‘Life’ is defined as the ability to breathe, grow, reproduce, etc. However, before a fetus is born, it had none of these abilities, and depends on the mother to keep it breathing. Therefore, although biologically, the ‘life’ of a fetus begins at conception, a person does not have moral personhood until much later, after he is born.
At conception, although biologically, the fetus was produced, but it is still unable to possess an individual consciousness and it’s unable to survive outside the womb. Therefore, at conception, a fetus is not yet a human, but only a potential human life. Renowned philosopher Professor Peter Singer defined argued that something can only be a person if it is self-aware and has temporal awareness. A fetus does not meet this definition until after it is born, so therefore, morally speaking, the life of a fetus begins at birth.
Infanticide, the homicide of an infant, is illegal in most countries, although the charges vary from infanticide to homicide and manslaughter. However, currently, abortions are legal in most countries, even abortions that allow babies to be aborted at 30 weeks. This shows that the law recognizes the human status of an infant, but not a fetus.
In religion, many religious academicians take the birth-view stance. This stance is supported by quotations from the respective holy books; the Jewish Talmud holds that a fetus's life is less valuable than a woman's; if the woman's life is endangered by the pregnancy, it requires an abortion. However, if the "greater part" of the fetus has emerged, then its life may not be taken even to save the mother's, "because you cannot choose between one human life and another", therefore implying that a fetus becomes a human life after it is born. Some Christian theologians hold that ensoulment occurs when an infant takes its first breath of air. They cite, among other passages, Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
Also, although the body of the infant develops at birth, the brain of the infant does not develop and start functioning until much later, after the birth of the infant. Legally and biologically, the brain is the representative of a human; a human is considered dead only if his brain is dead. Therefore, as the fetus’s brain isn’t functioning until it is born, legally, the life of a human begins at birth.
A favored argument of the opposition is that life begins at conception. However, there are major flaws in this argument. In human cloning, there is no conception at all. Then, could you say that a cloned human is not a human? Conception isn’t even a specific point in time; it is a period over which the sperm meets the ovum, and not a specific time. Also, the life-begins-at-conception argument also ignores parthenogenesis, when the gamete of a female is not fertilized by a male, yet produces viable and unique offspring that are not clones. Only DNA from the mother is inherited, but it is not identical to her. This had been done before; in 2004, Japanese researchers led by Tomohiro Kono succeeded after 457 attempts to merge the ova of two mice, the result of which developed normally into a mouse. Could you then say that it’s not a mouse?
In 2003, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was enacted in the United States, which prohibits an abortion if "either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother." Meaning that, after most of the baby is born, the baby will be granted human status, and thus could not be aborted, as it would no longer be a fetus, but a human, thus abortion would not be an abortion, but infanticide.
Therefore, I conclude that medically, philosophically and theologically, the life of a fetus begins only after it’s born, therefore, I believe that life begins at birth.
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