philosophy

Content Warnings: Death

I heard that life is sacred, but I don’t know what that word means.

A woman outside a clinic told me that a tiny mass of cells was a person. I was skeptical, but she said that the bundle of cells was just what a person looked like when it was very small. She said it had the same genetic makeup and all of the same DNA as a fully grown person and therefore had the same right to life. I watched her scratch her nose, dislodging a thousand skin cells containing her full set of DNA, which described her entire genetic makeup. The skin cells died.

The bundle of cells in a pregnant woman’s abdomen would grow into a fully developed human being, she said. That is, unless they didn’t, as was frequently the case. But, the bundle of cells had the potential to grow into a real person. The woman outside the clinic told me that life begins at conception.

If she had said before conception, I might have believed her.