Bradford Short in the NYT: Scientifically, Human Life Begins at Conception

Along the same lines as James J. Johanik’s letter in the Wall Street Journal that I reprinted the other day, the New York Times (!!!) published a letter written by my good friend Bradford Short that makes basically the same point: Based on the science, human life begins at conception. Short takes it to the next step by asserting that this matters morally, and indeed, that protecting human life simply and merely because it is human (my term) is the principle that President Bush is defending with his embryonic stem cell funding policy.

Here is Short’s letter: “It has been too common in the debate on embryo-destructive stem cell research for those who support such research to tell a story of the Enlightenment, where noble, wise scientists had to fight selfish, backward, religious ethicists for ‘science’ to advance.

“In fact, it was the most progressive scientists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who first discovered that human life begins at conception; that the human embryo from conception on is a self-organized, individual human being. It was people who thought that this scientific discovery was important for ethics who then criminalized abortion before the quickening in Britain and America in the 19th century.

“It is the right to life as they, the scientists, had helped to define it that President Bush feels is being violated by embryo-destructive stem cell research today.”

Bradford is right on the history and the science. This doesn’t settle the matter, however, since many people hold to the idea that “personhood” rather than “humanhood” is what infuses life with moral meaning. But if we are to have a societal debate about the ethical propriety of treating nascent human life as a natural resource, then it must begin with the scientifically accurate acknowledgment that what is being discussed is indeed, fully human life. Any debate that avoids that scientific truth is not morally serious.