  long), then through the dinosaur period (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods – 200 million years long), from which mammals evolved (Paleogene, Neogene and Quaternary periods – 65 million years long). 

Homo sapiens only emerged about 100,000 years ago. The first cave paintings were done about 20,000 years ago.

In the context of evolution, human beings have only arrived very recently.

It is an enormous mental challenge to get around this fact given how far we have come in evolution. It has divided science and religion pretty much since Darwin’s publication of the ‘On Origin of the Species’ on 24^th November 1859. It has caused brilliant minds like John Moriarty to almost go crazy trying to work out how spirituality and 3.5 billion years of evolution come together under a common understanding.

One of the key aspects of evolution is reproduction and how learning from one generation gets passed onto the next. Essentially each generation is a keeper of the knowledge of how to survive as a species for passing on to the next generation of that species.  Each species has evolved to instinctually have this at the top of their priority list.

In the reptile world, the world of creatures like the crocodile, immediate short-term survival is top of the instinct agenda. Lots of eggs are laid, which then become fertilised and tiny versions of the creature in question battle it out in a harsh world with only the fittest surviving.  Fittest is not just about being strong – it is far more about being capable of adapting to change. A young reptile must be able to rapidly adapt to an environment that they are born into or very quickly face death. 

The survivors of this cruel first phase of reptile life become the custodians of the gene pool for the next generation and so it goes on.

Immediate short-term survival is not only an instinct at birth for a reptile. A crocodile will eat its own young in order to survive – the idea being that it can always produce more off spring at a later time. This kind of short-term thinking is very typical of a reptilian brain.

Humans still have a reptilian brain. It’s the oldest part of our brain and still controls our most basic instincts around survival and reproduction.  Thankfully we have more evolved parts of our brain to moderate these primal instincts but make no mistake – the primitive reptilian brain is alive and well in humankind and dictates a lot of our behaviour at a macro level. Think of the stock market, one of the principle tools used to create wealth in an economy. It is dictated by two primal instincts – fear and greed - the same instincts that a reptile like a crocodile is principally controlled by. And we depend on tools like this to keep western society moving. Moving to where of course is always an open question.

Returning to reptiles - a key aspect of reptilian young is that they are immediately ‘viable’ entities when they break out of the egg. 

 A viable being is a being that can survive on its own.  In the reptile it is essential that you are born viable or you will not survive. Even the reptile’s ability to break out of the egg by themselves is an indicator of how likely they will survive.

This is not the case in the mammal world. Mammals are a much later evolution than reptiles and it’s this branch of evolution where humans are top of the chain.

In the mammal world birth involves a nurturing and caring element between the mother and the infant. The word mammal actually has its origins in the fact that all female mammals nurture their young using milk secreted through the mammary glands.  

A young mammal must spend time in the world in the care of the mother in order to be able to survive. A young mammal is not born viable. In other words it is not born with all the necessary skills and instincts to survive. Without the support of the mother or a surrogate a young mammal will die.

In the marsupial world (a branch of the mammal world that dominates mammal life in Australia), a foetus is delivered by the mother that is about half the size of a kidney bean after 4-5 weeks of gestation. It makes its own way to a teat in the pouch of the mother where it is nurtured till it is strong enough to spend longer and longer periods outside the pouch. 

One of the clear reasons marsupials evolved this way is the need to avoid a long pregnancy so that the mother is unencumbered from other survival needs like moving long distances to find water or dealing with rapidly moving bush fires.  At the heart of this development is the ability of the mother to support and nurture her offspring as it develops in the pouch whilst also protecting her own well-being.

There is no debate about whether the young marsupial offspring is or isn’t an independent entity in its own right. It just has a strong dependency on the mother which diminishes over time. Again this is standard right across the mammal kingdom. It is worth repeating that in the mammal kingdom offspring are entirely dependent on the mother for a long period of time during and beyond a gestation period.

Humans evolved as placenta based mammals. Essentially this means that our offspring spend their gestation period inside the mother wrapped in a placenta that protects and nourishes them during this very sensitive period. The child is totally dependent on the mother during this time. It’s the period in life when you are most vulnerable and most dependent on the care of another human being.  

The reasons placenta based mammals evolved this way was to give maximum protection to the offspring.  A placenta based gestation is much more challenging to the mother than a marsupial based gestation.  In the case of humans, placenta based evolution made sense as we are not a particularly strong or fast species and in earlier times our ‘human’ ancestors were easy prey to lots of predators.  We were however organised in groups (which is another strong trait of mammals) which could provide protection for the offspring.  It was out of these groupings that early community and societies were formed.

Long gestation periods are associated with mammals with larger brains. Dolphins, Whales and Elephants for example have gestation periods of up 20 months. There are many documented examples of mammals bearing children going to extraordinary lengths to protect their young. The deepest instinct being to do what they can to protect the offspring when they are most vulnerable.  This is a very typical mammal instinct – the protection of the young is on an equal footing to the parent’s survival.

Humans have gone a stage further. Even if a child is born into the world with physical or learning difficulties we do everything we can to make sure the child has a decent quality of life. 

This part of the evolution is something to be treasured. That we have evolved with an instinct to protect the most vulnerable is something truly extraordinary. In many ways, it makes the evolutionary journey through all the harrowingly challenging stages where survival of the species was the primary instinct, to be worthwhile. We have become a species that genuinely cares for the most vulnerable not on the basis of the survival of the species but on the basis of a right to life.

At the heart of an evolved society is compassion and care for our most vulnerable members.  Ignoring this instinct was what worried John Moriarty. He believed that western society was actually regressing in evolutionary terms to a more primitive society.

So here is a thought experiment.

Imagine human beings had evolved on the marsupial path. Imagine that a small child (half the size of a kidney bean) emerged from the placenta and made its way to a pouch on the mother so that it could nourish itself. As the baby grew in strength it would peek over the pouch and make tentative moves to leave the mother.  This process would go on for 9 months.

Could we honestly say that this is not a child?

Could we honestly say that the deliberate killing or maiming of this child is not wrong?

The horror of killing a child at this stage in its development would now be much more obvious.

We know that there is a huge dependency on the mother as part of the gestation period. We also know that that dependency does not stop once the baby is born. In fact the dependency is essential for the proper development of the child.  

Medical capability and expertise has also meant that even if a child is delivered into the world premature that it has a strong chance of survival. I personally know the youngest premature survivor in Ireland who was delivered at 20 weeks.  And as medical expertise develops the time when a baby can be delivered into the world with an expectation of surviving will drop.

There are places in the world where you can abort a baby at any stage in pregnancy for any reason that is deemed necessary. 

In other places the unborn child is given an anaesthetic before the abortion procedure goes ahead – a profound admission even in the places where abortion is performed, that the unborn child is a whole lot more than a group of developing cells connected to the mother.

And then there are the techniques used for abortion. Slicing, shredding, dissolving are all words one could use to describe what happens during the ‘termination’.  Without going into the details, it is truly a horrendous ‘procedure’ – hidden behind sanitised words like ‘a procedure used to terminate  a pregnancy’. It is no wonder why people who abhor abortion use graphic images and language to get their point across. Abortion is ultimately about killing a human being when they are completely defenceless and voiceless without any perceived consequences whatsoever.

Imagine if an abortion was filmed from within the womb (now possible with the latest camera technology)?  I contend that this would challenge any notion that abortion is nothing more than a simple procedure to terminate a pregnancy.

We have just signed into law abortion legislation that has no time period stated. A pregnancy can be terminated at any stage in the pregnancy as long as the conditions to do so are met. 

If you accept that a child’s life is at stake here then this is a grave mistake.

And that is the key point. Once you realise that abortion is about taking the life of a child then one can only abhor the practice and condemn it utterly. 

We have also signed into law that the threat of suicide is a justification for an abortion. Abortion is not a medical treatment for anything. If somebody is suicidal then they need psychological help and support. Society’s response to an unwanted pregnancy should be one of support and help to the troubled mum. The problem is that in the developed world that support and help is often not there.  It is more convenient to kill the unborn child rather than face the responsibility around the child’s right to life. Aborting a child has deep consequences and it does not go away. There is a strong argument that abortion can create suicidal feelings if the woman comes to regret the decision following the delivery of subsequent children later on.

I mentioned earlier that I know the family of Ireland’s youngest surviving premature baby. The young girl was delivered at 20 weeks because of a risk to the mother’s health. The mother has Spina-Bifida and was unable to support the child to term. A medical decision was made to induce the birth at 20 weeks when there was literally a 50-50 chance of the baby surviving.  Every effort was made to save both mother and child and the miraculous outcome is that both survived and are doing fine.

And this happened in Ireland without any fuss.  There are fantastic people in our medical services who fundamentally understand the essence of protecting mother and child in birth.

Once you cross the threshold of allowing the killing of the unborn you create a grim place where the convenience of killing the child can be weighed against the consequences of taking responsibility for its right to life.    

It’s a far more compassionate and evolved world if this does not happen.

I contend that at some point in the future humankind will look at the industrialised abortion phase of our evolution as one of the darkest periods of humanity. 

I also contend that there are very few things that Ireland can truly take global leadership on.  This is one of them. That other countries have made it legal to have an abortion whenever it is deemed necessary is not a reason for Ireland to do the same.

We evolved as placenta based mammals to project our young at their most vulnerable stage in their lives.

What has happened is that we have become the ultimate predator of our own young.

I appreciate that this is a divisive issue and one that will have people argue their case very strongly back at me, but I would rather be wrong on this issue with unplanned children born into the world (with a society structured to care for them) than being right on the issue wondering who on Earth have we killed for convenience.

So if abortion is wrong what do we do at a societal level to address the challenges of terrible circumstances like pregnancy from rape, fatal foetal abnormalities and underage age pregnancy?

I present the following idea tentatively. Having given the argument above about western society cultivating a culture of convenience around reproduction, some might say that this proposal feeds into that culture. I would argue back strongly that this is not the case but I accept that it is not fully worked out.  I do however believe it’s a good starting point and a far better approach than what we have currently.

So in the challenging circumstances above I suggest  that the embryo is removed alive from the mother’s womb and frozen and made available to surrogate mothers who want to bear a child but cannot.

As far as I am aware the technology and capability to do this is not available now.  We can implant frozen embryos into the womb (Frozen Embyro Transfer is a well-established technique as part of an In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) program) but there are challenges to safely removing a growing embyro once it has implanted itself in the Uterus wall. However, given that we can artificially implant the embryo it is only a matter of time before that process can be reversed.

For me this is the way forward. If we develop this capability then we have a solution to the abortion dilemma.  The storage of embryos would have to be thought out properly, but even in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities there may come a time when those abnormalities are treatable as science advances so freezing embryos till that capability emerges makes sense. Life is not being taken – it is just being put on hold.

I contend though that even with the capability above, there would have to be a time limit beyond which the embryo could not be removed from the womb and the pregnancy would have to go to term (unless the mother’s life is endangered).

If the underlying principle is that we do not kill the unborn child but make every effort to protect its right to life then I believe a scheme like the above would address concerns on all sides and create a much more caring and holistic approach to the challenges of unwanted pregnancy.  It also completely resonates with the direction evolution is and has taken the human species.

The alternative is to adopt the barbaric practice of abortion and justify it on the basis that everyone else is doing it so why shouldn’t we.

This to me is evolutionary regression.

GMcD 31/7/13