The Science of why abortion is wrong

I wrote this article in response to an article written in the Irish Times by Emer O’Toole on the 27/7/15 outlining the scientific evidence supporting abortion. The argument amounted to this:

‘The foetus is not sentient and does not feel pain so that is justification enough to kill it’

I am a scientist. I have a PhD in Biomedical Engineering with a specific expertise in Neuroscience. The above argument appalls me for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is a huge amount of scientific evidence to dispute the above (see http://www.doctorsonfetalpain.com/). Secondly, the argument is devoid of any kind of understanding of the consequences of deliberately killing a human being. Thirdly and most importantly the argument suggests that main stream abortion is ‘progress’.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I want to present the argument as to why abortion is fundamentally wrong based on science. This argument is not based on whether abortion is morally right or wrong. That is an argument that has divided people into two camps deeply entrenched. Pro-choice versus pro-life.

I want to state up front that I am not a member of either camp. The argument below will support views on both sides to some degree. I am just a concerned citizen and think a different perspective is required to demonstrate why abortion is wrong.

I am also going to argue why abortion is wrong even in the first trimester (12 weeks) of pregnancy post implantation (essentially the embryonic phase). Most liberal abortion regimes allow abortion to happen much later than this. Given that we know that a baby can survive outside the womb from 20 weeks onwards should really speak for itself. The fact that it doesn’t is a terrible reflection on how far humanity has regressed in the last 43 years.

The argument starts with what we understand to be the beginning of life for a human being. This is a contentious issue. The Catholic Church for example, has taken the view that life begins at conception and it is understandable why they took this perspective. You have to define a starting point and the obvious place to start would seem to be conception.

I would argue that life does not begin at conception but rather at implantation. This is where an entity called a blastocyst buries itself in the uterine wall and begins cell dividing to a blueprint defined by the chromosomes in the fertilised egg. It takes place about a week after conception. Let me explain:

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.

In my opinion all interventions to avoid implantation are morally justified in that first week as this is the way the body manages pregnancy naturally. If the blastocyst does not implant itself in the uterine wall then the pregnancy will not take place. If the blastocyst implants itself outside the uterine wall (an ectopic pregnancy) then medical intervention is necessary to save the mothers life. Either way, life can only begin if the blastocyst implants itself correctly in the uterine wall.

However, once implanted, the blastocyst draws nutrients from the uterus and cell division based on the human blueprint begins. At the same time the hormone human Chorionic Gonadotropin (better known as hCG) is produced in the developing placenta and pregnancy begins. The production of this hormone essentially allows the placenta feed the growing embyro.

The detection of hCG is one of the most common ways to detect pregnancy. It can be detected about 11 days after conception by a blood test.

At this point a unique person is being created. Because of the vastness of the genetic combination possibilities, this particular blueprint and mix of genes has likely never happened before and is likely to never happen again.

(The blastocyst can also divide and create identical twins before implantation. This is another reason why implantation is the obvious place to define life. Up to that point it is unclear whether the pregnancy will result in a single or a multiple birth).

Once implantation takes place a human being enters what is known as the embryonic phase (every human being alive has been through this phase). This is essentially the point in development where different organs like the baby's brain, spinal cord, heart and other systems 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 the first week, the baby is likely to be about the size of the tip of a pen.

The heart starts beating somewhere between 18 and 25 days after conception. It takes this amount of time for the circulatory system to be a closed loop and at just 28 days 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 this stage in your development you would be a couple of centimeters long. There is also no disputing the fact that you are alive.

If you were a marsupial at this point (a young Kangaroo for example), that tiny kidney bean sized entity would make its own way to the mothers pouch to be nourished outside the womb. Marsupials evolved this way because there were less predators in their environment and the mother needed to be mobile during pregnancy to manage looking for water, forest fires etc...

Nobody argues that the tiny entity in the pouch is not an infant marsupial at this point, despite its size and extreme dependence on the mother. And yet people argue that a human being at the same stage of development is not a human being.

Humans evolved as placenta based mammals. We evolved this way to protect our young. This brings me to the key point of the argument.

Mammals are considered the most evolved of all of life on Earth. We are called mammals because our young require to be nurtured through the secretion of milk through the mothers mammary glands. Implicit in the mammal world is that our young are not born viable (they cannot survive on their own). They depend on the nurturing of the mother in order to be able to survive. Human children require huge lengths of time before they are considered able to look after themselves.

Nurturing our children is an intrinsic and essential part of how we have evolved.

Consider what happens in the reptile world (a crocodile for example). They are considered a more primitive life form than mammals and predate them in evolutionary terms by hundreds of millions of years. Reptiles lay eggs. For most reptiles the young break out of their eggs as viable entities and it is up to them to work out how to survive. There are lots of eggs laid and lots of casualties in this process. Generally, the strongest, cleverest or the luckiest survive the early stages of the reptilian world.

Mammals evolved so that maximum protection could be given to their offspring. They did this because brain development in mammals is more sophisticated than in other species. There is more to mammals than just the reptilian instincts of survival. Communication capability , emotional development, manual dexterity and overall intelligence are higher in mammals than other species. Development of these capabilities requires nurturing, lots of care and lots of time.

There are extraordinary examples in the animal kingdom of mammalian mothers going to extreme lengths to protect their young. They even put their own lives at risk.

Humans are at the top of the mammal world and that is how we are supposed to be.

Instead we have become the ultimate predators of our own young.

Lets look at some statistics. Since the Roe Wade court case in 1972, when the legal system in the USA opened up the floodgates to abortion on demand, over 1.3 billion abortions have been performed globally. That is the population of China. Over twice the population of Europe and over 4 times the population of the USA. And this mass killing of our young has taken place in a single lifetime. Despite numerous wars at global scale, diseases that have wiped out millions and natural disasters down  throughout the ages there has been no greater impact on the human population than abortion. 

The entire population of the world was under 1.3 billion in 1850, 165 years ago.

And in that 1.3 billion deaths who have we killed? The next Usain Bolt? The next Mozart? The person who cures cancer? The person who solves the problem of being able to freeze an implanted embyro so abortion is consigned to history?

I repeat - we have become the ultimate predators of our own young.

What have we done? We have created societies where it is so difficult to bring a child into the world (taking responsibility for their life and development) that we think it is a human right to kill that child before they leave the womb to avoid facing that responsibility. Our societies have got so focused on individual rights and freedoms that bringing children into the world is now a complete inconvenience. And yet we have a dramatically increasing aging population that is not producing enough children to sustain itself. How ironic is that?

In pure evolutionary terms (which has served us well over the last 3.5 billion years) one of the single most important aspects of any species is how they manage and produce the next generation. We have decided that the present generation matters so much that we abort the next generation at a whim.

Think of people like Leonardo Da Vinci and Ludwig Van Beethoven. Exceptional people who changed the world by their individuality and brilliance. Both came into the world unwanted, neglected and abused. Both would more than likely have been aborted today. Both left the world with an eternal legacy of genius.

With that all said lets be clear what abortion is. The sanitised version tells us it is merely the termination of an unwanted pregnancy. This kind of language is designed to hide the truth (like the words ‘collateral damage’ when innocents are killed during a drone attack).

Abortion is the deliberate killing of human life when it is at its most vulnerable stage of development.

At this point in our development we are utterly powerless and voiceless. We rely entirely on others to look after our well-being and to speak up for us when our fragile existence is in difficulty. Those voices are diminishing and really need to be heard.

Science has a profoundly positive role to play in this regard.

Science tells is that we have evolved as mammals. Science tells us that we did this to protect our young. Science tells is how we care for our young is how we evolve as a species.

Science has also given us the tools and techniques to kill our young through abortion. Science has enabled us to build the most horrendous, destructive weapons to kill people through nuclear, chemical and biological understanding.

Science enables these terrible capabilities.

It should never be used as a justification for the horror they can inflict.

Epilogue

I am shortly going to leave this island. I have to emigrate with my family and I do it with a heavy heart. Ireland despite its flaws is a wonderful place to have a family. We are the envy of Europe in terms of the high proportion of young people we have living here. We have the highest birth rate in Europe.

Coincidentally we are one of the last places on Earth trying to protect our unborn. 

There are very few aspects of life that Ireland can claim to take global leadership on.

This is one of them. Protect our children at all stages in their development. Irish society will benefit hugely from this and by extension so will the world.

When I walk out of my house at night with my children it gives me joy to see other mums and dads bring their children out too. In my housing estate we are surrounded by Polish, Indian, Chinese, Russian, English and Irish children amongst others. The parents talk and get to know one another. The children play and get to know one another. Everyone is laughing and having fun. That is what children do. They bring us together. They remind us of innocence, joy, curiosity and the privilege of being alive. They make life worth living no matter what circumstances you find yourself in.

We are defined as a species by how we treat children. That is how we have evolved. That is why society and humanity needs children. That is why they should be treasured.

That is why abortion is wrong.

GMcD 20/8/15

One Percent

Yesterday I saw a picture of a drowned 3 year old child in a red tee-shirt and blue shorts on a beach in Turkey.

It made me cry. I have been crying regularly since, just thinking about it. 

I have travelled quite a bit during my time on this planet. I have seen a lot of suffering and injustice. It takes a lot to make me cry.

This picture did it at a whim.

To see the child washed up on the beach in a body position so familiar to me (my 4 year old daughter lies exactly like this as she drifts off to sleep) was heart breaking. As are the thoughts of his mum and dad dressing him in his colourful clothes earlier that day to make him feel positive and hopeful (disguising what was probably a terrifying situation for the family). And for it all to end in such tragedy. It truly makes me feel despair.

It does not help that my four year old daughter just started school this week. I am very much in that terrible tug of war of wanting to protect her and wanting to let her grow up. Her beautiful outlook and incredible excitement at going to school tears me in half. In that little boys broken body I imagine how I would feel as his Dad.

It also does not help that as I have got older I have come to be softened by the presence of children. I love their ebullience, innocence, joy at the simplest of things, their endless curiosity, their ability to live in the moment. They truly make you feel more alive just by being who they are.

That has all ended for that poor little soul on Bodrum beach. Aylan Kurdi was the boys name. His 5 year old brother Galip and his mother Rihan also drowned.

His father Abdullah Kurdi survived and my heart goes out to him wherever he is. I just cannot fathom his inconsolable grief. I pray that he is comforted and supported by whomever is around him.

It has prompted me to write this note. I do not know any other way to respond to the tragedy. 

Let me start by saying that I think Europe is regressing.

Over the last couple of years during the financial crisis we have seen the worst of Europe. Despite two horrific wars in the last century we seem to have learned nothing. Extreme nationalism is dangerous. European financial policy during the financial crisis has caused terrible hardship to its citizens and has fuelled extreme nationalism to dangerous levels. The obvious solution to the financial crisis was for all of Europe to share the burden of debt write down (by a devaluation of the currency). Instead the austerity route was taken (to protect the wealthier nations) and the citizen was made to pay the debt (which was never their debt in the first place). Ireland is the poster boy case.

One side consequence of all this was a fuelling of nationalistic thinking. The view that we must look after our own before we look after anyone else has risen sharply amongst populations across Europe. 

Meanwhile Syria has been torn apart. The initial civil war started as an effort to over throw the Assad regime - a regime that deserved to be overthrown. Procrastination on the part of the international community together with Russian backing for the Assad regime allowed ISIS to garner its resources and become the main Assad opponent. Now the West feels it cannot support either side. As a consequence a full blown war is unfolding in Syria and a mass exodus of its citizens has begun. 

Syria has a population of about 23 million. It is estimated that almost 8 million people have been internally displaced in Syria and some 4-5 million of them (well over 50% of them children) have fled the country and are now refugees.

The bulk of the refugees are in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and Iraq. All countries with their own challenges and considerably less resources than Europe.

The European response to the tragedy has been nothing short of pathetic.

Make no mistake. This is an enormous humanitarian disaster - probably the greatest in our life-time. It is going to take enormous effort to resolve it but it can be done. Europe has a population of almost 750 million people. 4-5 million people represents less than 1% of the entire European population. A 1% change in your population in a crisis is manageable by any standards.

So what makes me despair? Despite the absolute horror of the images of little 3 year old Aylan lying dead on the beach all over the social media channels, you only have to scroll through some of the comment feeds to understand that lots of people, (and I mean lots, not just a rogue minority) believe the right response to the disaster is to keep the refugees out of our countries. Why? Because we have enough problems of our own to resolve. Problems like homelessness, unemployment and so.

The trolling, the contempt for people suffering, the ignorance and conceited view that these poor people are sponging western society is chilling to the core. That even the picture of a dead child washed up on a beach is not enough to bring out the compassionate, caring side of our humanity. 

This is not an either/or argument. Of course we have to help the most vulnerable in our communities. Our governments right across Europe have forced this poverty on our shoulders and they are the ones to blame for these injustices. However, the people fleeing the Syrian civil war are fleeing for their lives. In many occasions they have had to gather their families and a few meagre possessions together and leave their homes to try to escape the ravages of the war raging unhindered in their country. These are citizens like you and I, with families, jobs, houses and dreams and suddenly find themselves fleeing their homeland.

Europe has an obligation to help the people of Syria in their time of need.

That is not the view shared by a significant percentage of Europeans. People have taken the view that looking after their ‘own’ is more important. What they all seem to forget is that a simple accident of where you were born decides your nationality. Very few people have to work to truly earn their nationality (except, ironically, those who have to leave their country as refugees or migrants). We all come into this world as human and leave it the same way. Nobody owns anyone, any nationality or any place. Nationality ownership is an artificial construct designed to protect the powerful and alienate the weak.

Europe went through two world wars last century and has constructed political machinery to avoid that ever happening again. At the heart of the European ideal is that sense of equality of all people - the belief that everyone has basic human rights. Europe is supposed to be a shining light of equality and freedom to the world.

In my opinion I believe Europe is losing its soul. 

In the vain attempt to just protect what we have and ignore the plight of others we are behaving no differently to a more primitive version of ourselves that found themselves forming warring tribes and clans to just survive. 

In the absence of any higher goal other than to look out for ourselves in a selfish short term way, we are doomed to societies of reckless consumption that ultimately will self destruct. And to be honest that would be no bad thing. A fresh start might just be what is required.

We live on a planet that we have plundered for resources. We have wiped out species of animal and plant on the basis that we believe humans can do what they like. Our financial models are built on infinite growth models that are not sustainable. We have an energy crisis, an ageing population crisis and a climate crisis, the latter of which may bring the wake up call that humanity needs. We genuinely are on the brink so what are we trying to hold onto?

The correct response to this humanitarian disaster begins with compassion. Help as many people as we possibly can. Even if it hurts. That is what will help solve and dispel this nightmare. Our brothers and sisters in Syria will benefit from this response, so will Europe and so will humanity. 

In my opinion how we respond collectively to this crisis will define Europe and by extension us as a species. I for one want to be part of a humanity that responds compassionately (even if it hurts) to a crisis like this. Its the world I want for my children. 

We are a long way from living in that world it seems. 

Aylan and his family are a chilling reminder of that.

So here is what I propose. There are between 4 and 5 million people currently feeling Syria. That is less than 1% of the population of Europe. Each country takes 1% of their population as refugees. That would mean Ireland opens its doors to 45,000 refugees.

Lets put it into context. That is half of a Croke park all Ireland final attendance. 

Lets take these 45,000 people and distribute them across our island (in the same way that we hosted people for the Special Olympics). Lets open our schools, our medical and social services and our communities to the families. Lets have extra seats at our dinner tables. Lets get our voluntary organisations to involve them in their activities. In short, lets welcome them with open arms and prove that even if our political structures have failed us, our communities can prevail.

This would be difficult financially but I am sure we could apply to Europe for help. If they so wished they could write the debt off. How ironic would that be?

In the same way that the obvious solution to the financial crisis was a collective sharing of the burden so too is it the obvious solution in this crisis.

Were Europe to do this it would stand a chance of saving itself. It would send out a message to the world that there is hope for humanity. It would also send a message to the aggressors in the war, the perpetrators of evil and oppression, the extremists wanting to bring us back to the dark ages that western society built around principles of equality and compassion works. It would lay bare the ignorance of their ideology and not a bullet would be fired or a bomb dropped.

Compassion should be the guiding principle for how we build our future. I really don't care how much wealth we create, how many billionaires there are in the world, how much growth there is in our economy if we are not acting compassionately. I do care that people who are disadvantaged, people who are frail or people who are in crisis are cared for. We all feel compassion. Let it be our guide.

Many years ago a famous picture showing a naked child running from a Napalm explosion effectively started the movement that stopped the Vietnam war.

Aylan Kurdi's picture on Bodrum beach is our picture.