As she explains, she was "the victim of battered spouse syndrome, terrorized by a marriage that left her a prisoner in her own home." Karen, who is disabled, "was repeatedly hit with a fist, handcuffed & hung over a door & chained to a bed." In addition, Edward warned her that "if she ever called police, he'd kill the children, slice them into little pieces & freeze the remains."

Thanks to this terror, Edward Rodriguez forced his wife to facilitate his abuse of his children. Their son "was molested for more than 10 years, starting at the age of 5."

In opening statements, prosecutors said Tuesday that the mother dressed her son as a schoolgirl, put makeup on his face & then watched as his stepfather raped him. Prosecutors also said the boy's mother held down his younger sister while his stepfather raped her.

A Question of Abuse

By Judith Levine
Mother Jones, July/August 1996

An influential group of therapists is promoting a new scare: children who molest other children. Those who question the murky evidence are said to be in denial. But it is the kids, taken from home & given intense therapy, who might be sufferering the most.

Note: The names & identifying characteristics of the family members have been changed.

Tony Diamond is a troubled boy. Charming & tractable one minute, he may be flailing in rage or brooding in despair the next. Tony's classwork is outstanding; he reads widely & writes winningly. In a report on Napoleon, he quotes the "battleous" (& apparently bilingual) "military genius" as uttering the famous palindrome, "Able was I ere I saw Elba." Yet he fights & disobeys at school - & in his short life he's attended several.

Like other boys his age, 12, Tony likes Star Wars & baseball. He takes care of a small menagerie at home - a hamster, a rabbit & a garrulous cockatiel. But he can be mean to his sister, Jessica, one year his junior, dark & soft where he is blond & slender, slow in class where he excels. Their relationship, it seems, is fierce - fiercely affectionate & fiercely antagonistic. One evening, they sit next to each other, playing quietly. Another time, she climbs into the car & he slaps her.

Three years ago, in November 1993, San Diego County Child Protective Services pronounced Tony a grave danger to his sister. Jessie had told someone at school that her brother had "touched her private parts, front & back."

Mandated by the 1974 Child Abuse Prevention & Treatment Act to report any suspicion of child abuse, even by a child & even without substantiation, Jessica's elementary school called the Child Abuse Hotline. A social worker elicited a record of Tony's earlier offenses: In elementary school, he used sexual language & looked under girls' skirts; at 4, he lay on top of Jessie in the bath.

San Diego Juvenile Court charged Tony with "sexual abuse" of Jessica "including, but not limited to, touching her vaginal & anal areas...placing a pencil in her buttocks," & threatening to hurt her if she "disclosed the molest."

"It would appear from a review of the case," the social worker wrote, "that Tony is a budding sex offender." Tony was 9 years old.

What followed for the Diamonds was a nightmare, executed by a system so zealous to protect children from perceived sexual abuse that it may fracture their families & crush their spirits in the process. First Tony & then Jessica were removed from their mother's home & placed in state custody. Only after more than 2 years of foster & group homes, treatment programs & the representation of a private lawyer, would the family be reunited.

But blame for the Diamond family's travails can't be assigned exclusively to San Diego County caseworkers, therapists & judges. They, like many of the nation's journalists, politicians & parents, suspect sex abusers are everywhere & include everyone - the competent teacher, the friendly neighbor, the loving father.

Now, sex abuse hysteria has delivered a new kind of perpetrator: "children who molest."

These kids, as young as 2, are diagnosed & treated & sometimes prosecuted, for "inappropriate" behaviors like diddling, licking, putting things inside genitals, flashing, mooning, or masturbating "compulsively."

They're accused of "coercion," though often the sex play is consensual.

Some kids have committed real sexual intrusions on other kids. But while these children are almost always aggressive in other ways -- they fight, steal, or set fires, i.e. - the unproved assumption, deeply embedded in American psychological ideology, is that sex is a wholly different & worse, category of behavior, profoundly symptomatic for the doer & inevitably traumatic for the done-to.

So, with little supportive evidence, the new children-who-molest experts have persuaded the child protective systems they work for that "sex-offense-specific" therapy is necessary for any kid with a "sexual behavior problem." They insist this therapy, whose methodologies derive from their own theories, can be practiced only by them or others they have trained. 

When Diane Diamond invited a caseworker into her blue-&-beige adobe house, she had a naive faith in the helping professions. The quick, blond woman had undergone plenty of healing herself, by both traditional & new age practitioners & in several Child Protective Services interviews she poured out her family's history in sentences studded w/psychologisms.

She told the caseworkers that, pregnant w/Jessica, she'd fled the children's father, who had beaten & raped her & had choked 1-year-old Tony; she reported that a man had exposed himself to Jessica in the park & she'd tried to press charges; she said that the children might have been encouraged in sexual play by a babysitter years earlier.

Diane told Child Protective Services she was concerned about her son's volatility & depression; she thought he might even be suicidal & she hoped they'd help find him therapy.

Twenty years ago that might have happened. The school could have referred Diane to a child or family therapist to deal w/the whole constellation of her children's needs. But today, teachers & social workers, undereducated in psychology & overtrained (often by law enforcers) in sexual abuse, tend to see sexual pathology & criminal exploitation in any situation that looks even remotely sexual.

So Diane's tale turned against her, becoming a sort of stationhouse confession about a criminally insane family: Tony had a history of abuse (a psychologist wrote that he had "witnessed" his mother's rape, though he was only months old); the possible abuse by a babysitter was recorded as though it were a certain & traumatic event; Jessica's glimpse of the flasher's penis was added to her list of victimizations. Because Diane was at the time more worried about Tony than about Jessica, who seemed OK, Child Protective Services decided Diane was "minimizing" the "molestation," & judged her incapable of protecting her daughter.

Tony was declared a "sex offender," made a ward of the San Diego dependency court & removed from his mother's custody.

Panic over child abuse seems to sprout from the desert soil of San Diego as abundantly as neon fuchsia succulents & bougainvillea. The county has been the scene of a string of highly publicized false allegations of molestation, including satanic ritual abuse, going back to the 1980's.

In 1992, a major grand jury investigation found the county's child welfare agencies & juvenile courts to be "a system out of control," so keen on protecting children from predation that it took hundreds of them away from their parents on what turned out to be false charges. The report called for "profound change" throughout the system.

Carol Hopkins, deputy forewoman of that grand jury, now chairs the Justice Committee, which works to overturn false convictions of satanic ritual abuse & child abuse. She says some of the changes were instituted, but that many of the same people are still working in the child protection system. When cases of kids accused of abuse started crossing her desk, with these same names on them, Hopkins felt queasy. "This," she thought, "is the next satanic ritual abuse."

San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Mark Sauer saw it coming, too. In the early 1990's, he watched psychologist Toni Cavanagh Johnson & social worker Kee MacFarlane presenting their work on children who molest at a professional conference held in San Diego. He was astonished.

"First they state that there is no research - that we really don't know anything about normal children's sexual behavior," he recalls. "Then out come the pie charts & graphs & they go on for an hour defining this new abnormality. And everybody is madly taking notes."

Sauer had reason to be suspicious of MacFarlane & the clinic she worked for, Children's Institute International in Los Angeles. His newspaper had published some of the only skeptical coverage of the 1980s McMartin Preschool satanic ritual abuse trials.

Sauer knew MacFarlane as the woman who headed the team that interrogated nearly 400 children for the prosecution & found 369 to have been victimized in bizarre rituals including anal rape, animal mutilation & kidnapping thru secret tunnels. Except for one, none of the children mentioned abuse until they got to CII. After the jury saw MacFarlane's taped interviews, full of leading, hectoring questions, they voted to acquit the defendants.

Johnson, now the children-who-molest guru, had not yet joined CII at the time of the McMartin interviews, but became affiliated with the clinic & began working w/MacFarlane in 1985. She left the clinic in 1990 & her tenure isn't mentioned in her publicity materials. It was Johnson who first coined the diagnostic description, "children who molest," in a 1988 paper, while working w/MacFarlane at CII's Support Program for Abusive Reactive Kids.

Since then, her 1993 book, Sexualized Children: Assessment and Treatment of Sexualized Children and Children Who Molest, co-authored with psychologist Eliana Gil, has become the specialty's main text.

As in the satanic ritual abuse scare, the prophets of this plague claim the problem is enormous, but we don't see it because we aren't looking hard enough. "[Children who molest] make all of us uncomfortable," writes MacFarlane in her 1996 book, When Children Abuse, "so uncomfortable, we've had to deny their existence &/or minimize their behavior until now.

We've called their behavior 'exploration' or 'curiosity' until they were old enough for us to comfortably call it what it is: sexual abuse of other children.

"Who are they?" she continues. "So far, relatively few have come to our attention."

In fact, arrests for juvenile sex offenses are up in many states. Although this demonstrates increasing alertness on the part of the juvenile justice system, it doesn't necessarily indicate that juvenile sex offenses are on the rise.

Police records are unenlightening about what exactly is happening between children - the courts label as a "sexual offense" everything from consensual fondling between different-age kids to forced sodomy. It's even harder to tell what's happening in the dependency courts, where younger kids are sent, because those records are confidential.

Moreover, the 1974 Child Abuse Prevention & Treatment Act offered an incentive to rout out alleged sexual abuse: States get federal matching funds for programs that identify & treat abused kids & prosecute their abusers, including minor offenders. Since then, child abuse reports have grown dramatically. But of the 2.9 million child abuse reports filed in 1993, 2/3 couldn't be substantiated.

Despite a near-absolute absence of normative data about what kids actually do sexually, literature on this new category of juvenile "deviance" is filling up the child abuse bibliographies. In 1984, there were no treatment programs for such kids.

Today, the Vermont-based Safer Society Foundation database lists 50 residential & 396 nonresidential programs that treat "sex offenders" under 12. And at the 1995 Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers conference, about 80% of the exhibition tables featured literature on such programs for children & adolescents.

As the diagnosis of "sexual behavior problems" gains currency in sex abuse circles, it's also on its way to wider ratification, which in turn will boost media attention, funding & business. Two five-year, $1 million studies that provided therapy & evaluated the best treatment approach for hundreds of "sexualized" children under 12 are just wrapping up in Vermont, Oklahoma & Washington.

And if this major grant from the government's National Center on Child Abuse & Neglect (NCCAN) doesn't institutionalize the new sickness, some psychologists are promoting the inclusion of juvenile sex offending into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the canon of psychopathologies. 

For more than two years, almost a score of adults - foster parents, social workers, psychologists & judges - evaluated, disciplined & relocated Tony, planned his treatments (few of which he received), supervised his relationship w/his family & generated thousands of pages of paper.

Tony was found to be in need of "boundaries." So he was placed with a foster mother, who kept him inside much of the day, stored his toys on an inaccessible shelf in the garage & punished him when he was "manipulative," by making him sit on the stairs for hours. Later, the foster mother accused Tony of "sexual assault" for pushing against her while she was doing dishes. (Tony's court-appointed therapist, Philip Kaushall, interviewed the boy about the incident. "I don't believe he did it," Kaushall reported.)

From the start, Child Protective Services identified Jessie as the victim, though it will probably never be known how much of the sex play between the siblings was consensual. In fact, Jessie later told a social worker that one of the main incidents that put her brother in foster care didn't even involve disrobing. Tony "poked her with a pencil over the clothes. The pencil wasn't inside her body. He just hurt her a little & she didn't like it," the social worker reported.

Jessie was getting attention for talking about abuse. In May 1994, she told a different social worker her mother had sexually abused her by lying on top of her in bed. (She also said a social worker "wanted to molest" her, but this charge wasn't investigated.) Later, at least one psychologist would find the girl unable to "differentiate between imagination & reality."

When Jessie's mother, whose criminal record consisted of one unpaid fine for a broken taillight, explained that she'd reached across her daughter to turn off the electric blanket, Child Protective Services found her "in denial." The agency made a "true finding" of abuse & took Jessie from Diane & sent her to a foster home, too. 

What potential harm could justify removing two small children from a mother whose only observed transgression was a distrust of the child protective authorities?

Barbara Bonner, who is running the largest component of the 5 year, NCCAN studies, in Oklahoma City, acknowledges that such interventions are "driven by values," because the science of child sexual development is so paltry.

"We'll probably never know the harm [of children behaving sexually], because no one will ever do that with those kids - let them get inappropriately involved w/other children [in a clinical setting]," she explains. "They might become oversexually stimulated & prefer sexual behavior to sports, dance, or other more appropriate activities. They might become promiscuous as adults. But we don't have long-term outcomes. They may turn out to be normal."

Nonetheless, she says, "We recommend, as people who are hopefully knowledgeable & as a society, what we consider to be appropriate & in the best interest of children." Her program's "sexual behavior rules" for 6 to 11 year-olds include not touching others' "private parts" or letting others touch or see theirs.

Toni Johnson also says that some sexual behavior among kids is OK. "Normal, healthy sexuality is what we need in children. There is no problem with that," she said in an interview. "You think we are out looking to condemn children's sexual behaviors. For the last 8 years, I've been talking on this continuum. You're finding the extraordinary cases." What defines molestation, says Johnson, is sex that is aggressive or nonconsensual.

The position sounds reasonable, except that Johnson & her followers define unhealthy "aggression" on their own terms, often dismissing the children's experience - most notably when the victim doesn't feel victimized.

"I don't know if it's the degree of pleasantness or unpleasantness that ought to be the guideline that determines whether it's appropriate or not," says Bonner. "The victim should be defined by somebody other than the child."

But sexologist Leonore Tiefer suggests that even coercive aggression ought not necessarily be pathologized. "Kids push & hit & demand, until they're socialized," she said.

In fact, a study of 128 psychologically healthy Bryn Mawr College students, who wrote about their thrilling games of porn star, rapist & slave girl when they were young, indicates that even "force may exist on a continuum" within normative child sex play. Definitions of consent aren't cut & dried.

And therein lies the problem: Except in the most benign games of doctor between children of the same age, the children-who-molest experts generally rule out the possibility that any underage child can consent to sex.

In his "Pathways" workbook for youthful sexual transgressors, Bellevue, Wash., social worker Tim Kahn tells readers that to consent, "the partner must understand the proposed action, know what society's standards are for this action, [and] be aware of the consequences & alternatives."

Then how can a child who isn't a lawyer consent to sex? "Children don't know what they're consenting to," Kahn states. "They need to be protected from more manipulative or sophisticated persons."

So why not improve sex education, rather than stigmatize sex by rushing kids to a specialist? The reasoning lies in two main elements of children - who - molest theory.

The first - a corollary of the so-called cycle of abuse - is that "age-inappropriate" behavior is a symptom that the perpetrator is himself a victim of abuse. (Where else, the logic goes, would a 7-year-old get the idea of putting a crayon, or a penis, into somebody's vagina?) Although this is sometimes true, even Johnson admits that plenty of kids who have sex aren't abused.

Yet the term "abuse-reactive" is used almost universally when describing "sex abusers" under 12 & social workers & law enforcement professionals facing "inappropriate" sexual behavior by children almost automatically suspect the parents.

The second element is the belief that sex acts by children are often more coercive than we think & therefore must be stopped, lest the perpetrator grow up to become a bona fide molester.

"[Adult] offenders will tell you they started out young, maybe masturbating in public," says Bill Southwell, co-chair of a countywide task force on juvenile sex offenders. (Southwell also supervised the San Diego County sheriff's child abuse unit from 1985 to 1988 & from 1991 to 1994, when it conducted some infamously flawed investigations.)

However, the fact that adult offenders experimented sexually as children doesn't mean that children who experiment become sex offenders; prison & clinical populations simply don't represent the general population, says Temple University psychology professor Bruce Rind.

In any case, the children-who-molest theorists argue that even if a kid isn't being abused & even if he won't become a grown-up abuser, "age-inappropriate" sex is a sign of emotional distress.

Johnson alerts parents to be concerned if a child exhibits at least three "problematic" behaviors, like wanting to be naked in public, using dirty words after being told "no," or "touch[ing] the genitals of animals," & to seek professional help if he asks "endless questions about sex."

What's wrong with these things? "They make parents nervous," says Allie Kilpatrick, a social work professor at the University of Georgia who conducted a massive review of the literature on childhood sexual experiences, both wanted & unwanted & administered her own 33-page questionnaire to 501 Southern women.

Most of Kilpatrick's subjects had kissed & hugged, fondled & masturbated as adolescents & more than a quarter had had vaginal intercourse. Her conclusion: "The majority of young people who experience some kind of sexual behavior find it pleasurable, w/out much guilt & w/no harmful consequences."

A similar study of 526 New England undergraduates revealed "no differences...between sibling, nonsibling & no-[sexual]-experience groups on a variety of adult sexual behavior & sexual adjustment measures."

Around the globe, just about everything Johnson considers worrisome is unremarkable. Clellan Ford & Frank Beach, in the classic 1951 Patterns of Sexual Behavior, examined 191 of the world's peoples, including Americans. "As long as the adult members of a society permit them to do so," they noted, "immature males & females engage in practically every type of sexual behavior found in grown men & women."

In fact, most sexologists say that the trauma of kids' sex usually comes not from the sex itself, but from adults getting upset about it.

Despite Child Protective Services' official intentions, Tony got almost no therapy until November 1994, when Philip Kaushall, a psychologist the county had appointed to supervise family visits, agreed to conduct joint sessions w/Tony's mother.

When he met the Diamonds that summer, Kaushall was shocked that the children were in foster care: He recognized troubles in the family, but nothing that warranted separation. In September, he began recommending to the authorities that the kids go home.

Around that time, Jessica started attending Daughters & Sons United, an incest treatment group, where she reported learning about "good & bad guilt," the latter of which she understood as "when you tell on somebody about something & you feel bad about it." She'd come out of those meetings angry & excited, recalls Diane.

"And she'd go, 'I'm gonna report you, Mother,' every time she got mad." Meanwhile, Jessie's therapist was repeatedly asking the girl about "bad things that might happen" if the children went home, according to a social worker's report.

Both children's therapy continued, but what went on in Kaushall's office didn't fulfill Tony's requirement to undergo "offender treatment" w/a therapist specifically trained in children-who-molest theory. So, in October 1995, almost 2 years after the "offense," Juvenile Court put Tony in a "sexually reactive children's" group w/social worker David McWhirter, among the county's most prominent therapists of juvenile offenders. (McWhirter also runs a treatment program for older children. See "Drastic Steps").

But soon McWhirter, who describes the children's group work as "soft confrontation," wrote Kaushall to inform him that Tony was disruptive. The boy didn't want to confess guilt, the first step required for "recovery," & was doubtful of the other kids' guilt, too. ("Mom," he reported one afternoon, "there's one kid in there for mooning!")

Kaushall encouraged Tony & Diane to cooperate, but he says that privately he felt McWhirter's approach might be a failure from the get-go. "There may be a need for therapy," says Kaushall. "But if you treat somebody specifically for a 'sex offense,' you're undercutting the treatment automatically, because you give them an identity as a sex offender, which is precisely what you don't want them to have."

The treatment of sex offenders, including little ones, is classic good cop-bad cop stuff. The theory sounds like children's rights propaganda:

promote self-esteem & empathy, consent & equality.

But the practice is anything but fair & the rights of both kids & parents are all but disregarded. A patient receives no due process: As long as he protests his innocence, he is "in denial" & he can be dropped from the program - without which he can't get out of state custody.

Worse: His treatment, unlike a jail sentence, may go on indefinitely.

The American Civil Liberties Union Prison Project has sued a number of similar programs for adults, including one in Vermont, whose "drama therapy" portion compelled inmates to simulate anal rape while the therapist shouted obscenities at them. (The program's director, William Pithers, is now co-director of the Vermont component of the NCCAN study to devise treatment for sexualized children.)

Parents who take exception to either the charges or the treatment are considered part of the problem. Usually mandated to therapy themselves, they're counseled to overlook their own judgment, stop trusting their kids & heed their betters.

And if parents don't bite the carrot of "cure," the stick isn't far away. "In cases where children are very young & families aren't very cooperative, it may require a Dependency Court petition regarding neglect, failure to supervise, or other category addressing parental responsibility in order to compel parents to cooperate with recommended living arrangements & treatment plans," writes MacFarlane in When Children Abuse. In plain English: Resist treatment & risk losing your kid. 

Diane Diamond's resistance to the state's approach to her family's problem became the main impediment to her getting her kids back. "You should be aware that your conduct at Tony's birthday party...was inappropriate & detrimental to your reunification efforts," wrote one caseworker, enumerating her transgressions. Among them: "You put your arms around Tony's neck & whispered into his ear."

Once the narrative was inscribed - crazy mother makes boy a molester, victimizes girl - no alternative story could be told. When Jessie confessed to a social worker, almost immediately, that she had "told lies" about her mother's alleged molesting, social workers presumed her to be exhibiting accommodation syndrome, that is, suffering the consequences of being removed from the life she knew & thus lying to put things back as they were.

Diane sold her car & hired a private lawyer to try to get her children back. She spent Christmas of 1994 alone, while the hearing was delayed. In February 1995, she had her day in dependency court - & lost. Tony was sent to yet another foster home, where he began losing weight & hope. Jessie was in her 7th foster home, pleading to be returned to her mother. Kaushall wrote report after report to Child Protective Services that institutionalization & separation from their mother was damaging the children & that Diane's home was the best place for them.

As it happens, after 18 months of holding a child in custody, federal law requires that the dependency court come up w/a permanent plan - to send him home, place him in long-term foster care, appoint a guardian, or terminate the parents' rights & refer him for adoption.

Yet it took an additional 7 months before Child Protective Services made arrangements to move Tony & Jessica back home. The final outcome of the Diamonds' case appears to be a combination of bureaucratic fatigue, Diane's refusal to give up her children without a savage fight & Kaushall's intervention, which may have prevented the children from being put up for adoption.

The splintered family was reunited early this year, although Jessie will officially remain in state custody until this fall. 

Over the past two centuries, the arbiters of deviance have moved from the pulpit to the clinic. But, as Barbara Bonner suggests, "normal" remains a moral category. And, just as 19th-century doctors who surgically "cured" masturbation & Progressive Era judges who sent girls to reform school for sexual "precociousness" were enforcing the social-religious order, today's diagnosers of "childhood sexual behavior problems" reveal a terror of pleasurable excess & an anger at kids who won't buckle under sexual taboos.

The same moralistic intolerance of desire quashes the behavioral research critical to stemming real perils, like the spread of AIDS & teen pregnancy. Congress' reauthorization of the National Institutes of Health in 1993, for example, specifically prohibited appropriations for sexuality surveys, moving those moneys to programs that promote premarital celibacy.

"This all reminds me of heroic gynecology [during the early 20th century], which regarded the birth process itself as a pathological thing," says Vern Bullough, a distinguished professor emeritus at SUNY who has written or edited over 50 books on sexuality. "What we've got now is heroic intervention in childhood sexuality by people who don't know what they are talking about."

Kaushall says he's equally disgusted. "There's no doubt in my mind that what was done [to the Diamonds] was 100 times worse than any problem they had to begin with. It was handled w/a lethal combination of zealotry & incompetence."

Jessie, he believes, "has learned that when she talks about sex, everyone will drop their forks & knives & listen. She knows sex is a powerful weapon." The "sex offender" Tony suffered harshness & betrayal from adults; he is depressed & mistrustful. For both kids, Kaushall says, "the developmental harm of breaking a bond with the parent is tremendous."

On a bright Sunday in March, though, everybody seems OK. Jessie goes off to an "ugly dog show" with a church volunteer & the rest of us drive to La Jolla to wade in the tide pools. Tony hugs his mom frequently, demands to go to McDonald's & mopes when he doesn't get to. "I'm a survivor," Diane tells me, estimating that her ordeal has cost more than $30,000. She chats about "our plans" to move to Arizona - or maybe Oregon, she says, because "we love the beach." She uses "we" often, as if to repossess that fragile pronoun.

Tony & I peel snails from a rock as Diane explains that I'm writing about their family. His brown eyes become serious & he asks: "Are you writing about cruelty to children in California?"

Judith Levine's second book, In Search of Innocence: America's Battle Over Children's Sexuality, is scheduled for publication in 1998 by Houghton-Mifflin.

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Is there any doubt that there's something seriously wrong with a judicial process which leads to the prohibition of the care & feeding, by her own parents, of a brain damaged woman? Of course, the woman to whom I refer is Terri Schiavo.

We've all become aware of Terri's situation in recent years & the attempts by her husband, Michael, to have her feeding tube removed, based upon his assertion that Terri once told him she wouldn't want to live if ever she became as severely disabled as she has since become.

The Schiavo case has been batted about the legal world for 7 years so far, which is a truly scandalous fact in my opinion. Frankly, I'm astounded that it was ever allowed to be argued in a court of law beyond the initial 1998 hearing, but like Ted Kennedy's backside, this case just seems to go on & on.

There are some people within the legal community who have taken a position on the matter which is contrary to my own. But the logic by which they've reached their conclusions is fundamentally flawed & their demeanors are indicative of what I can only describe as utter soullessness.

Terri Schiavo never penned a living will, which is a document created by sound-minded individuals to elucidate their wishes, should they become unable to express them due to the onset of a debilitating & seemingly irreversible medical condition.

In light of this fact, it should have been assumed from the start that Terri would want to live, no matter what her apparent condition, if any possibility exists of her being able to think & feel. The contention by Michael Schiavo & his lawyers that Terri is necessarily devoid of any mental & emotional substance whatsoever, is absurd on its face & any judge who is incapable of recognizing that isn't competent to sit on the bench.

My own mother spent her last days of life in a catatonic state worse than Terri's, following a long battle with pancreatic cancer. I was told by several doctors at the time that it was impossible to determine if people in her condition had the capacity to understand spoken words, or experience emotions.

Yet, both my father & I behaved as if she could, whispering comforting thoughts to her and stroking her forehead as she lay motionless in her hospital bed. You see, although we didn't know for a fact that what we were saying was getting through to her, we had to assume she could understand our words. To do otherwise was unthinkable to us, as I suspect it would have been to most anyone in our position.

Perhaps we were merely deluding ourselves at that point, but we both understood that if we were to err, it was far better to err on the side of humanity & compassion. It was never a subject of debate between us & I can't imagine that any other family would have acted differently under similar circumstances.

But my personal experiences aside, it seems to me that Terri Schiavo is due the same rights that every other person in this country enjoys. To deny her those rights, based upon the unsubstantiated testimony of her husband, who has behaved like a complete louse from day one, is prejudicial at the very least.

Those who've declared categorically that Terri would want to succumb to starvation & dehydration, a truly horrifying prospect & that her parents should have no say in the matter, almost deserve to be locked up & deprived of food & water themselves for a few days. Perhaps then they'd be able to appreciate the consequences of what they're suggesting.

Basic human decency dictates that we give Terri the benefit of the doubt that she desires to go on living, even though she is unable tell us so. I may not be the smartest man in the world, but I do know that her life deserves to be treated with more respect than certain law practitioners have exhibited. No human being can know what is in the mind & heart of this woman, and for anyone to say that they can is arrogant in the extreme.

I'll tell you something else as well. If Terri were my daughter, I'd be damned if I'd just sit around & watch as she was forced to endure a slow, torturous death, merely because some black-robed nincompoop said that's the way it has to be. You'd have to put a gun to my head to stop me from making sure she had all the food & water she needed. But that's just me.

Edward L. Daley is the Owner of the Daley Times-Post

When Does Human Life Begin?

The question of when a human life begins is a profoundly intricate one, with widespread implications, ranging from abortion rights to stem cell research & beyond. A key point in the debate rests on the way in which we choose to define the concepts of humanity, life & human life.

What does it mean to be alive?

What does it mean to be human?

Is a zygote or an embryo alive?

Is a zygote or an embryo a human being?

These are intricate philosophical questions that often incite intense debate, for their answers are used as evidence in the answers to questions about the moral status of a zygote, embryo or fetus.

The question of when human life begins has been pondered throughout history & in a multitude of cultural contexts. The "answer" is fluid, in that it has been changing throughout history, because any answer about when human life begins is deeply integrated with the beliefs, values & social constructs of the community or individual that drew the conclusion.

Throughout history there have been several "answers" to the question of when human life begins, but the only consistency among the answers is that they are always changing as social contexts change, religious morals fluctuate, or new knowledge about the process of embryo development is obtained.

A particularly interesting aspect regarding the question of when human life begins is how the answer to the question is obtained. As the criteria & social contexts change, what methodology or fundamental principles did people use to answer this complicated & convoluted question?

Historically, the answer has been coupled w/the issue of abortion. As people tried to determine what stage abortion was acceptable, they often confronted the question as to when abortion should be considered destruction of a human life. While abortion is also a complicated issue w/many confounding political, social & cultural factors, historically one of the fundamental determinants of the moral consequences of abortion, stemmed from what stage people viewed the embryo as a human being.

The moral acceptance of abortion extended from the question as to whether abortion was the destruction of tissue, or whether it was an act of homicide. An analysis of the historical controversy over abortion issues can lead to an understanding of how communities & individuals throughout history were able to address the question of when human life begins.

Historical Views of When Human Life Begins

At times, the distinction as to when human life begins was based on a community's need to regulate its population flux. In ancient Sparta, abortion was frowned upon because it ran counter to the desire to raise strong males for military struggles. Yet in Sparta, the practice of leaving a child to die of exposure on a hillside wasn't considered murder if the child was judged to be unsuitable for some reason (Morowitz & Trefil 1992).

It's unclear whether Spartans believed that one obtained personhood after birth & the regulation on abortion was purely for political reasons, or whether they believed that personhood was obtained prior to birth & that it was a status unattainable by deformed infants.

Plato contended that the human soul doesn't enter the body until birth & this was determinative for legal science in ancient Roman society (Buss 1967). In his Republic, Plato writes that abortion should be compelled in any woman who becomes pregnant after 40. Plato, in the ideal state detailed in his Republic, laid it down as a matter of eugenic policy that parents should bear children for the state for a defined period of years.

After that period sexual intercourse would be permitted, but the couple involved would make every effort to prevent any children conceived from seeing light & dispose of the newborn child only if the former course proved impossible (Bonner 1985).

While Ancient Romans may not have openly approved of the practice of abortion, it wasn't considered a serious offence. Indeed, Seneca disapprovingly states, that it was common practice for a woman to induce abortion in order to maintain the beauty of her figure (Tribe 1990).

The Stoics held that the fetus was no more than a part of the women's body during the entire duration of pregnancy & was ensouled only at birth by a species of cooling by the air, which transformed a lump of flesh into a living & sentient being (Tribe 1990).

Pythagoreans stressed that the human soul was created at the time of conception & this is reflected in the Hippocratic oath. Hippocrates was of seemingly a minority position in ancient Greece, in that he disapproved of abortion. The Oath expressly forbids giving a woman "an instrument to produce abortion" & it's been interpreted to forbid inducing abortion by any other method (Tribe 1990). Hippocrates outright disapproval of abortion stemmed from his belief that conception marked the beginning of a human life (Tribe 1990).

Aristotle formulated a view on abortion & the beginning of human life that was widely accepted & even acknowledged & practiced for some time in the Catholic Church. Aristotle believed that the state should fix the number of children a married couple could have & while Aristotle held the common Greek view that deformed children ought not to be reared, he objected to the exposure of healthy infants merely as a method of population control.

In his view, the size of the family should be determined by the state & if children were conceived in excess of the permitted number, an abortion should be procured at an early stage of pregnancy "before sensation & life develop in the embryo" (Bonner, 1985).

Aristotle detailed the notion of the "animation" of the fetus & associated individuality, life & form as those features for which the "soul" was responsible at a certain point in gestation. Aristotle asserted that when soul was added to the matter in the womb, a living individuated creature was created, which had the form & rational power of a man (O'Donovan 1975).

This process of formation or animation, manifested by the movement of the fetus in the womb, took place, in Aristotle's opinion, on the 40th day after conception in the case of a male child & on the 90th day after conception for a female child (Bonner 1985). Aristotle explained this difference in animation times, for males & females, based on his perceived fundamental differences between men & women.

Aristotle believed that males were more active than females, thus he believed that they were quicker to develop, obtain a soul & become animated within the womb. Females on the other hand were viewed as physically & intellectually inferior to men; therefore, their process of ensoulment took a longer time to complete (Bonner 1985).

The Catholic Church, including both Thomas Acquinas & Augustine of Hippo, held the view that fetuses were animated (i.e., ensouled) around day 40.

The Jewish interpretation of when human life begins is extracted predominantly from 3 sources:

• the Torah
• the Jewish Talmudic Law
• the rabbinical writings

Since the Torah doesn't make any direct references regarding the beginning of human life, the inferences as to when human life begins has stemmed from the Torah's stated position on the issue of abortion.

In the Torah, there isn't an explicit prohibition directed against a voluntary abortion. The legislation in the Torah makes only one reference to abortion & it's thru implication (Jakobovits 1973):

And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with a child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follow, then shalt thou give life for life... (Exodus 21: 22-23; as cited by Jakobovits 1973).

According to the Jewish interpretation, if "no harm follow" the "hurt" to the woman resulting in the loss of her fruit refers to the survival of the woman following her miscarriage; in that case there is no capital guilt involved & the attacker is merely liable to pay compensation for the distress that the miscarriage may cause the family (Jakobovits, 1973).

"But if any harm follow," i.e., the woman is fatally injured, then the man responsible for her death has to give "life for life"; in that event the capital charge of murder exempts him from any monetary liability for the aborted fetus (Jakobovits 1973).

From the interpretation of this passage it can be concurred that the killing of an unborn child isn't considered murder punishable by death in Jewish law. What is explicitly stated in the Jewish text, is that murder is an offense that is punishable by death: "He that smiteth a man, so that he dieth, shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21:12; as cited by Jakobovits 1973).

The Rabbis had to reconcile the contexts of these two passages & reached the conclusion that the capital charge of murder should be used for death of "a man, but not a fetus" (Mekhilta; as cited by Jakobovits 1973). In reaching this conclusion, the fetus was designated a status that was below that designated for a human.

In essence, the interpretation of the Torah led the Rabbis to come to the conclusion that human life doesn't begin at the fetal stage of development.

The Jewish Talmudic Law assumes that the full title to life arises only at birth. According, the Talmud rules:

If a woman is in hard travail {and her life cannot otherwise be saved}, one cuts up the child within her womb and extracts it member by member, because her life comes before that of {the child}. But if the greater part {or the head} was delivered, one may not touch it, for one may not set aside one person's life for the sake of another (Talmud, Tohoroth II Oholoth 7:6; as cited by Jakobovits 1973).

This is the sole reference to abortion in the principles of Jewish law & it's more explicit in emphasizing the belief that human life begins once the head of a full term baby emerges, because once the head emerges the infant is given the same status of human life as the mother. Yet even in this context abortion is only considered acceptable if the birth of the child threatens the life of the mother.

The fetus must maintain some form of perceived life, otherwise the destruction of the fetus would be acceptable under any circumstances, rather than only under the conditions of a mother's imitable health. Also, an argument has been put forth that declares the child as being in "pursuit" of the mother's life; therefore, it may be destroyed as an "aggressor" following the general principle of self-defense (Jakobovits 1973).

The need for this argument indicates that abortion may have been considered the destruction of a human life & this belief had to be reconciled w/the practice of abortion to save the mother's life. Generally, it can be viewed that the fetus is granted some recognition of human life, but it doesn't equal that of the mother's & can be sacrificed if her life is in danger.

While the Talmud gives the full status of humanness to a child at birth, the rabbinical writings have partially extended the acquisition of humanness to the 13th postnatal day of life for full-term infants (Jakobovits 1973). This designation is based on the viability of the infant, so the acquisition of humanness occurs later for premature infants, because the viability of premature infants is still questionable after 13 days (Buss 1967).

Rabbinical writings have established that viability of a child isn't fully established until it has passed the 13th day of its life. Extending from this idea is that if two lives are at stake, the one that is certain & established, the mother, overrides the infant's life, which is still in some doubt (O'Donovan 1975). Under these circumstances, it may be that the sacrifice of the child must result to save the life of the mother (Jakobovits 1973).

This slight inequality in value is too insignificant to warrant the deliberate sacrifice of the child for the sake of the mother if, without such sacrifice, the child would survive; but it's a sufficient factor to tip the scales in favor of the mother if the alternative is the eventual loss of both lives (Jakobovits 1973).

The sense that priority belongs to the weaker & younger of the two claimants is balanced & in most peoples judgment overruled, by a strong sense that the self conscious humanity of the mother, who has already established pattern of relationships, demands more attention than the yet unconscious humanity of the infant (O'Donovan 1975).

Some of the Christian interpretations on abortion & thus indirectly when human life begins, are influenced by the writings of the Old Testament. Under Greek influence the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22-23 came to make a distinction between an unformed & a formed fetus, the latter was considered an independent person (Buss 1967).

This Christian tradition that disputes the Jewish view apparently resulted from a mistranslation in the Septuagint, where the Hebrew for "no harm follow" was replaced with the Greek for "imperfectly formed" (Jakobovits 1973):

And if two men strive together and smite a woman with child, and her child be born imperfectly formed, he shall be forced to pay a penalty: as the woman's husband shall lay upon him he shall pay with valuation. But if it be perfectly formed, he shall give life for life (Exodus 21:21-23; as cited by Bonner 1985).

Tertullian & later church fathers accepted this interpretation, distinguishing between an unformed & a formed fetus & branding the killing of the latter as murder. The formed fetus was to be accorded full human status & this distinction was subsequently embodied in canon law as well as in Justinian Law (Jakobovits 1973).

The distinction between a formed & an unformed fetus, in Exodus, generated the question as to whether biblical writers understood parts of embryonic development & had designated a temporal period that marked the formation of a fetus.

While the Old Testament gives several passages in which the growth of the unborn child is described, these passages are written in poetry & it can't be determined whether they represent what the biblical writers actually thought was happening inside the womb (Rogerson, 1985). Job 10:10 states the rhetorical question: "Didst thou not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese"? It continues: "Thou didst clothe me with skin and flesh and knot me together with bones and sinews" (Rogerson 1985).

The reference to curdling may reflect the fact that as a result of miscarriages & premature births, the biblical writers were aware of the difference between the fetus in an undeveloped state & in a state where the outward form of the child was already complete.

Psalm 139: 13-16 stresses again upon the growth of the child from something formless to something developed & complete, but there isn't a clear distinction indicating when the fetal body obtains form & whether this acquisition of form designates an acquisition of humanness (Rogerson 1985).

Yet there's reference to the involvement of God in the process of growth & development of the embryo & some theologians argue that there is no need to distinguish between a formed & an unformed fetus, because embryonic development is a divine process that shouldn't be interrupted by human intervention (Rogerson 1985).

The involvement of God in determining the beginning of human life is further expanded upon in the New Testament. The New Testament offers the belief that it's the love of God, which makes possible the Christian life.

The passage that comes nearest to saying this explicitly is Galatians 2:20 "... the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself to me" (Rogerson 1985). If the love of God marks the beginning of human life, then the point at which God extends his love to a fetus must be determined.

Does God's love extend to include potential life, or is there a point in development where the soul is infused with an embryo, which is the point that God extends his love to mark the beginning of a Christian life?

While there are references in the New Testament to God's love rejuvenating life, there isn't any mention of God's role in loving a developing fetus. i.e., in the New Testament it was the fact that the Good Samaritan in the parable was "moved with compassion" that saved from certain death the man who had been robbed & beaten (Rogerson 1985).

In the parable of the Prodigal Son it was the love of the father that make possible the renewed life of the son who had been "dead & is alive again" (Luke 15:24; as cited by Rogerson, 1985). The very possibility of Christian life may depend on the fact that God commends his love towards Christian followers "in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8; as cited by Rogerson 1985).

It has been stated that it's the love of God, which makes life in a relational sense possible, consequently Christians should resist any degradation of the life of a human being who is potentially a son or daughter of God (Rogerson, 1985).

... can we, at one and the same time, be under the imperative of love, and be satisfied with a society that denies to the unborn the possibility of living (Athenag., Supplicatic; as cited by Rogerson 1985)?

Yet it's still unclear as to whether denying the ability for God to love a fetus represents taking away a human life or a potential human life. Some Christian theologians argue that humanness is acquired on a continuum & the state of humanness is reached thru the acts of birth & baptism. It's been argued, that the true acquisition of humanness can't be obtained until after a baptism or at least birth, because miscarried fetal material is usually not accorded the signs of recognition w/which some Christians note human birth & death: baptism, burial & weeping (Rogerson 1985).

Tertullian, a prominent Christian theologian, opposed contraception & early abortion, because he regarding them as "proleptic murder"- the prevention of a birth that should occur (Buss 1967). In his Apology (A.D. 197) Tertullian denounces infanticide & abortion:

As regards infanticide, however - although I grant that murder of a child, if it is your own, differs from killing somebody else! - it make no difference whether it is done willfully or as part of a sacred rite. I will turn to you now as a nation.

How many of the crowd standing round us, open -mouthed for Christian blood, how many of you, gentlemen, magistrates most just and strict against us, shall I not prick in your inner consciousness as being the slayers of your own offspring?

There is, indeed, a difference in the manner of death; but assuredly it is more cruel to drown an infant or expose it to cold and starvation and the dogs (than to sacrifice it, as you allege that we do) - even an adult would prefer to die by the sword.

But for us, to whom homicide has been once for all forbidden, it is not permitted to break up even what has been conceived in the womb, while the blood is still being drawn from the mother's body to make a new creature.

Prevention of birth is premature murder, and it makes no difference whether it is a life already born that one snatches away or a life that is coming to birth that one destroys. The future of man is a man already: the whole fruit is present in the seed (Tertullian, Apology; as cited by Bonner 1985).

Tertullian observes that infanticide, usually accomplished by exposure, was generally accepted in Roman society. He contends that it was only eventually banned due to the influence of Christianity. The notion that a child, once born, was a human being enjoying the same right to life as an adult, was very far from being generally accepted by Roman society (Bonner 1985).

The survival of the child during the first few days following birth depended to a great degree upon the decision of the father who thus retained, in an attenuated form, something of the power of life & death enjoyed by the head of the family in early Roman society. This residual patriarchal power perished w/the instillation of Christianity; but the notion that parents had a right over the fate of the newly born was retained (Bonner 1985).

While Tertullian regarded infanticide & abortion as forms of homicide, indicating that he believed the fetus had acquired a status of humanness, he did recognize the need for abortions when necessary to save the life of the mother. So while Tertullian considered the embryo a human being, he didn't designate it the same status of personhood as that held by the mother (Buss 1967).

Tertullian's views on abortion were reinforced by St Basil the Great, writing in 374, when he declared that abortion was murder & that no distinction between the formed & the unformed fetus was admissible in Christian morality (Buss 1967). In 1140, when Gratian compiled the first collection of canon law that was accepted as authoritative within the church, he concluded that "abortion was homicide only when the fetus was formed." If the fetus wasn't yet a formed human being, abortion wasn't homicide.

Throughout history, even the Catholic Church has held varying declarations about the beginning of human life. For most of the history of the Catholic Church, its thinkers viewed immediate animation / ensoulment as impossible & under the traditional Catholic doctrine, a male fetus became animated - infused w/a soul at 40 days after conception & the female fetus became animated at 80 days after conception (Tribe 1990).

In 1588, Pope Sixtus V mandated that the penalty for abortion (or contraception) was excommunication from the Church. However, his successor, Pope Gregory IX, returned the Church to the view that abortion of an unformed embryo wasn't homicide. This was largely the view until 1869, when Pope Pius IX again declared that the punishment for abortion was excommunication. (Much of the support for this view was based on the idea that since we can't know with certainty the time at which human life begins, it should have protection from the earliest possible time, that of conception. This view doesn't actually insist that fertilization is the time when human life begins. Rather, it's a statement that we don't know the time of ensoulment. Pope Pius IX was also responsible for canonization of the notion that Mary was w/out sin & that the pope was infallible).

The current Catholic Church doctrine maintains the belief that immediate animation, the instant at which the zygote is endowed w/ life including a soul from God, is concurrent with the moment of fertilization (Shannon & Wolter 1990). Later Catholic theologians argued that the rational human soul began at the time of conception, because such an infusion was a divine act.

This designating established that ensoulment occurred at conception & the fetus should be designated a status independent of its parents. The fetus was considered a separate entity; no longer an automatic derivative of its parents, hence it had obtained a status of humanness as early as conception (Buss 1967).

Catholicism traditionally forbade even early abortion in that it held that these acts interfered with the procreative purpose of sexual activity; but a fetus wasn't considered a person early in pregnancy & early abortion wasn't deemed homicide (Tribe 1990).

By the Catholic doctrine, firmly enunciated by Saint Augustine & other early Christian authorities, the unborn child was included among those condemned to eternal perdition if he died un-baptized (DeMarco 1984). The movement to remove the distinction between animate & inanimate fetuses from the Catholic doctrine was initiated by Thomas Fienus, who argued in 1620 that the soul must be present immediately after conception in order to organize the material of the body (DeMarco 1984).

In the late 19th century, following the discovery of fertilization, the debate about abortion within the church tipped in favor of its now familiar position that human life begins at conception. This view was enhanced by the theological acceptance of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. In 1701 Pope Clement XI declared the Immaculate Conception a feast of universal obligation & in 1854 Pius IX incorporated into Catholic dogma the teaching that Mary was without sin for the moment of her conception (Tribe 1990).

These beliefs didn't coincide w/the prior view that the fetus didn't acquire a soul until later in pregnancy, so the church had to unite its doctrine so that the act of conception coincided w/the beginning of human life.

This belief that life begins at conception is maintained to the present day & it assumes that potential life, even in the earliest stages of gestation, enjoys the same value as any existing life. Some Catholic theologians even reject medical indication, considering abortion the destruction of a potential human being & an outright refusal of a divine gift from God (Buss 1967).

The current catholic view of abortion concerning medical indication strays from that of Tertullian & Augustine, who accepted the use of abortion when the mother's life was threatened as the Church maintains the view that "two deaths are better than one murder" (Jakobovits 1973).

Debate over the beginning of human life & abortion practices isn't limited to ancient civilizations or Judeo-Christian religions. That abortion was known, practiced & punished in the ancient Near East is evident from the Middle Assyrian Laws, where we read:

If a woman has had a miscarriage by her own act, when they have presented her (and) convicted her, they shall impale her on stakes without burying her. If she died in having the miscarriage, they shall impale her on stakes without burying her. If someone hid that woman knowing when she had the miscarriage (without) informing (the king).... (Meek, The Middle Assyrian Laws; as cited by Rogerson 1985).

There may have been a political aspect to the foundation of Assyrian Law. The state may have penalized abortion because it regarded it as destruction of human life, but the state also needed to increase the number of healthy males so that there could be more warriors to carry out the state's military aims (Buss 1967).

Certain Persians, Hindu & Buddhist texts applied ritual penalties to abortion on the level for those of homicide. Buddhism opposed the destruction of any form of life.

Abortion violated the Buddhist ideal of self-sacrifice; its price is the woman's entrapment in the perpetual cycle of birth & rebirth (Tribe 1990) The Japanese Buddhists have a number of devotional practices that demonstrate their opposition to abortion. As early as the Tokugawa period, an aborted fetus came to be known as Mizuko (water child or unseeing child).

It was believed that the soul of the aborted child is sent back to a children's limbo, whence it might later be reborn into the family that earlier rejected it (Tribe 1990). Throughout the Vedas, the classical Hindu religious texts, pejorative references to abortion abound. It has been called embryo murder & an act inimical to the very principle of creation. (Tribe 1990)

Islamic law regards the fetus as a possible heir that can have his own heirs, but abortion is only punishable when it's done without the fathers consent (Buss 1967). Arabs practiced certain forms of contraception, particularly withdrawal, during the early Islamic era & Muhammad apparently condoned these acts (Tribe 1990). In 1937 the grand mufti of Egypt issued a fatwa (opinion) that declared birth control permissible.

In 1964, the grand mufti of Jordan declared that it's permissible to seek an abortion as long as the embryo is "unformed," that is, within 120 days of conception. Islam appears to espouse a view that strictly forbids abortion after the embryo has acquired a soul; something said to take place any time between 40 & 120 days after conception (Tribe 1990).

The abortion laws in Britain originally roughly coincided w/the belief of when human life begins, but gradually the multifaceted political aspects of abortion resulted in the abortion laws deviating from the general opinion of when human life begins.

English common law located the beginning of a human soul at "quickening," believed to be the stage when the soul enters the body & the embryo could be felt moving within the uterus, which occurs at about 4 months. Abortion laws became more stringent in 1803, when abortion was criminalized. Punishment for abortion before quickening was set at exile, whipping, or imprisonment. Post-quickening abortion was punishable with death (Tribe 1990).

In 1838 the concept of quickening was subtracted from British legal calculations on abortion. At the same time punishment by death was also eliminated. Under the Offenses Against the Person Act of 1861 anyone procuring an "unlawful" abortion, including the woman herself, could be punished w/3 years in prison.

In 1929 Parliament passed Infant Life (Preservation) Act, which states that a termination of pregnancy, particularly with a viable fetus, is unlawful except when proved to have been done in good faith to preserve the life of the woman (Tribe 1990). In 1966 the House of Commons voted to legalize abortions performed for medical reasons including health.

The British Abortion Act of 1967 permits abortion until infant viability outside the womb, as long as two doctors' certify that the risk to the life or mental or physical health of the woman, or to her existing children, would be greater if the pregnancy were to continue than if it were to be terminated. The line of viability is provided by the still valid Infant Life (Preservation) Act, which has been interpreted to restrict abortion after 28 weeks of gestational age (Tribe 1990).

The first soviet abortion decree, issued in 1920, was cast solely in terms of public health. Calling abortion a necessary "evil," the proclamation alluded to the pervasiveness of illegal abortion in a country torn by famine & civil war & suggested that abortion was a symptom of the social illnesses that lingered from the Czarist regime & for which Socialism would soon find a cure (Tribe 1990). Those opposed to legalized abortion argued not in terms of the right to life of the unborn child but in terms of the duty of the mother to perform her "natural" role in society, that of bearing children. The socialist state, they believed, had a right to the "natural" increase in the labor force occasioned by this role (Tribe 1990).

In 1936 Joseph Stalin outlawed abortion. He proclaimed that socialism had solved the underlying problems that had caused abortion & he exhorted soviet women to fulfill their natural role & "give the nation a new group of heroes" (Tribe 1990). Two decades later after Stalin's death, abortion was re-legalized, again for public health reasons (Tribe 1990).

The US doesn't have a set definition of when human life begins. Many of the historical & contemporary abortion laws are based on either the opinion that life begins at conception, quickening, or the viability of the fetus outside the womb. Abortion was also permitted as a matter of public health in America, in an attempt to prevent the loss of lives of women who would be injured when trying to obtain illegal abortions.

In 1821 Connecticut first enacted abortion laws though abortions of a non-quickened fetus were often permitted, or treated more leniently than others & were generally permitted to save the life of the mother. The decision of Roe vs. Wade in 1973 was based on the survivability of the fetus outside of the womb.

There are several different contemporary cultural views regarding when a person acquires humanness. In rural Japan, personhood is obtained when an infant utters first cry (Morowitz & Trefil 1992).

In Northern Ghana a child is said to acquire humanness 7 days after birth, while for some Ayatal aborigines personhood isn't obtained until the child is named which occurs 2 to 3 years after birth (Morowitz & Trefil 1992). For several Native American tribes in the Mojave, human life begins for children who live long enough to be put to the mother's breast (Morowitz & Trefil 1992).

Current Scientific Views of When Human Life Begins

Current perspectives on when human life begins range from fertilization to gastrulation to birth & even after. Here is a brief examination of each of the major perspectives w/arguments for & against each of the positions. Contemporary scientific literature proposes a variety of answers to the question of when human life begins.

Metabolic View:

The metabolic view takes the stance that a single developmental moment marking the beginning of human life doesn't exist. Both the sperm & egg cells should individually be considered to be units of life in the same respect as any other single or multicellular organism.

Thus, neither the union of two gametes nor any developmental point thereafter should be designated as the beginning of new life.

Another slightly different though similar position maintains that the argument over when a new human life begins is irrelevant because the development of a child is a smoothly continuous process. Discrete marking points such as the 14 day dividing line between a zygote & an embryo are entirely artificial constructions of biologists & doctors in order to better categorize development for academic purposes.

This position is supported by recent research that has revealed that fertilization itself isn't even an instantaneous event, but rather a process that takes 20-22 hours between the time the sperm penetrates the outermost layers of the egg & the formation of a diploid cell (Kuhse 1988).

Genetic View:

The genetic view takes the position that the creation of a genetically unique individual is the moment at which life begins. This event is often described as taking place at fertilization, thus fertilization marks the beginning of human life.

During this developmental event, the genes originating from two sources combine to form a single individual w/a different & unique set of genes. One of the most popular arguments for fertilization as the beginning of human life is that at fertilization a new combination of genetic material is created for the first time; thus, the zygote is an individual, unique from all others.

Although the opinion that life begins at fertilization is the most popular view among the public, many scientists no longer support this position, as an increasing number of scientific discoveries seem to contradict it. One such discovery in the last twenty years is that research has shown that there is no "moment of fertilization" at all. Scientists now choose to view fertilization as a process that occurs over a period of 12-24 hours. After sperm are released they must remain in the female reproductive tract for seven hours before they are capable of fertilizing the egg. Approximately ten hours are required for the sperm to travel up to the fallopian tube where they find the egg. The meeting of the egg and the sperm itself is not even an instantaneous process, but rather a complex biochemical interaction through which the sperm ultimately reaches the inner portion of the egg. Following fertilization, the chromosomes contained within the sperm and the chromosomes of the egg meet to form a diploid organism, now called a zygote, over a period of 24 hours. (Shannon and Wolter 1990). Thus, even if one were to argue that life begins at fertilization, fertilization is not a moment, but rather a continuous process lasting 12-24 hours, with an additional 24 hours required to complete the formation of a diploid individual.

The most popular argument against the idea that life begins at the moment of fertilization has been dubbed the "twinning argument." The main point of this argument is that although a zygote is genetically unique from its parents from the moment a diploid organism is formed; it is possible for that zygote to split into two or more zygotes up until 14 or 15 days after fertilization. Even though the chances of twinning are not very great, as long as there is the potential for it to occur the zygote has not completed the process of individuation and is not an ontological individual.

Proponents of this view often propose the following hypothetical situation: Suppose that an egg is fertilized. At that moment a new life begins; the zygote gains a "soul," in the Catholic line of thought, or "personhood" in a secular line of thought. Then suppose that the zygote splits to form twins. Does the soul of the zygote split as well? No, this is impossible. Yet no one would argue that twins share the same "soul" or the same "personhood." Thus, supporters of this view maintain that the quality of "soul" or "personhood" must be conferred after there is no longer any potential for twinning. (Shannon and Wolter 1990)

The argument that human life begins at the moment that chromosomes of the sperm meet the chromosomes of the egg to form a genetically unique individual is also endangered by the twinning argument because genetic uniqueness is not a requirement for an individual human life. "Genetic uniqueness" can be shared by multiple individuals, particularly indentical twins. Thus, this argument continues, the moment at which a unique individual human forms is the not the moment when its genetic code is determined, but rather the moment when the zygote can no longer split into multiple individuals.

In addition to twinning, there are other complexities that further confound the idea of the moment of conception. Just as it possible for a zygote to form two or more individuals before it is implanted in the uterus, it is also possible for it to not continue to develop at all, but rather just become a part of the placenta. (Shannon and Wolter 1990). It is estimated that more the 50% of the fertilized eggs abort spontaneously and never become children (see Gilbert 2003). Or, if the zygote splits into multiple zygotes, it is also possible for these to recombine before implantation. All of these possibilities are examples of the ways in which the individuation of the zygote is incomplete until it has been implanted in the uterus.

Embryological View:

In contrast to the genetic view, the embryological view states that human life originates not at fertilization but rather at gastrulation. Human embryos are capable of splitting into identical twins as late as 12 days after fertilization resulting in the development of separate individuals with unique personalities & different souls, according to the religious view.

Therefore, properties governing individuality aren't set until after gastrulation. This view is endorsed by a host of contemporary scientists such as Renfree (1982), C. Grobstein (1988) & McLaren. This view of when life begins has also been adopted as the official position of the British government. The implications of a belief in this view include giving support to controversial forms of contraception including the "morning after" pill & contragestational agents as long as they are administered during the first two weeks of pregnancy.

One of the most popular positions among philosophers is the perspective that life begins at the point of gastrulation, that point at which the zygote is an ontological individual & can no longer become two individuals. Gastrulation commences at the beginning of the third week of pregnancy, when the zygote, now known as an embryo is implanted into the uterus of the mother. The cells are now differentiated into 3 categories that will give rise to the different types of body tissue. (Shannon & Wolter 1990). After gastrulation the zygote is destined to form no more than one human being.

The philosophers who support this position argue that there exists a difference between a human individual & a human person. A zygote is both human & numerically single & thus a human individual. However, because individuality isn't certain until implantation is complete & because individuality is a necessary condition of personhood, the zygote isn't yet a human person. (Ford 1988; Shannon & Wolter 1990; McCormick 1991).

Catholic scholars Shannon & Wolter (1990) describe this eloquently saying, "An individual isn't an individual & therefore not a person, until the process of restriction is complete & determination of particular cells has occurred. Then & only then, it's clear that another individual can't come from the cells of this embryo."

Some supporters of the fertilization position find fault in this argument by claiming that the potential of twinning is a technicality & not strong enough to support the claim that human life doesn't begin until gastrulation. Alan Holland puts forth the view that just because a zygote has the possibility to divide into multiple individuals doesn't mean that it isn't an individual before it divides.

As an analogy, he presents the case of the worm that is clearly a single individual worm until it is cut into two when it becomes two individual worms. (Holland 1990).

Some would also argue that in the discussion of when human life begins the question of whether a zygote will eventually become one individual or multiple individuals is irrelevant. The key point is that at least one human life may begin as the result of the zygote & thus human life began at the creation of the zygote, 14 days before gastrulation.

Neurological view:

Although most cultures identify the qualities of humanity as different from other living organisms, there's also a universal view that all forms of life on earth are finite. Implicit in the later view is the reality that all life has both a beginning & an end, usually identified as some form of death.

The debate surrounding the exact moment marking the beginning of a human life contrasts the certainty & consistency w/which the instant of death is described. Contemporary American (& Japanese) society defines death as the loss of the pattern produced by a cerebral electroencephalogram (EEG).

If life & death are based upon the same standard of measurement, then the beginning of human life should be recognized as the time when a fetus acquires a recognizable EEG pattern. This acquisition occurs approximately 24 - 27 weeks after the conception of the fetus & is the basis for the neurological view of the beginning of human life.

These principles of the neurological view of the beginning of human life are presented in The Facts of Life, a book written by Harold Morowitz & James Trefil in 1992 concerning the abortion controversy. An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a simple medical procedure in which electrodes are attached to different locations on a patient's head & the voltage difference over time is measured between the two points.

The voltage data is plotted against time to produce "brain waves" with up & down voltage oscillations that are representative of the organized electrical activity of the brain (Morowitz & Trefil 1992). Medical professionals use a patient's EEG pattern to identify a broad spectrum of mental states. Although EEGs are often used as a diagnostic tool, the exact mechanism behind how an EEG pattern is linked to an individual's cerebral neuron activity remains a mystery (Morowitz and Trefil 1992).

Despite lacking a precise explanation for the connection between the EEG & neural activity, there's a strong argument that the unique & highly recognizable EEG pattern produced by a mature brain is a defining characteristic of humanity (Morowitz & Trefil 1992). Therefore, the moment that a developing fetus first exhibits an EEG pattern consistent w/that of a mature brain is indicative of the beginning of human life. It's from this point & onward during development that the fetus is capable of the type of mental activity associated w/humanity (Morowitz & Trefil 1992).

Because the state of modern technology still prohibits EEGs in utero, brain activity data for humans at various stages of development has been gathered using premature infants. Observations to date have led to the conclusion that 25 weeks of gestation is required for the formation of synapses needed for recognizable neural activity.

At this point in development, the recognizable signals exist only as intermittent bursts that interrupt periods of random activity (Morowitz & Trefil 1992). This conclusion is summarized by Donald Scott who in his book Understanding the EEG wrote, "Attempts have been made to record cerebral activity of premature infants & they've succeeded (only) if the gestational age was 25 weeks or more (Morowitz & Trefil 1992)."

Such claims, as well as arguments that endorse an opposite argument, are for many the foundation for any dispute over defining the inception of human life. Consequently, the principles of the neurological view are tenets in the debate over another controversial subject: abortion.

Champions for a fetus's right to life often claim that the brain of a human fetus begins to show electrical activity at a remarkably early age. A key moment in the history of the abortion debate is the production & release of "The Silent Scream," an influential abortion film that graphically depicts the fetal response to its termination.

The video accompanies the abortion of a 12-week-old fetus w/the words "Now this little person at 12 weeks is a fully formed absolutely identifiable human being. He has had brain waves for at least 6 weeks..." (Morowitz & Trefil 1992). Although such arguments appeal to both the emotion by depicting an infant, though still developing, in a moment of pain & crisis & the intellect by presenting a scientific line of reasoning, the position presented by the film conflicts widely accepted developmental theory.

For instance, the film contends that a fetus has brain waves after 12 weeks & suggest, even in the title "The Silent Scream," that it reacts to its termination w/fear & pain. These contentions contradict scientific evidence that indicates neural connections in the cerebral cortex have yet to develop in a 12-week-old fetus.

Lacking these basic neural networks, the developing fetus is incapable of feeling the emotions recognized as fear or pain (Morowitz & Trefil 1992). The film's position is further contrasted by evidence that suggests a 12-week-old fetus isn't yet capable to take direct actions in response to a thought. The developing fetus is therefore incapable of recognizing potential danger & unable to either be fearful of it or actively evade it thru movement or any other willful activity (Morowitz & Trefil 1992).

(For information concerning how photographs of the embryo are often misrepresented on anti-abortion literature & websites, see Images of Embryos Used by Anti-Abortion Activists.)

In addition to presenting 25 weeks as a critical developmental landmark, other proponents of the neurological view believe that events of the 8th week of human gestation represent the key moments marking the beginning of human life.

Contemporary philosophical arguments for designating week 8 as the beginning of human life proceed in accordance w/the following format: humanness requires rational thought & rational thought requires a brain & a nervous system. Philosophers who present such arguments contest that an embryo isn't a human being until it has a rudimentary nervous system.

At week 8, the embryo has completed organogenesis, meaning it has simple, undeveloped versions of all the basic organ systems, including the nervous system (Shannon & Wolter 1990) Philosophers who subscribe to this perspective pay close attention to the progressively increasing complexity of the nervous system or the first weeks & months of pregnancy.

At week 5 the first neurons begin to appear, at week 6 "the first synapses ... can be recognized," & at 7.5 weeks the embryo displays its first reflexes in response to stimulus. (Shannon & Wolter 1990). Thus around week 8 the embryo has a basic 3 neuron circuit, the foundation of a nervous system necessary for rational thought. (Shannon and Wolter 1990).

It should come as no surprise that this contemporary philosophical debate also consists of a second argument, which is in direct opposition to the aforementioned position. There are philosophers who believe that the capacity for rational thought is indeed a prerequisite of humanness, but that an 8-week-old embryo doesn't have the capacity for rational thought.

At 8 weeks an embryo displays reflexes that are the result of its budding nervous system, but it doesn't yet have the structures necessary to engage in true rational activity in contrast to mere reflex motivated movement. (Shannon and Wolter, 1990)

A 3rd developmental landmark presented by proponents of the neurological view occurs at 20 weeks. Some advocates of the philosophy that a prerequisite for humanness is the capacity for rational thought believe that the existence of a primitive nervous system after 8 weeks, w/the ability to respond by reflex to stimulation, doesn't amount to rational thought.

The embryological landmark of 20 weeks marks the completion of the development of the thalamus, a region of the brain, which enables the integration of the nervous system. Philosophers who support this view therefore believe that only after 20 weeks of gestation can the embryo be said to have the capacity for rational thought.

The precept at the heart of the neurological view of the beginning of human life is the significant development of neural pathways that are critical for characteristic human brain activity. The formation of these neural connections is often viewed to culminate in the acquisition of humanness, a stage during the 3rd trimester of human gestation when the overwhelming majority of neural pathways in the cerebral cortex are established (Morowitz & Trefil 1992).

The contemporary concept of the acquisition of humanness was developed & elaborated during the later half of the 20th century by theological & biological leaders who emphasized the importance of the cerebral cortex in characterizing humanness. The Jesuit scholar & anthropologist scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin presented his belief that the transcendence of humanity was dependant upon the successful maturation of the cerebral cortex.

Bernard Haring, a permanent Catholic theologian of the 1970's argued that individuality & the uniqueness of personal characteristics & activities originated from the cerebral cortex. A decade later, the anatomist Paul Glees argued "the (cerebral cortex) represents the signature of a genetically unique person" (Morowitz & Trefil 1992)

The contemporary idea of the acquisition of humanness is based on the contemporary theories of developmental embryology. Cerebral nerve cells accumulate in number & continually differentiate thru the end of the 2nd trimester of human pregnancy (Morowitz & Trefil 1992).

However, it isn't until the 7th month of gestation that a significant number of connections between the newly amassed neurons begin to take form. It's only after the neurons are linked via synapse connections that the fetus is thought to acquire humanness.

Just as a pile of unconnected microchips is incapable of functioning & is therefore not called a computer, the unconnected neurons of the pre 24-week fetal brain lack the capacity to function, thus the developing fetus has yet to acquire humanness (Morowitz and Trefil 1992).

Ecological / Technological view:

Advocates of the neurological view contend that human life begins when a developing fetus acquires humanness, a point designated by brain activity that can be described as characteristically human.

But if this developing fetus is separated from its mother at an early stage, regardless of the state of neural development, the fetus will be unable to sustain life on its own. The total dependence of the developing fetus for the majority of gestation catalyzed the formation of another view of when human life begins.

The ecological / technological view of when human life begins designates this point when an individual can exist separately from the environment in which it was dependent for development (i.e., its mother's womb).

Under most circumstances, the limiting factor for human viability is not the development of neural connections but the maturation of the lungs. However, advances in medical science permit a premature fetus to breathe after only 25 weeks of gestation, a stage in its development prior to the complete formation of functioning lungs (Gilbert 2002).

Legislation using the ecological / technological view of when human life begins includes decrees of when a fetus can legally be aborted, mandating that after a fetus is determined to be independent its life can no longer be terminated (Gilbert 2002).