When Does Life Begin?

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But let’s be clear: biologically speaking, we cannot know when life begins. This was the Supreme Court’s view when it decided the legality of abortion back in 1973—the Court was, you might say, agnostic on the question.

“When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus,” Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in Roe v. Wade, “the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”

We may question the veracity of Justice Blackmun’s assertion concerning theologians, but the logic of his words seems appealing. And ever since, the question of when life begins has been for many purely a matter of opinion, often religious opinion. And religion, so we hear, has no business mingling with the law. Interesting if true, but that’s another question.

What’s wrong with the legal skepticism of Roe v. Wade—of settling the question of when life begins by deciding that we can’t settle the question—is that we all agree that at some point life does have a beginning and is worthy of protection, and we’re pretty obviously wandering into moral quicksand if we refuse to entertain at least the possibility that the Court’s diffidence may put lives at risk. Roe v. Wade would be controversial if the Court had decreed that abortion is permissible only through the first trimester, but it has become a Kulturkampf because the case has—whether de jure or de facto—permitted abortion at any point. True, some restrictions have been placed on “late-term” or “partial-birth” abortions in some jurisdictions but not in all, yet such limits more reflect queasiness about the procedures than certainty about the fundamental question.