The Human Person
It’s been more than two years since the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs Decision that overturned the infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade Case. The majority of the Court held that abortion was neither a specific nor implied right protected by the Constitution and returned the authority to regulate abortion to the States. The decision has had little impact on the number of abortions performed annually. In fact, the use of telemedicine to prescribe abortion pills has actually led to an increase in the number of abortions.
While Dobbs appears to be a pro-life victory, it really isn’t, because what Dobbs effectively does is to give the states the power to define a person. Think about it. Only people have human rights, and our human rights are dependent on us being a person. And doesn’t the question of abortion ultimately hinge upon when a human life becomes a person? Now, each individual state gets to make that decision; legislative bodies and politicians get to decide on who is a person and who is not. Of course, that’s been tried before, and it didn’t work out too well.
In 1860, the Southern States insisted that black people were not people but “property.” The result was a Civil War in which one out of every twenty Americans was killed or wounded. In 1935, Germany passed a series of laws that classified people as “Untermensch.” The term literally means “sub-human.” It was initially applied to non-Aryans, specifically the Jews, but was expanded to include Poles, Slavs, Czechs, Ukrainians, Russians, Serbs, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, and just about anyone else the Nazis deemed unworthy of living. The result was eleven million people exterminated in the gas chambers and ovens of the holocaust.
Legislative bodies or the judiciary cannot determine who is a person and who is not because, as history has shown, the consequences will be disastrous. There must be a universal definition that applies equally to everyone everywhere.
Most pro-abortion advocates embrace John Locke’s definition of a person which states that a person is, “a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places.” Although Locke’s definition seems reasonable, it is dangerously flawed because personhood is dependent upon one’s ability; the ability to think, the ability to reason, and the ability to reflect. However, we know that there are people who do not possess these “abilities.”
Infants and babies, those with severe mental and developmental disabilities, and perhaps even those with advanced dementia or Alzheimer’s. These people are certainly human beings, but they do not necessarily possess those abilities that Locke says makes them a person. Our personhood, our human essence, must exist at a fundamental level that’s deeper than an ability that can be diminished or never actualized, and that level must be evident in the process by which human life originates.
We know that biological life originates at the cellular level. The sperm fertilizes the egg, a single cell zygote is formed, it starts to divide, and the process of life begins, but how does a human being come into existence?
Human beings, like everything else in creation, come into existence at the quantum level of reality. The quantum level is the subatomic boundary where waves of energy take on mass and become matter. In terms of creation, it is where the rubber meets the road.
Scientists theorize that when the sperm and egg merge, the Higgs fields of their subatomic particles become entangled, creating microscopic black holes through with human consciousness passes affixing itself to the mass of the embryo, and triggering the release of 20-billion zinc atoms in a “zinc spark” or flash of light which initiates the process of life.
Where does the consciousness come from? The theory is that the black holes create Einstein-Rosenberg Bridges that connect the physical reality of our space-time to whatever is on the other side; the quantum field, the Source, or some Universal Consciousness that permeates all of creation, no one really knows. However, the result is a single cell embryo that is imbued with an individual consciousness and contains a unique and never duplicated blueprint of life, which is a combination of the parent’s DNA.
It is a fascinating theory, and if true would mean that general relativity, quantum gravity, and human consciousness are unified at the moment of fertilization. There is, however, a simpler and more eloquent explanation of what happens at the instant of conception.
The Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, creates a human being in the likeness and image of the Creator, with an eternal and immortal soul.
Religion calls it an immortal soul, the spiritual and immaterial essence of a person, that animates life, is capable of moral judgement, and survives and separates from the body at death.
Science calls it consciousness, the animating life force that possesses the awareness and intelligence to direct and sustain the evolution and development of the human organism. A consciousness that near-death studies indicate, and the New York Academy of Science has concluded, survives bodily death.
Think about it, aren’t science and religion saying the same thing? They describe the phenomenon of conception in the vocabulary of their own disciplines, but they have come to the same conclusion. That at the moment of conception we are imbued with our essence, that unique, intrinsic characteristic that defines us and makes us who we are.
At conception we are imbued with a consciousness or soul that will survive the death of our biological body. This occurs long before there are organs or a brain. At the instant of fertilization, it is a human life, a unique an individual human being.
There is no need for any political body or judicial decision to define a person because our personhood is inherent in the life force which animates us and gives us life. We are endowed with our inalienable rights at the instant of our creation, and we are a person from the moment of our conception to the death of our biological body.
Human institutions the govern our societies need to recognize this truth and pass legislation and enact laws that are needed to protect the human person.
Think About It 