Robert VerBruggen on Science and Personhood: A Response

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 1:28 pm by Francis J. Beckwith

Robert VerBruggen on Science and Personhood: A Response 2015-03-13T13:28:31-04:00 Francis J. Beckwith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Over at National Review’s “The Corner,” Robert VerBruggen writes:

What’s not clear to me, however, is why “distinct DNA” should be the criterion by which we judge personhood for moral and legal purposes. As Reason’s Ronald Bailey has pointed out, 60 to 80 percent of human embryos — post-conception, with distinct DNA — are naturally destroyed by the woman’s body. Are we to see this as a large-scale massacre of human beings, develop drugs to prevent it from happening, and require all women who have unprotected sex to take them? Certainly, we would be willing to take measures like this if post-birth infants were dying in comparable numbers.

First, VerBruggen is not correct in saying that the prolife position depends exclusively on the “distinct DNA” of an embryo in order to affirm its personhood. Rather, the prolifer believes that the embryo is a person because of the sort of thing that it is, a rational animal, an individual human substance whose parts are intrinsically ordered to work in concert for the good of the whole. It is an individual being who owns properties and parts and is not a property or part of something else, like its foot or its weight. The fact that the embryo has its own DNA distinct from either parent’s DNA is not what makes it a person. After all, my hand’s DNA is distinct from my wife’s DNA, but that does not make my hand a person. It is, to be sure, a part of a person, but it is not an individual human substance. Rather, it is a part of a rational animal whose existence began at the moment of its conception over 51 years ago. (For more on the “substance view of persons,” see my chapter “The Human Being, a Person of Substance: A Response to Dean Stretton,” in Persons, Moral Worth, and Embryos: A Critical Analysis of Pro-Choice Arguments, ed. Stephen Napier [Dordrecht: Springer, 2011], 67-83).

I understand that VerBruggen was quoting fellow NRO blogger, David French, who writes: “Indeed, scientists are virtually unanimous in declaring that the result of conception is a human child with a distinct DNA different from his or her parents. This unanimity is the essence of `overwhelming consensus.'” Notice, however, that David is not saying that “distinct DNA” is a sufficient condition for personhood. Rather, he is arguing that a human child already exists and that it happens to have its own “distinct DNA” that differs from its parents’ DNA. It would be like saying that “Fred is an individual human child, since he has his own hands and feet that are not the hands and feet of his parents.” But having hands or feet are not sufficient for human personhood, since chimps have hands and feet and some human beings, like the thalidomide babies, lack them.

Second, VenBruggen’s argument from “embryo wastage” is flawed as well. As I write in my book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 75-77 (notes omitted):

Objection 3: Because so many pregnancies result in miscarriages or spontaneous abortions, it is difficult to believe the unborn are complete human beings during their entire gestation.

Not every conception results in the birth of a child. In fact, some have estimated that between 20% and 50% of all concepti die before birth. And some have claimed that up to 30%die before implantation. Thomas Shannon and AllanWolter maintain that only 45%of sperm-egg unions result in live births, with the remaining ending in miscarriage, which leads them to hold that the individual human being does not come to be at conception. That is, because of the apparently vast number of unborn entities that perish prior to birth (and usually very early in pregnancy), some people find it difficult to believe that the newly conceived unborn entity is fully human. But this is clearly an invalid argument, for it does not logically follow from the number of unborn entities who die that these entities are by nature not human beings who have begun their existence. To cite an example, it does not follow from the fact that underdeveloped countries have a high infant mortality rate that their babies are not as human as those born in countries with low infant mortality rates. After all, what if it were discovered that the numbers cited above are mistaken, that in fact 90% of all conceptions come to term? Would it now be the case that the early embryo is an individual human being that began her existence at conception? Again, why would the number of entities who perish make a difference as to whether these entities were human beings who had begun their existence at conception? After all, all human beings who are conceived die, whether they die as a result of a miscarriage at three months gestation or as an adult in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 42. Are we to infer from this 100% mortality rate that none of these beings are human beings who have begun their existence?

It should be noted, as Patrick Lee points out, that “the percentages mentioned by proponents” of the spontaneous abortion “argument are disputable. For one thing . . . [as we saw earlier], in many cases the fertilization process is in effect incomplete, so that what is growing is not a complete human being. Many of the products of fertilization which fail to implant are no doubt the results of incomplete fertilizations and so are not human persons [or human beings].”

But suppose someone were to respond to this analysis by arguing that if we really believe that every conception is a human being, are we not obligated to prevent all spontaneous abortions even though it may lead to overpopulation and an appropriation of medical and other resources that may have catastrophic results?

First, this response does not show that the newly conceived entity is not a human being who began her existence at conception; rather, it is an attack upon the intellectual consistency of those who offer arguments to support their belief that the newly conceived entity is a human being whose existence began at conception. It is those arguments, and not the people who offer them, that are the proper object of analysis….

Third, assuming that the unborn from conception is a subject of moral concern (i.e., a person), this response is flawed in another way: it confuses our obvious prima facie moral obligation not to commit homicide (that is, to intentionally kill an innocent human person) with the questionable moral obligation to interfere with natural death of a human person in every instance. Clearly the former does not entail the latter. “Protecting life is a moral obligation, but resisting natural death is not necessarily a moral duty. . . . There is no inconsistency between preserving natural life, opposing artificial abortion and allowing natural death by spontaneous abortion.” Consider an illustration outside of the context of abortion: a healthy 82-year-old man is clearly a human person as would be his twin. Imagine that the twin is in the last stages of cancer and no known remedy can save him. Suppose, however, he could prolong his life for a little bit more but only if he undergoes painful chemotherapy that will result in several months of misery. Our prima facie duty not to kill the healthy twin does not entail that we have a duty to require that the dying twin undergo the chemotherapy, even though both are human persons. Consequently, just as difficult questions about withholding and withdrawing treatment from dying patients do not count against our prohibition against killing innocent healthy adults, the question of how we should ethically respond to spontaneous abortions does not count against the pro-life position that it is morally wrong to directly and intentionally kill the healthy and normally developing unborn.

Previous Post

November 2, 2011

Catholics Come Home

Next Post

November 5, 2011 Can the Personhood of the Embryo Be Rejected Based on Supposed Bad Consequences of Believing In It?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2010 Election 2012 2012 Election Abortion Academic freedom Academic Freedom Alliance Affirmative Action Al Mohler Alvin Plantinga Amazon.com American Culture Animal Rights Anti-Catholic Bigotry Antichrist apologetics Apostolic Succession Appearance Aristotle Ash Wednesday atheism Baptists Barack Obama basketball Baylor Best Books Bias Biden Billy Joel bioethics Bishop Gorman High School Bishop Robert Barron blogging Bob Dylan books C. S. Lewis Called to Communion Calvin College Calvinism Cancel culture Casey v. Planned Parenthood Catholic Catholic Answers Catholic saints Catholic Social Thought Catholic World Report Catholicism China Christianity Christianity Today Christians Christmas Christopher Hitchens Chuck Colson Church Fathers Church of England communion of the saints Conclave Confirmation Conservatism Constitutional Law contraception conversion stories Cornel West Critical Race Theory Culture of Death Culture of Life Daddy's Little Girl Darby Beckwith David Boonin David Crowder David Novak Defending Life DEI Dinesh D'Souza Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Dr. Tod Worner E. O. Wilson Easter Edgardo Mortara Edith Schaeffer Elizabeth Beckwith Emergent Church Emily Edmondson Epistemology Equality Eric Metaxas Ethics Evangelical Philosophical Society Evangelical Theological Society Evangelicalism Evangelicals Evangelium Vitae EWTN faith and reason Falkirk Center family Federalist Society feminism Film First Amendment First Things Football Fr. Robert Barron Francis A. Schaeffer Frank Capra Frankie Beckwith God Good Friday Gospel Coalition Grateful Dead Gratitude Greg Koukl Ground Zero Mosque Hadley Arkes Harold Joseph Beckwith Harverford College Hell Higher Education Hillary Clinton Hobby Lobby Houston Baptist University Humanities humor Integralism intelligent design Internal Revenue Service Islam It's a Wonderful Life Ivy League J. Budziszewski Jesus Movement Jimmy Akin Jimmy Stewart Joe Dickerson John F. Kennedy John Gerstner John J. Haldane John Locke John Rawls Journeys of Faith Judaism Judith Jarvis Thomson Justification Keith Green Keith Whittington King James Version Las Vegas Latter-day Saints Laura Nyro Law Lawrence Ferlinghetti Levon Helm Liberalism Liberty University Lou Reed Lutheranism Malcolm & Alwyn Marriage Martin Luther Mary the Mother of God Media Media appearances Michael Licona Michael Ruse Michele Bachmann Michelle Bachmann Mike Huckabee Mike Krzyzewski Miracles MIT Mitt Romney monozygotic twinning Moral Theology Mormonism music N. T. Wright Natural Law New Books Network New Evangelization new word New York Times Newt Gingrich Newtown Massacre Nicholas Wolterstorff Norman L. Geisler Note Dame Notre Dame NSA spying O. Carter Snead Papal Conclave Papal Conclave 2013 Passover Pat Robertson Patheos Penance Personhood Philosophy Philosophy of Religion Planned Parenthood Political Correctness Political Liberalism politics Politics for Christians Pope Benedict XVI Pope Francis Pope John Paul I Pope John Paul II Pope John XXIII Pope Leo XII Pope Paul VI Pope Pius XII Prayer in Schools President Barack Obama President Bill Clinton President Ronald W. Reagan Princeton Problem of Evil Prolife Protestantism Providence College Public Discourse Publications Publishing Purgatory R. C. Sproul Racism Ralph Wood RCIA Real Presence Reformation relativism relics Religion religious art Religious Liberty Religious urban legends Republican Party Resurrection Return to Rome Reversion Rhetoric Richard Dawkins Richard Mouw Rick Santorum Riley Beckwith Robert P. George Rod Dreher Roe v. Wade Roger Olson Ronald Dworkin Ronald W. Reagan Rush Limbaugh Russell Moore Ryan T. Anderson Sanctity of Life Satan Sexual Ethics Sexual misconduct Snoop Dogg Social Justice South Park Southern Baptists Speaking Engagement Speech St. Augustine St. Francis of Assisi St. Peter's Catholic Student Center St. Thomas Aquinas St. Thomas More stained glass Stand to Reason Stanford Stephen H. Webb Studies in Christian Ethics Super Bowl LV Syllabus The Band The Beatles The Bible The Catholic Thing the Christian university The City The King's College The Moral Argument The Sacraments The Vatican theology Theology of the Body Thomas Aquinas Thomas Nagel Thomas S. Hibbs Thomistic Institute Tim Challies Timothy George Tolerance Tony Sclafani Transubstantiation Trump U. S. Supreme Court Uncategorized University Faculty for Life University of Dallas UNLV Vatican Virtual Book Burning Volokh Conspiracy Walker Percy William F. Buckley William Lane Craig Wokeness Word of Fire

Select a Month August 2025 June 2025 March 2025 February 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 July 2024 April 2024 March 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 January 2023 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 September 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 October 2015 August 2015 July 2015 May 2015 April 2015 July 2014 April 2014 March 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I was called three times in the night before I realized it was the Lord speaking to me. Who am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Eli Samuel Saul David