Dear Editor,

Starting from some 60 years ago, bio-medical research into human conception has been extensive. The highly regarded British medical journal Lancet has, over the years, carried several articles on the topic, and some findings are quite clear and generally accepted.

Such is the finding that fertilisation or conception takes place in the fallopian tube. There the ovum coming from the ovary encounters and is penetrated by the sperm swimming to meet it.

This new cell, technically called a zygote, normally then moves toward the uterus or womb where it implants itself, develops after some weeks into what is called the embryo, later again termed foetus. [I will stick in this letter with the commonly used ’embryo’ for all the early phases.)

For many women, however, often the embryo doesn’t make it to the uterus. Medical research disagrees only on the numbers that are so lost. Some put them at 10 per cent to 20 per cent, others at 70 per cent to 80 per cent. Such fertilised lost cells are simply passed out by women in their next menses.

The notion espoused by some church groups of souls inserted into embryos by special divine action at the moment of fertilisation would mean that countless human beings are passed out in female menses. This throws major doubt on soul insertion at conception and, therefore, on the conclusion that abortion is murder. One humorist has asked about heaven being ‘peopled’ with billions of embryos with souls,

The soul-insertion-at-conception view is intended perhaps to assert that the fertilised cell or embryo is fully human, and thus sacred and to be respected. But this disregards the straightforward distinction between human and human being. The cell swabbed from inside a human cheek is human. It has 46 chromosomes. It can be used for an in vitro fertilisation to become a human embryo. It is not yet, however, a human being, a human person, any more than a pear seed is a pear tree. Similarly, a human zygote or embryo, though at a further stage, is human but not yet a human being. Like other living beings, a period of development is needed for a human being or person to be formed. Only then can the question of murder possibly arise.

An embryo must be regarded as undeveloped not only in its body component but also in its spirit (soul) component (assuming this as what distinguishes humans from animals). The two are mutually complementary. An embryo’s spirit cannot be at such a level as to qualify its possessor as a human person until its body has reached a matching level. To speak, therefore, of the termination of an embryo as murder is highly incorrect. This makes it more emotive than clarifying and helpful.

The priority for humanitarians and Christians must be concern for women and girls who are raped and forced into back-street abortions that endanger health and life. The adoption path offered by some as an alternative to abortion, while laudable, is not a solution to their existential problem.

Horace Levy

halpeace.levy78@gmail.com