Is a blastocyst a human being?

[lucaspa]

Well, yes. This would be similar to asking: Do you ascribe the 5 year old that developed into you, as always being you? A different me sure...a developed me...but me all the same.

 

The difference being that a 5 year old already has all the organs and cognitive ability of an adult. A blastocyst does not.

 

There is a significant point between defining what is a "being" for simple reference's sake and defining what is a "being" for morality's sake. I don't know why this is glaring at me, but it seems silly not to think of a blastocyst as a being. Downright absurd.

 

I agree that this debate isn't about science, it's about a moral/ethical decision. Because "human" here isn't a biological term; it's a moral/legal/ethical term about when to assign the "rights" we as a society assign to humans: the right to life, to liberty, free speech, etc.

 

I find it absurd to think of a mass of undifferentiated cells as a "being". If that were the case, I'd have to think of the multipotent adult stem cells in the culture dish as a "being". A blastocyst MAY become a "being" someday, but it isn't a "being" now. And a lot can go wrong between a blastocyst and a newborn. Fully 25% of blastocysts are flushed out (aborted) with the next menstrual cycle. Do we mourn the deaths of "beings" when that happens?

 

You can also take the approach of whether applying the law we apply to "beings" works when applied to a blastocyst. If our moral laws don't work on blastocysts, then we can conclude that blastocysts are not persons.

 

For instance, it is illegal to poison a person, either accidentally or on purpose. Alcohol is a teratogen -- poison -- because it screws up development. If a blastocyst is a person, then we would have to say that it is illegal/immoral for any woman of childbearing years to drink alcohol because of the potential for poisoning a blastocyst. Think about it. You don't know when the woman is going to get pregnant -- either by consensual sex or rape (and that doesn't matter to the blastocyst anyway, does it?) -- and thus she can never have that poison in her system.

 

That law/morality is absurd, which shows that we do not really consider a blastocyst to be a "being" because we do not consider the law to protect the blastocyst to be ethical. And there are other examples you can think of; laws that we would never think of applying. One would be that women would be required to take pregnancy tests at least once a month. Remember that 25% of blastocysts that are flushed with the next menstrual period? EACH of them would have to be investigated as a possible crime. Every miscarriage would have to be investigated as a possible crime. Did the woman do something that might have precipitated the miscarriage? We investigate every accident that involves injury or death to a human for negligence or criminal intent.

 

My view is that we do not have a person in the legal/moral sense until birth.

 

Actually, it's indescribable for me at the moment. This has happened to me before. Something just isn't right and the conclusion just seems so obvious, yet I can't figure out how to conciously make sense of it and articulate it.

 

Then you might want to reconsider your position. If you can't figure out WHY it isn't "right", then maybe it isn't. The problem may not be in your articulation, but in the lack of support for the conclusion.