Levels in the life force
Life is nature's mysterious gift. Its origin is unknown. A life force is manifest in the gases and particles in the cosmos. Space itself is expanding. Black holes form. Earth’s plates shift. Weather systems move, creating seasons. This endlessness is a wonder.
The life force is in human and animal DNA. Its physical appearance in human life is in a radical nexus when male sperm and female egg fertilize. So life is already underway before conception. At this level, the life process indicates that a human baby, rather than a creature, has begun a journey toward eventual birth into historical and conscious existence.
The first level of life is as a zygote, a germinating period that turns into an embryo. When the embryo reaches the uterus, a fetal level begins. In eight weeks, the fetus emerges in a life support system moving toward birth. During this time, the fetus, living in a fluid world becomes aware of internal surroundings. At some point, if it should be born prematurely, it could exist outside the womb. All organs and the sense neurons are in their place and have but to mature. Within twenty-six weeks the fetus has a cerebral cortex that activates a dim awareness of its position in the womb.
Everything is ready for the moment for which the mother has prepared since the moment of conception-- the emergence of a child from the womb into the world. At birth, the fetus is transformed into a breathing infant that becomes a historical person for whom a birthdate is recorded. Prior to this moment, a person exists only as an expectation, that is, as an unborn fetus. These levels represent a broad position that life is sacred at each level.
At birth, the infant, with one hundred billion neurons in place, has a primitive consciousness. That state gradually passes into self-consciousness and then broadens into social consciousness. Historical personhood is a process of internal dynamics and external factors that define our existence. Here is where we make our way in the world until life ceases in death. The life force is infinite. Our DNA continues in our descendants and our particles leave a residue that nature recycles.
The question of when life begins has, however, become a political issue. In 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy provided in the l4th Amendment extended to the right of a woman to have an abortion. The court established the Trimester Framework by which to modify the terms of abortion. That framework was replaced in 1992, settIng up the various theories of fetal viability. That is, the question of when life begins. The most anti-abortion standard among state legislators is that the presence of a heart beat means that the fetus is a person. As a theory, it can be evaluated. The major weakness of this activism is its denial of the complexity of the pregnancy matrix and lack of empathy for a woman’s well being. Its most social damage is that it criminalizes abortion.
It is now apparent that the fury of this political aim originates in a surety among anti-abortion advocates that it will force the issue back to the courts.
They likely will be disappointed that the courts have no interest in deciding when life begins. It is not evident how the plaintiffs will translate their cause into legal language. Neither is it a certainty that the newly conservative Supreme Court, should it decide to review a lower court ruling, will reverse Roe v Wade.
G. Temp Sparkman, 2019.