Originally Posted by Deckard
I see what you're saying, however this is where I think my position splits away from yours. Instinctively, purely in terms of feelings, I share that same difference in how I feel about a fertilized egg as compared to an unfertilized one, between one that's closer to a human life and one that's less close - when the sperm and egg still have some distance between them. But the question is, why should that distance matter? Why even should the difference in complexity matter? There's still probability involved in the creation of the separate cells themselves, even before conception. Even that is remarkable. Why should the moment of conception itself be the defining moment that separates moral from immoral on an issue like embryonic stem cell research, if not for the sense of destroying a potential life by destroying the process that may lead to it?
From what I understand of what you're saying, the factor of 'potential life' does seem to be what this boils down to when you refer to the fertilized egg developing into a unique human being. I can identify with the feeling that, once we're past the stage of conception, we're interfering with a process that has already beaten many odds and is on the way to developing into something we can emotionally relate to - and ultimately ends up with an emotional state of its own. Something that most of us would agree IS sacred - a human being. But of course it's still not an actual human being yet, and in reality the only thing we're respecting is the sheer leaps of probability that have taken place to get as far as fertilization, the wonderfulness(?) of the fact of creation, and the potential of human life at the end of it. Appreciating those things is fine, but what does it mean to apply a moral distinction to them?
Another question might be: should the human life that will result from a currently separate individual egg and sperm cell be deemed less important than the human life that will result from a fertilized egg a second or a week or a month later when they join up? Sure, the fertilized egg is more advanced and closer to the stage of human life, and has undergone that whole chance encounter of egg meeting sperm - but is that a reason to assign it greater protection/sanctity, and use it as a measurement for judging whether an issue like human embryonic stem cell research is morally acceptable?
Here's what I think. As I see it, the line we're inclined to draw is essentially an arbitrary one based on how we instinctively feel ie. that interfering with one stage of complexity/development feels acceptable, while the other just feels wrong, or as you say, feels like cannibalism. And while that feeling might be perfectly natural and understandable given the unique status we afford the moment of conception, when you think about it, drawing a line at one particular moment of complexity, past one particular set of low-probability events, of the sperm and egg having no distance between them rather than having distance – well it seems somewhat irrational to use any of this as a moral yardstick without knowing fully why these things matter – and why going further back in the development process, they don't.
|