My response

My letter, published in the 7 November issue of Christian Renewal magazine, responding to the below letter.

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In response to the letter by Mr. Henry Groen in the 24 October edition of Christian Renewal:

I appreciate Mr. Groen’s response to my article, and I offer a few thoughts in reply:

1. Mr. Groen repeatedly asserts that frozen embryos have no souls; for example: “A human being does not become a living human being until God gives it a soul at the time when the woman conceives.” In the case of frozen embryos, however, conception has already occurred. So if embryos become human beings and receive souls at conception, then frozen embryos are human beings and have souls.

Indeed, that is the central point of my argument: if life begins at conception – which I have argued previously in, for example, the 17 January edition of Christian Renewal – then these already conceived, now frozen embryos are human beings and should be treated accordingly.

Perhaps Mr. Groen meant that a soul is conferred to the embryo not at conception but at implantation, a point that frozen embryos have not yet reached. But this distinction is completely arbitrary: no substantive change to the embryo itself occurs between the moment before it implants and the moment after. It seems problematic to choose this or any other equally arbitrary point to confer humanness on an embryo.

Indeed, if we believe that embryos are not human beings until implantation, then we should have no problem with the “post-coital,” “morning after,” or “plan B” (as it is alternately called) contraceptive pill. An embryo does not implant on the uterine wall until five days after conception, and this contraceptive works by simply preventing implantation. If not-yet-implanted embryos are not human beings, then this contraceptive poses no threat to human life and we should not oppose it. But if human life begins at conception, than we should oppose it on the grounds that even a not-yet-implanted embryo is a human being.

2. Mr. Groen describes embryos as “potential” human beings. We need to be careful using this particular language as it is precisely the same as that used by the pro-abortion and pro-embryonic stem cell research movements. They, too, assert that embryos are not real human beings – or “living human beings,” to use Mr. Groen’s other description – but rather “potential” human beings.

But I will again press the question: when do these embryos become human? Certainly by birth, and certainly no earlier than conception, so it must be at some point between the two. But when? Mr. Groen does not adequately answer this question, but we must if we are to be consistently pro-life.

I submit that the only answer to that question that is not arbitrary and indefensible is that human life begins at conception, and consequently I reject the idea that frozen embryos are theoretical, possible, potential human beings.

Brian Douglas
Brighton, England