In the Spring of 1981, early in the first Reagan Administration, the newly-elected Senator from North Carolina, John East, convened a Judiciary Sub-Committee hearing to examine the question, "when does human life begin?" Of the initial panel of eight "expert witnesses" seven were opposed to abortion, leading to an outcry which resulted in an open-ended hearing. Eventually a small library of testimony accumulated, as biologists, embryologists, theologians, and lawyers offered their opinions. The results were, to say the least, "inconclusive." ⁽³⁾

    I am not aware that any analytical philosophers were on the witness list. At least I can report that The Gadfly was not invited. Had he been, the testimony might have gone like this: When asked the question, "when does human life begin?," I would have followed the tradition of the original Gadfly, Socrates, and responded to the question with another question:

"Tell me, Senator, just what sort of reply would constitute an answer to that question?

"Is there some sort of scientific data, fresh from the laboratory, that would lead you to say, 'That's it! By George, now we have the answer at last!' If so, please describe it to me. Yet you have heard most of what the biologists have to say about the process of human fertilization and gestation, without any resolution whatever of your question. So it seems that the facts of science are not in dispute, and indeed appear to be irrelevant to your question.

"So I ask again, what might anyone say that might answer your question? And if you can not supply me with an answer to my question, what then is the point of yours - 'When does human life begin?' In short, why bother to pose that question when you are not prepared to recognize an answer?"

    My strong suspicion is that Senator East, and his "pro-life" cohorts, were quite unprepared to recognize an empirical answer to their question. This is due to the fact that they (and apparently almost all of the witnesses) failed to recognize the logical status of that question, "when does human life begin." This was not an issue of fact, it was a question of semantics, heavily charged with political and theological ideology. And because scientific fact and legal codes had nothing to do with it, no testimony from the scientists or the historical or legal scholars had any chance of answering Senator East's question.

    In fact, the naive gist of the question was this: "knowing what we do about genetics, fertilization, and fetal development, at what stage in that development should we decide to apply the term, 'human life?'" Fertilization? The first detectable heartbeat? The onset of brain-wave activity? Full-term birth? Take your pick, but don't count on "the facts" to guide you. For once you have made your definitional choice, all that you have demonstrated thereby is your preferential use of the language and, by implication, your personal moral belief system.

    What you have not done is to "prove" when in fact "human life" actually begins. You can not prove "it" because there is no "it" (an objective and empirical fact) to be proven. And so, on to the close of my hypothetical testimony to the East Committee:

"Senator, I can not answer your question, 'when does human life begin?,' since it is, strictly speaking, a non-question. As an analytic philosopher, the best I can do is point this out to you, and hope that you will not continue to waste the taxpayers' money on what must be a fruitless quest."

    Of course, once an empirical definition of "human life" is agreed-upon (unlikely on a panel containing Senators who are unwilling even to accept the truth of evolution), then one might proceed to address the question of "the beginning of human life." So let's just stipulate a biological definition of "human life" and see where it takes us. Now clearly, gametes (spermatozoa and ova), as biotically functional cells, are "alive." And gametes issuing from human beings are exclusively "human" - they can result in no other life form than humans. Gametes issue from sexually mature humans which in turn issued from gametes, etc. Ergo, given the stipulation that gametes are "human life," the answer to the Senator's question is straightforward: Human life does not begin, it continues! Or, alternatively, human life "begins" some two to three million years ago, as homo sapiens evolves out of earlier hominids. ⁽⁴⁾
(Oops! Did I say "evolves." Let's not get into that morass again. Cf. our September Editorial, "We're Not in Kansas Anymore!").

3. Constance Holden, "Senate Commences Hearings on 'Human Life,'" Science, v. 212, 8 May, 1981, p. 648. See also responsive letters in Science, v. 213, 10 July, 1981, p. 154.

4. To this, a common rejoinder is that with conception, a genetically unique individual is formed, and that is the "beginning" of this individual life. However, because that too is just another stipulation, no newly-discovered "fact" can "prove" this to be the "correct meaning" of "human life." Still worse for the argument, identical twinning occurs after fertilization, as a single zygote results in multiple births. But no one argues that twins are "the same individual." If not, then fertilization can not be "the beginning of (individual) human life."