The Egg and I: Conception, Identity, and Abortion

Philosophical Review

The Egg and I: Conception, Identity, and AbortionAuthor(s): Eugene MillsSource: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 117, No. 3 (JULY 2008), pp. 323-348Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40606031 .

Accessed: 31/05/2014 14:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Philosophical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.230.234.162 on Sat, 31 May 2014 14:56:38 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=philreview

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40606031?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The Egg and I: Conception, Identity, and Abortion

Eugene Mills Virginia Commonwealth University

I. The Metaphysics and Morality of Origination When did I come into existence, and why should you care? Take the second question first. You should care because what goes for me goes for all human persons: we aren't all the same age, but we all came into existence at the same stage of biological development. This fact bears on the morality of abortion. I assume - without argument but for its sake - that you care about this.

The answer to the first question may hinge partly on the answer to a different question: what kind of thing am I? I'll suppose for the sake of argument, except where explicitly stated otherwise, that the true, relevant, and known answer is that I'm a "human being" in the sense of a human animal, a member of the genus Homo.1 Given this supposition, I'll argue first and foremost that I originated not at the moment of

I'm grateful to Anthony Ellis, Gayla Mills, Allen Thompson, Mikhail Valdman, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions.

1. I suppose this - merely for argument's sake - for two reasons. First, it's now the default (though not the unanimous) materialist view of the self; for one forceful presentation, see Eric Olson, The Human Animal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Second, it forms the chief support for a moral position on which my coming metaphysical argument bears. That argument has some commonalities with, and some bearing on, recent attempts to establish moral conclusions about abortion via the metaphysics of personal identity. See David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and David DeGrazia, "Identity, Killing, and the Boundaries of Our Existence," Philosophy and Public Affairs 31 (2003):

Philosophical Review, Vol. 117, No. 3, 2008 doi:10.1215/00318108-2008-001 © 2008 by Cornell University

323



EUGENE MILLS

my biological conception, but either before or after. This metaphysical point carries moral freight. I'll argue secondarily that if any familiar "pro-life" moral principle raises moral qualms about the permissibility of zygotic abortion,2 these qualms apply equally (or at least almost equally) to the permissibility of contraception and abstinence.

Although I think my primary, metaphysical argument is strong, a related but weaker argument will serve for most of my moral purposes. I hope that even if I don't convince you that I originated either before or after conception, I'll at least convince you that it's at least reason- ably doubtful that I originated at conception. And if you're convinced of even this much, I'll argue, my primary moral arguments should convince you as well.

Regardless of your moral attitude toward abortion, you probably hold that human biological conception - the fertilization of the egg - creates a new being. You probably hold that this being is at least a candidate for being or becoming a living human being. If you lean one way on abortion's moral status, you probably deny that this being is a person or a "human being" in a moral sense while allowing that it may eventually become one. You may deny that it has moral standing, while allowing that it may eventually gain it. Still, you probably affirm that conception results in a new being (even if you think this being a constituent part of the pregnant woman). If you lean the other way on abortion, you're more likely to insist that this new being has moral standing; you may, though you needn't, hold that it's a person right from the start. Whichever way you lean, you probably hold that from conception on, but not before, a being exists that probably will, absent abortion or mishap, become a normal adult human being.

From the retrospective first-person perspective, this shared assumption amounts to the view that I - the human animal that I'm assuming is me - originated with the fertilization of an egg. I'll argue that this assumption is mistaken. 'Conception' has an ontological sense on which it's analytic that conception is origination. It's not analytic, though, that biological conception is origination. I'll argue that it's not even true; biological conception creates no new being.

413-42. I don't assume, though, that persons are essentially persons, and my argument, which is less ambitious than those of Boonin and McMahan, rests on considerations of cross-time identity that needn't involve personal identity at all.

2. Pregnancies are reckoned medically as starting with (not conception but) the implantation of the zygote into the womb. I stipulate that by 'zygotic abortion' I mean the killing of a zygote as a means or as a consequence of preventing or aborting the pregnancy that does or would consist in a woman's being pregnant with that zygote.

324




I'll then draw out some consequences for abortion. Pro-life arguments typically involve two main premises. The first assigns to the human organism in utero some salient metaphysical status. Candidates for this status include: person, potential person, being with the potential for a valuable future, sentient being, and living human being. The second premise is a moral principle to the effect that (at least generally, at least presumptively) it's wrong to kill beings with the metaphysical status in question. I focus here on the metaphysical rather than the moral premise and mainly on the question at what stage of development is the salient metaphysical status attained? I argue that there's no good reason to think, for any standard candidate, that biological conception - hereafter, just 'conception' - is the point of attainment.

I don't debate whether any sound principle leads from the metaphysical status of beings who could survive3 to normal adulthood to the presumptive wrongness of abortion.4 I argue that any such principle of familiar stripe, if true, either renders contraception and sexual abstinence presumptively wrong, or else does not rule presumptively wrong zygotic abortion.

"Morning-after pills" destroy zygotes. Though my argument renders no categorical verdict on the permissibility of such destruction, it does show that no familiar basis for condemning morning-after pills while condoning contraception and abstinence can succeed. Given the current public debate over the moral status of morning-after pills, my argument thus has a practical upshot of contemporary relevance.

Here's a sketch of the coming argument. Common sense holds, and I assume for convenience,5 that an organism existing at one time

3. I stipulate that I use 'survive' so that, necessarily, if a being survives from one time to another, then it exists at both times. I don't deny the intelligibility of views according to which "survival" doesn't require identity; my use of 'survive' is mere short- hand.

4. It Judith Jarvis Ihomson s tamous deiense ot abortion convinces you, men you may doubt that there's any such true principle or think that if there is one, the pre- sumption of wrongness is typically defeated. See Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971): 47-66. In that case you may see my argument as having little practical force. Note three points. First, even if Thomson's argument succeeds, its applicability remains controversial over many actual cases, given the circumstances and methods of actual abortions; second, Thomson's argument clearly does not apply to some medically possible (and probably actual) cases of abortion to which my argument does apply; and third, my argument carries philosophical interest independent of its practical upshot.

5. "For convenience": thus do I gloss over matters of bitter metaphysical controversy. This is not because I think these matters unimportant but because my coming

325



EUGENE MILLS

may be numerically identical to an organism existing at another time, though it grows and otherwise changes in the interim. When I say truly that "I existed ten years ago," I say that I (now) am identical with an organism that existed ten years ago. I argue in section 2 that, given this view, I didn't come into existence at conception. I consider objections in section 3. In section 4, I consider the only two plausible candidates for my origination, neither of which is my conception. In sections 5 and 6, 1 trace some consequences of my metaphysical argument for the morality of abortion.

II. The Egg and I

Suppose, again, that I'm a human animal - a member of the genus Homo. When did I originate?

I'm intimately related to a zygote that inhabited my mother's womb when she was pregnant with me. Either the intimate relation con- necting me with the zygote is identity, or it isn't. If it's identity, then I (now) and the zygote (then) are the same being at different stages of development. If it isn't identity, then our intimate relation consists in my having "developed out of the zygote in a distinctive way. In either case, I'll argue, I didn't originate at conception.

Suppose I'm not identical with the zygote from which I developed. Now, temporally gappy existence may be possible. (Dismantle a car, scatter its parts, and then recover and reassemble them. Perhaps the car has gappy existence.) Whether or not existence can be gappy, though, my actual existence clearly isn't.6 So if I was never a zygote, then I didn't exist before or during the existence of the zygote to which I'm intimately related. Conception occurred either before or during the existence ofthat zygote. Hence if I was never a zygote, then I existed neither before conception nor for some time after. Thus I originated some time after conception. So if I was never a zygote, I didn't originate at conception.

argument adapts smoothly to fit all standard views of cross-time identity, including those that cash it out in terms of genidentity or sortal identity, endurance or perdu- rance. For reasons of space, I merely assert this here rather than show it, but I invite you to confirm it for yourself.

6. Assuming, again, that I'm an organism. On some psychologistic views of personal identity, I cease existing when I cease thinking - say, during dreamless sleep - and resume existing when I resume thinking. On such views, however, I'm no organism.

326




Suppose on the other hand that I once was a zygote. A zygote is a fertilized egg. A fertilized egg doesn't pop into existence upon fertilization; it exists, unfertilized, before its encounter with the fertilizing sperm. So if I was once a fertilized egg, then I was once an unfertilized egg. The fertilization of the egg is (biological) conception. Hence if I was once an unfertilized egg, then I existed before conception. So if I was once a fertilized egg - a zygote - then I did not originate at conception.

In sum: whether or not I was once a zygote, I did not originate at conception.

III. Some Objections Considered

I expect that the first horn of my dilemma - that if I was never a zygote, then my conception wasn't my origination - will raise no eyebrows. I expect that the crucial claim of the second horn - that if I was once a zygote, then I was once an unfertilized egg - will inspire incredulity. I now consider some objections to it.

One objection to my argument for the second horn is as follows. A fertilized egg is not, contrary to my suggestion, an egg - just as a crowned prince is not a prince, a victorious candidate not a candidate. So I wrongly claim that a zygote is an egg that was once unfertilized and then became fertilized.

I note that despite my forthcoming concession of this point for argument's sake, it's utterly implausible. You can buy fertilized hen's eggs in grocery stores. I see no license in common sense, biology, ontol- ogy or agribusiness for the claim that they aren't really eggs.

The main point, though, is that my argument doesn't require that a fertilized human egg be an egg, it's enough that it's an organism (or, in fact, a thing). It would indeed be a mistake to say that a crowned prince is a prince who was once uncrowned and then became crowned. It would be no mistake, though, to say that a crowned prince is a thing that was once uncrowned and then became crowned. What matters is that the crowned prince is identical with - the very same being as - the uncrowned prince, not that this being is a prince at both times under consideration. Similarly, it suffices for my argument that a fertilized egg - a zygote - is a thing that existed before fertilization and then became fertilized.

Let me reinforce this claim. If I was once a fertilized egg but never an unfertilized one, then the organism that's the fertilized egg

327



EUGENE MILLS

didn't exist before its union with a sperm. More accurately, it didn't exist before its predecessor's union with a sperm: the organism that is the fertilized egg never joined with a sperm, on the suggestion I now consider, since on that suggestion the joining precedes the existence ofthat organism. If this is true, then eggs can't survive fertilization. Eggs never become fertilized; nothing is at one time an unfertilized egg and later a zygote. Fertilization annihilates one organism and creates another.

The problem with this suggestion is that it seems plainly false, notwithstanding its wide uncritical acceptance. Review some sex education materials; watch, via microscope, the fertilization of an egg. You see an unfertilized oocyte - the one-celled human egg. A sperm approaches and, after traversing the corona radiata and zona pellucida, contacts the egg's cell wall. The sperm breaches that wall, enters, and dissolves, dis- charging its contents. The breach in the cell wall is immediately sealed.7 The most natural description of these events is that you've watched one egg become fertilized, not the annihilation of one organism and the creation of another.

I offer no principle of organismic identity over time - no con- junction of nontrivial necessary and sufficient conditions. Even without such a principle, we recognize clear cases of the persistence (or failure of persistence) of organisms through change, just as we need no principle of (say) chair-identity over time to recognize clear cases of the persistence (or failure of persistence) of chairs through change. A concrete look at the events involved in conception reveals what seems a clear case of organismic persistence through change - a clearer case, certainly, than we find in many other cases that we take as uncontroversial cases of organismic persistence. The description of the case as one of persistence - of an egg undergoing and surviving fertilization - rather than annihilation is, as I say, natural. There is, I will argue, no good reason to reject it.

I'll argue this by surveying the most likely sources of rejection and showing of each that it fails. This procedure isn't ironclad; perhaps there's some good reason that I don't consider. If you can produce it,

7. For details, see any standard textbook of embryology, for example, Felix Beck, David Burns Moffat, and John Benjamin Lloyd, Human Embryology and Genetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973). A concise account with animated depiction may be found at Clovis Neves and Roberto Mueller, "Teleeducation: Fertilization," www.cenapad.ufmg .br/~teleeduc/fer.html (accessed August 25, 2005).

328




well and good. Otherwise, the mere possibility of such a reason is no rebuttal of my argument.

If you insist that fertilization annihilates the egg, then tell me: at what point does the unfertilized egg cease to exist and a new organism come into existence? In response, you might identify the relevant point, or you might demur while arguing that your demurral doesn't concede the point at issue. I consider these two responses in turn.

Suppose you identify the relevant point. I don't know where you might put it, but the most likely candidates are the moments when (a) the sperm breaches the cell wall of the egg, and (b) the paternal genetic material is fully incorporated into the nucleus of the egg. I'll discuss these two possibilities, confident that no candidate with dimmer prospects will succeed.

Suppose it's the first: the egg blinks out when the sperm breaches its cell wall. Why would you think this? Cells don't generally suffer annihilation when their outer layers are breached. If a cell can't survive a breach, then an amoeba can't survive a meal; but this is absurd. With respect to cross-time identity, no relevant difference separates an amoeba's absorbing its food and an egg's absorbing a fertilizing sperm. So an egg doesn't cease to exist (whether or not it ceases to be an egg) when a sperm breaches its cell wall.

Suppose, then, that the unfertilized egg ceases to exist when it has fully incorporated the sperm's genetic material into its own genetic makeup. This occurs after the sperm has dissolved and the breach in the egg has been sealed. On the suggestion now under consideration, what would naturally be described as an internal rearrangement of parts in a persisting organism would naturally be rawdescribed. In fact, when the genetic material is finally sorted out - when the haploid oocyte becomes diploid - the unicellular organism that was an unfertilized oocyte ceases to exist, and a new organism is created.

This seems once again absurd. The egg is a living cell. Through- out the process of fertilization, there's just a single living cell relevantly in view. After the absorption of the spermatic material, this cell undergoes rearrangement of its internal parts, and in particular of its genetic material. If you accept this description of the situation, you already reject the suggestion that the conversion from haploid to diploid status marks a simultaneous annihilation and creation. For if it did, there would be nothing of which we could truly say that it underwent rearrangement of its internal parts. There's simply no basis in ordinary views of cross-time

329



EUGENE MILLS

organismic identity for the idea that full absorption of spermatic genetic material extinguishes the oocyte.

So much for identifying the moment of the zygote 's creation. Turn to demurral. You might invoke vagueness: it's a vague matter when one egg blinks out of existence and a new one blinks in. Still, you say, we can be sure that the (unfertilized) egg that precedes fertilization is distinct from the (fertilized) egg that follows it.

I gladly allow that if there's good reason to think that the unfertilized egg is an organism distinct from the zygote, then it's a vague matter when one vanishes and the other appears. I grant, that is, that if there's good reason to think that there's a relevant transition, then it's a vague one. In standard cases of vagueness, we rightly grant the vagueness of a transition (say, between something's being red and being orange) because we have good reason to believe that the transition must have occurred, even if we can't pinpoint its occurrence. In the case of conception, I claim, there's no good reason to think that any relevant transition occurs. There's no basis for the view that there are two successive organisms here rather than one that undergoes significant changes -

changes that pale, of course, in comparison with those distinguishing a fetus from the adult with which it's identical, or a caterpillar from the butterfly with which it's identical.

Some philosophers might invoke genetic essentialism to defend the view that conception is origination. I have my doubts about genetic essentialism, but I won't press them here. For such an invocation would be confused, even granting genetic essentialism. Kripke, for example, defends the necessity of origin and apparently infers from it that Queen Elizabeth's conception couldn't have involved an egg or sperm different from those actually involved.8 This inference hinges, however, on the unargued - indeed, unacknowledged - assumption that Elizabeth originated at conception. Everything I say here is compatible with the thesis of the necessity of origin and also with the thesis that a being's original genetic endowment is essential to its existence. (It is compatible, that is, with the thesis that a being could not have existed with an original genetic endowment different from its actual one. No one, I hope, will advocate that a being cannot survive changes, including additions, to its genetic endowment. I wouldn't cease to exist if I became the first victim of adult-onset Down's syndrome.) These theses entail the

8. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 112-13.

330




necessity of spermatic ancestry, however, only when wedded to the question-begging assumption that conception is ongin. There's nothing in the theses of necessity of origin or of original genetic endowment to suggest that the Queen couldn't be identical with an unfertilized oocyte. Both theses are perfectly compatible with the view that oocytes survive fertilization.

You might plump for the conception-as-origination thesis on the following, related grounds. A particular genus-membership is an essential property of that which has it; I am a member of Homo; so if I first acquired that membership at conception, then I must have originated at conception. I accept this argument for argument's sake. (If you prefer to cast it in terms of species- rather than genus- membership, go right ahead.) But to move from its conclusion to the conception-as-origination thesis, you must justify the antecedent of that conclusion: the claim that I did first acquire my genus-membership at conception.

This claim is, by itself, neutral on genus-essentialism. You might deploy it in arguments concerning abortion's permissibility even if you decouple it from genus-essentialism. Discussion of it thus fits naturally into a discussion of metaphysical features other than origination that might bear on the permissibility of abortion, and I will discuss these below. To avoid redundancy, I issue here a promissory note: I'll argue below (in section 6) that there's no good basis for marking conception as the moment at which I became a member of Homo. I'll assume here the success of the lengthier argument to come later.

I expect another objection. It's commonly claimed that sperm and egg contribute equally to conception. If the zygote is identical with the unfertilized egg, then it seems that it must also be identical with the preconception sperm. But the sperm and the egg are numerically distinct, so my claim violates the transitivity of identity. It's absurd, too, that both the sperm and the oocyte still exist after conception, when there's only one relevant organism in view. Given their equal status and the problem with transitivity, we should conclude that both the sperm and the oocyte cease to exist at conception, and the zygote is a fresh creation. So goes the objection.

I answer that the sperm and the unfertilized oocyte are equal in some senses but not in the one that matters for the issue at hand. They're equal insofar as they contribute equal amounts of nuclear genetic material to the zygote. (Mitochondrial DNA, all maternal, is another matter.) They're equal insofar as they're both needed (causally,

331



EUGENE MILLS

at least normally, at least in humans)9 for the survival of the oocyte and its transformation into a zygote. They're roughly equal insofar as they contribute roughly equally to many salient traits of the later adult. They're not equal, however, in surviving conception.

To repeat: the sperm breaches the egg's cell wall, enters, and dissolves. Its dissolution is its death. The sperm "lives on" as we live on in our children, our works, and the compost our bodies eventually become: that is, figuratively. The sperm doesn't literally exist after conception. The oocyte does. Life is unfair.

You might just insist that fertilization is different from all other processes involving the absorption of extracellular material or the internal rearrangement of parts. One way or another, fertilization must mark the beginning of a new being.

This insistence is as ad hoc and unjustified as it is common and unquestioned. Its wide acceptance gives it no support but does call for diagnostic explanation, and I offer one speculative but plausible such explanation. (Whether it's the correct explanation is an empirical matter that exceeds my expertise.) Long before the biology of human reproduction was understood, the clear sign that a new being had been brought into being was a baby. Sex was the salient recognizable link in the causal chain leading to babies: abstinence prevents them, indul- gence produces them. (I ignore in-vitro fertilization and the like because these technologies can't be responsible for the common attitudes that predate their existence.) Given their background knowledge, our ancestors had no reason to think that any human beings existed except those that either had been born or were growing inside pregnant women. So it's easy to understand why our ancestors would believe that sex initi- ated a causal process that resulted in the creation of a new being, and it's easy to understand how such a belief might become entrenched. Biological conception was later found to be the salient concomitant of sex: babies result only when conception occurs, and conception, when it occurs, is an effect of sex. (Again, I ignore alternatives only recently ren- dered medically possible.) These simple facts are enough to account for the prevailing belief that conception marks the beginning of existence: that belief would result from combining two independently reasonable beliefs. That the resulting conjunctive belief contradicts another, far

9. Parthenogenesis is common in invertebrates. Recent work suggests that unfertilized eggs might be induced to mature even in humans; see Sylvia Westphal, "Virgin Birth Method Could Found Stem Cell Dynasties," New Scientist, April 26, 2003, 17.

332




more reasonable, belief concerning identity over time is something eas- ily and understandably overlooked.

The relevant beliefs of biologists need no diagnostic explanation, for biologists don't have the false belief in question. (They don't have it, at least, when wearing their biologist-hats. They can change headgear as well as anyone else.) You'll look in vain in the embryology literature for any hint that conception is anything other than an important event punctuating - not originating - the life of a single being.10

Fertilization resembles other cellular processes in this respect. Consider bacteria. Here's an account whose substance is wholly unre- markable in the biological literature:

Among bacteria, genetic information transfer occurs without reproduction: one bacterium transmits genetic information directly to another by DNA transfer through the cell walls. The receiver mating organism remains, with a changed genetic constitution, but no new offspring organism is formed [my emphasis]. Bacteria reproduce without sex, by dividing and creat- ing two organisms exactly like the original.11

Bacteria, which like oocytes are single cells, routinely survive the alteration of their genetic material. Oocytes can surely do the same.

There's no good reason to affirm and good reason to deny that I came into existence at my biological conception. I hope you agree; but even if you don't, reason requires that - absent some compelling argument to the contrary - you should at least hold, in light of my discussion so far, that it's unjustified to think I did come into existence at my conception. (Perhaps you think you should simply withhold judgment.) I'll take my stronger claim as established and trace its moral consequences,

10. Harold Morovitz and James Trefil, writing for a popular audience in The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), get the main point right while displaying the tenacity of the confusion infecting the received view. They say (46-47):

When biologists object to statements about life beginning at conception, they are not splitting hairs or being pedantic. There is no time in the sequence [of events including and flanking conception] where new life is created. In fact, from the point of view of the biologist, at conception, two previously existing living things come together to form another living thing.

The (false) italicized statement flatly contradicts the (true) sentence preceding it unless somehow the formation of a new living thing might not bring the creation of new life.

11. Ernest Callenbach, Ecology: A Pocket Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 104.

333



EUGENE MILLS

but I'll argue eventually that the most compelling of those consequences attend even the weaker claim.

IV. How Old Am I?

The moral consequences of separating my conception from my origination depend in part on when origination occurred. If I didn't originate at conception, then when? Only two times are plausible candidates, corresponding to the two horns of my main dilemma - corresponding, that is, to whether I was or wasn't once a zygote.

Suppose, first, that I was once a zygote. Then, as I've argued, I was once an unfertilized egg. I didn't exist before that unfertilized egg did. Hence I came into existence when it did.

If I originated when the egg did, then I'm probably several decades older than I am on the conventional reckoning of age that starts the clock at birth. (If you peg my conception as my origin, you'll say that I'm about nine months older than on the conventional reckoning.) The received view is that all the oocytes a mammalian female ever harbors originate while she's a fetus. A recent study suggests that some oocytes may develop later,12 but it remains likely that the unfertilized egg that was me (if I was once a zygote) originated while my mother was a fetus. I came into existence, on this view, decades before my conception, and I don't look my age.

Suppose, then, that I was never a zygote. I was once a baby; that baby was once a fetus; that fetus, an embryo. Adults, babies, fetuses, and embryos are organisms, and there's no denying that in the normal course of development, a single organism is first an embryo, then a fetus, then a baby, child, and adult. So while the embryo that was I developed from a zygote, the embryo (-organism) was never the zygote (-organism) . Hence if I was never a zygote, I came into existence at or after the demise of the zygote and at or before the first presence of an embryo.

You might grant this conditional but take it as a reductio of its antecedent. For just as there's no denying that an embryo is identical with the fetus that it becomes, you might insist, there's equally no denying that a zygote is identical with the embryo that it becomes.

12. Joshua Johnson, Jacqueline Canning, Tomoko Kaneko, James K. Pru, and Jonathan L. Tilly, "Germline Stem Cells and Follicular Renewal in the Postnatal Mam- malian Ovary," Nature, March 11, 2004, 145-50, suggests some postnatal production of oocytes in mice. What goes for mice may go as well for humans, though it has yet to be shown.

334




I needn't rebut you. Grasp this horn of my dilemma, and you thereby commit yourself to my having once been an unfertilized egg. This is fine with me. The other horn is, however, at least prima facie defensible, so I want to see where it leads.

First, let me buttress my claim of prima facie defensibility. Here's why it isn't silly to deny that the zygote and embryo are identical. The zygote is a single cell. It cleaves into two distinct blastomeres, also single cells. Let 'Z' name the zygote; ΈΓ and Έ2', the two blastomeres into which it cleaves. What identity relations hold among Z, Bl, and B2? We encounter here a familiar problem of cross-time identity in the face of fission.

Bl isn't identical with B2 since their properties differ. Since identity is transitive, it can't be that Ζ = Bl and Ζ = B2.

Perhaps Z = B1 or Z = B2. You might think that exactly one of these identity relations holds, though we can't tell which it is. Suppose you're right. Suppose that (unbeknownst to us) Ζ = Bl. Each blastomere divides in turn; Bl divides into Bla and Bib. The fission puzzle recurs. Presumably you say that Bl is either Bla or Bib but not both. (If not, what distinguishes this fission case from the first one?) Suppose it's Bib. Then Z = Blb. As pregnancy proceeds, on this picture, the zygote survives, but always as a single cell. So while the zygote coexists with the embryo, it's not identical with it. Instead it's a single cell in the embryo's body13 (or in the placenta, given further facts of embryology). So on the view that a fission-ancestor survives as exactly one of its fission- descendants, the zygote isn't identical with the embryo.

On the other hand, there's considerable intuitive pull to the idea that given the similarities between Bl and B2, Ζ is identical either with both of them or with neither; and since it can't be identical with both, it must be identical with neither. Because there's nothing with which it might be identical other than the blastomeres, it must be that, in this case, the organism that is the zygote ceases to exist when the zygote divides, and each blastomere is a fresh creation.

You might avoid this conclusion by denying that there's nothing with which the zygote might be identical after its division except for the blastomeres. For (you might say) the blastomeres compose something distinct from either of them. There's no reason why the zygote can't be identical with a two-celled object, composed by the blastomeres,

13. That is, there's a single cell in the embryo's body that was once a zygote.

335



EUGENE MILLS

and there's no reason why that object can't be identical with the later embryo, fetus, and so on.

If you say this, you say something questionable (though perhaps true). For if the zygote is identical with an object composed by the blastomeres, then an object may be a cell at one time and a noncell at another. There's nothing problematic, of course, about a child (or a tinker, or a tailor) continuing to exist while ceasing to be a child (tinker, tailor). There's some plausibility, though, to the view that being a cell, unlike being a child, is a property possessed essentially if at all. I don't say that this view is true. (If it is, then I was never a zygote - a claim on which I'm explicitly neutral.) My claim about its plausibility springs merely from two failures on my part: a failure to imagine a situation of which I think it would be clearly true, rather than simply unclear, that a cell persisted while losing its cellhood; and a failure to discern any clearly unacceptable consequence of denying it. I note two things about this view. First, denying it constitutes once again a reversion to the first horn of my dilemma: if the zygote is the same organism as the embryo that is me, then I was once an unfertilized egg. Second, to whatever degree it's intuitively plausible, it supports my claim that the second horn of the dilemma is at least prima facie defensible to the same degree. But again, it won't faze me if you find one horn or the other indefensible; if one doesn't catch you, the other one will.

Return to the line of thought on which the zygote ceases to exist when it divides. Do the two blastomeres compose an organism? If so, then (it seems reasonable that) this compound organism can survive further cellular division and eventual transformation into an embryo (fetus, baby, adult) . So if the two blastomeres compose an organism, then (it's reasonable to think that) I am that organism, and hence that I came into existence when the zygote first divided.

Perhaps, though, the blastomeres compose nothing, or perhaps they compose an object that isn't an organism. (Multicellular organisms aren't mere colonies of unicellular ones.) Given the further details of embryology, which I won't recite here, it seems likely that if the blastomeres compose something, it's not an organism. It doesn't follow that they don't compose me: perhaps I who am now an organism once existed as a nonorganism. It's at least not obviously mistaken, though, to maintain both that I came into existence when the embryo did, and also that the embryo came into existence after the blastomeres did and so some time after the destruction of the zygote. I'm content, though, to leave this matter unsettled, for I'm not sure how to settle it, and anyway

336




I've accomplished my stated goal. I've shown that if I was never a zygote, then I didn't exist until at least such time as the zygote ceased to exist.

V. Origination and the Morality of Abortion

I didn't originate, then, at conception. This fact makes trouble of various kinds for some standard pro-life positions. The trouble may be sur- mountable, but it must be and hasn't been surmounted.

Perhaps the most philosophically prominent pro-life position is that of Don Marquis.14 Marquis argues that it's seriously wrong to deprive any being of the potential for certain kinds of valuable future experiences - of a "future like ours" (FLO). (By "seriously wrong," Mar- quis means "seriously presumptively wrong." I'll follow his lead.) Since abortion typically deprives the fetus of an FLO, Marquis says, it is typically seriously wrong.

Marquis considers the objection that on his account, contraception and abstinence are seriously wrong because they deprive a being of an FLO.15 To take this as an objection is to presuppose, as Marquis seems to do, that contraception and abstinence aren't seriously wrong. It's worth noting that even if contraception and abstinence do deprive a being of an FLO, they needn't be equally wrong even by Marquis's lights. If you plump for a morally relevant distinction between acts and omis- sions, you might well see abstinence as less wrong than contraception and both, perhaps, as less wrong than abortion. For abstinence looks like a (mere?) failure to rescue - though the rescue is in most cases an easy and pleasant one - whereas contraception looks like a more odious active interference with a rescue. You might even think that active interference with a rescue is not, unlike abortion, a matter of active killing, and so you might think it less odious than abortion. I don't endorse this hypothetical parsing of moral gravity, but if you do, no matter. What I'm concerned with is the question whether, given Marquis's assumptions,

14. Don Marquis, "An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong," in Contemporary Moral Problems, 6th ed., ed. James White (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000), 164-75. This article is a revised version of "Why Abortion Is Immoral," Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989): 183-202.

15. I ignore many other criticisms of Marquis's argument; see, for example, Gerald Paske, "Abortion and the Neo-Natal Right to Life," in Life and Death, 2nd ed., ed. Louis Pojman (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000), 293-301; reprinted from Louis Pojman and Frank Beckwith, eds., The Abortion Controversy (Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1994), 343- 53.

337



EUGENE MILLS

there's something seriously wrong with abstinence or contraception, not with whether they must be equally wrong or as wrong as abortion. If actively depriving something of an FLO is seriously wrong, then surely failing to prevent such deprivation, when prevention is easy, is at least very significantly wrong.

You might pin your hopes on the gap, if there is one, between very significant wrongs and serious ones. You might say, that is, that while actively killing a being with an FLO is seriously wrong, failure to perform an easy rescue of such a being isn't. This surely isn't Marquis's view; if it were, he would have said so in response to the objection at issue. In any case, the view looks desperate and ad hoc on its face. (This isn't to deny, of course, that some serious wrongs are worse than others.) I'll take for granted that if abstinence and contraception deprive a being of an FLO, then they are seriously wrong by Marquis's lights. If you want to insist that they are only very significantly but not seriously wrong, go right ahead.

The question for Marquis is this: which being is deprived of an FLO by contraception or abstinence? Marquis surveys the candidates

in order of the increasing number of individuals harmed: (1) The single harmed individual might be the combination of the particular sperm and the particular egg that would have united to form a zygote if contraception had not been used. (2) The two harmed individuals might be the particular sperm itself, and, in addition, the ovum itself that would have physically combined to form the zygote (3) The many harmed individuals might be the millions of combinations of sperm and the released ovum whose (small) chances of having an FLO were reduced by the successful contraception. (4) The even larger class of harmed individuals (larger by one) might be the class consisting of all of the individual sperm in an ejaculate and, in addition, the individual ovum released at the time of the successful contraception. (1) through (4) are all candidates for being the subject(s) of harm in the case of successful contraception or abstinence from sex. Which should be cho- sen? Should we hold a lottery? There seems to be no non-arbitrarily determinate subject of harm in the case of successful contraception. But if there is no such subject of harm, then no determinate thing was harmed.16

Marquis is mistaken. There is a single, nonarbitrarily determinate subject of harm in a case of contraception or abstinence: the unique

16. Marquis, "An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong," 174.

338




oocyte that would (or could)17 otherwise have been fertilized. When a woman ovulâtes, only one oocyte is (typically) ripe for fertilization. If it's fertilized, it survives to become a zygote, and nothing else does. Deprive it of fertilization, and you deprive it of an FLO - if, that is, the zygote is identical with the fetus that it becomes.18 If I was once a zygote, then, Marquis has no adequate defense against the objection that abstinence and contraception are (by his lights) seriously wrong.

Marquis might allow, in light of this point, that I was never a zygote. Suppose I wasn't. Then the zygote from which I developed didn't survive to fetushood, and its failure to survive is a matter of at least nomological necessity. So that zygote lacked the potential for an FLO. It was hardly unique in this respect: if I was never a zygote, then no human zygote has the potential for an FLO. So killing a zygote doesn't deprive it of an FLO. Hence Marquis's argument, even if otherwise sound, does nothing to show the serious wrongness of killing a zygote.

This point might not ruffle Marquis. He allows that "during the first fourteen days after conception . . . there is an argument that the fetus is not definitely an individual,"19 and so he allows that perhaps abortion isn't seriously wrong during those two weeks. (Marquis uses 'fetus' to encompass zygote, embryo, and fetus proper.) I don't know what argument Marquis has in mind, but this allowance is confused on its face since if there's anything that is the fetus, then that thing is ipso facto an individual. The view that Marquis might more plausibly mean to countenance is that during the first two weeks, there's nothing that would be identical with the later fetus were the pregnancy to progress normally. Hence there's no individual during the first fourteen days that abortion would deprive of an FLO.

It may seem, then, that my argument should resolve Marquis's apparent indecision about whether his argument applies from the moment of conception. He ought, by his own lights and absent some other argument, to view early abortion as no worse than contraception and abstinence, and he seems to view these as not seriously (or even significantly) wrong.

17. Fertilization might fail. But it's no excuse for not attempting an easy rescue that your attempt might have failed.

18. A can "become B" both in cases in which A is identical with Β and in cases in which it isn't. The boy can become, and be identical with, the man; the man can become dust, by ceasing to exist and undergoing decomposition.

19. Marquis, "An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong," 164.

339



EUGENE MILLS

If all of this is right, it's a substantial result. For Marquis leaves it open whether his argument applies to zygotes, whereas the foregoing considerations clinch the case that it doesn't, at least if contraception and abstinence aren't seriously wrong.

Things aren't so simple, though, and the upshot of my argument may be more substantial still. As I've said, it's a murky question whether zygotes are identical with the fetuses that they become. (I've offered prima facie reasons for thinking they aren't, but these aren't conclusive.) Murky questions of identity can raise flags of moral caution. Absent moral certainty that zygotes aren't identical with later fetuses, moral caution requires us to act as though they are and thus to treat abstinence and contraception as seriously wrong, given Marquis's prin- ciples.20 Perhaps Marquis has the requisite moral certainty. I don't.

I don't say that moral caution forbids abstinence or contraception. I say that it forbids them by Marquis's lights, absent moral certainty about metaphysical murk. I lack that moral certainty,21 and I expect you do, too. If you're justified in thinking abstinence and contraception permissible, then Marquis's lights don't illuminate. That is, if you're justified in thinking contraception and abstinence permissible, but you aren't certain that you were never a zygote, then you can't justifiably hold that deprivation of an FLO suffices for the serious wrongness of abortion. If, on the other hand, you buy Marquis's explanation for the wrongness of abortion and share my epistemic modesty, then you should think that we ought to treat contraception and abstinence as seriously wrong.

You may question my application of moral caution to the case at hand for more than one reason. You might have misgivings about apply- ing moral caution (only) when relevant doubts are "metaphysical."22 These misgivings are baseless. Whether moral caution applies hinges on whether genuine doubt is reasonable in the circumstances, not on

20. "Is that a person or a paper target in the distance? It's unclear, so I'll shoot." Suppose you're lucky and it's a paper target. Luck doesn't justify your action or make it "permissible" in an internalist sense, even if the act is "permissible" in an externalist sense. Articulating a clear and true principle of moral caution is no trivial task, and I don't attempt it here. We can see a clear role for moral caution in some cases absent such a principle, though, and this case is one of them. I use 'moral certainty' to pick out whatever epistemic relation is appropriate for moral caution - perhaps mere epistemic justification, perhaps more.

21. Remember my background supposition: strictly speaking, I lack moral certainty that iJI'm a human organism, then I was never a zygote.

22. As some readers of earlier versions of this article have done.

340




whether the point at issue is metaphysical. Whether something is a person or a paper target is a question about its metaphysical status; the juror who asks whether the defendant is identical with the criminal is asking a metaphysical question of cross-time identity. A philosopher's worries would, of course, rightly be laughed out of court. ("An evil genius may be fooling you into thinking that my client is guilty" or "The problem of temporary intrinsics raises reasonable doubt about my client's guilt.") This isn't because such worries raise "metaphysical doubts," however, but because they raise no actual, relevant doubts at all; or if they do, as they may for the mentally ill, those doubts are unreasonable. Skepti- cism (for example) raises deep, hard philosophical challenges, but not by inducing reasonable, actual doubt about relevant metaphysical claims (as opposed to doubt about various claims of metaphysical, epistemic, or normative theory) . But if they really do induce reasonable doubt in you, then you'd be unreasonable to ignore that doubt and throw moral caution to the wind.

One sort of doubt deserves special mention.23 You might doubt that there's any fact of the matter whether zygotes are identical with later fetuses; you might doubt, that is, that the proposition that they are so identical is either true or false.24 Such doubt might be both actual and (at least initially) reasonable. The grim consequences of denying the principle of bivalence render such doubt ultimately indefensible, in my view, but fortunately, I needn't argue this here. For doubt of this sort is grist for my mill. If you lack moral certainty whether there's any relevant fact in the neighborhood, then you lack moral certainty that there isn 't such a fact and (presumably) that it isn't a fact of the sort that requires the safe moral choice. In this case, my invocation of moral caution proceeds as before. If, on the other hand, you're morally certain that there is no relevant fact, then you're faced with deciding the moral status of an action X such that (a) X is morally wrong if and only if Xhas property F, but (b) you're morally certain that there's no fact of the matter whether Xis F. I know of no one with pro-life leanings who will embrace the combination of theses necessary in this case to yield the result that abortion is seriously wrong but abstinence and contraception aren't. Those with

23. I thank an anonymous referee for this journal for raising this point. 24. These may be distinct and independent doubts, depending on your view of the

relation between factuality and truth. The doubt about truth-value is the crucial one here; I'll treat the doubt about factuality as equivalent to it, recognizing that on some views these are different matters.

341



EUGENE MILLS

such leanings will want to resist, not endorse, the thought that there's no fact of the matter whether the zygote is identical with the later fetus.

I'm supposing for argument's sake, once again, that I'm a human animal and that I know that I'm a human animal. Drop this supposition, and the scope of moral caution changes. If I'm convinced that I'm an immaterial soul rather than a human animal, then I'll see moral caution as bearing on (at least, though probably not only) my uncertainty concerning the moment of ensoulment. If I'm sure I'm material but unsure which materialist account is correct, or if I'm simply unsure whether I'm material or immaterial - never mind the details of this or that account - then the proper scope of moral caution will have to widen and bend to follow the contours of my uncertainty. I won't try to trace these permu- tations here, sticking instead to the assumption that I know that I'm a human animal.

Some other candidates for morally relevant metaphysical status follow the same pattern as Marquis's. Suppose you think that abortion is seriously wrong on the ground that the aborted being is a potential person. (I bypass standard objections to this view.) If I was never a zygote, then zygotes aren't potential people, so your ground says nothing about the moral status of zygotic abortion. If I was once a zygote, though, then unfertilized eggs are potential people, and your principle would make contraception and abstinence seriously wrong. Either way, moral caution would once again counsel treating contraception and abstinence as wrong if your principle were true, barring moral certainty about whether zygotes are identical with the fetuses they become.

You might think that the morally relevant status is not that of being a potential person but simply that of being a person: abortion is seriously wrong because (or when) it kills a person. The question, then, is: at what point does personhood appear? One standard view is that being a person is a matter of having at least some of certain capacities, such as the capacity to reason, to use language, to have a self-concept, or to make or understand moral claims. There's no serious debate that zygotes (and embryos and fetuses, not to mention newborns) lack all these capacities, so if you hold the capacity-view of persons, then personhood can't ground the wrongness of zygotic abortion. Robert Larner has argued, however, that personhood requires having not the capacity for reason (or whatever) but merely the potential for it.25 On this view,

25. "Abortion, Personhood, and the Potential for Consciousness," Journal of Applied Philosophy 12 (1995): 241-51.

342




embryos are people, not just potential people. I don't engage the mer- its of Larner's argument. I merely point out that if having the relevant potentials suffices for personhood and I was once a zygote, then unfertilized eggs are people, too. In that case, contraception and abstinence are once again thrown into moral jeopardy. If I was never a zygote, on the other hand, then the view now in play yields nothing morally problematic about zygotic abortion. Moral caution plays its usual role.

The moral caution to which I've appealed so far stems from moral uncertainty whether I was once a zygote, taking it as established that I didn't originate at conception. A second moral uncertainty might, however, underlie a second application of moral caution. I think I've shown that I didn't originate at conception. It isn't necessary for all of my moral purposes, however, that I've convinced you of this. It's enough that I've made you morally uncertain that I did originate then. For if you aren't morally certain that I originated at conception, then you shouldn't be morally certain that abstinence and conception are permissible while zygotic abortion isn't. If I've convinced you of this much, I'm content; moral caution will do the rest. Analogous points about moral caution apply, mutatis mutandis, to all my arguments still to come; to avoid tedium, I won't rehearse them.

VI. Acquiring Humanity and the Morality of Abortion

Consider next the claim that what matters is being a living human being. If 'human being' is used with a sense that includes personhood, see the previous section. If not, matters are more interesting.

It may seem platitudinous that every living biological organism belongs to some species or other. It's nevertheless false if "belonging" is a matter of membership. Some living organisms are members of no species. Consider a particular living cell that's now a constituent of my liver - call it 'Liv'. A living cell is paradigmatically a living organism, and Liv is a living cell. Yet Liv is not a member of the genus Homo; Liv is not a "human being" on the usual meaning of that term. Liv isn't a member of any genus at all.

Liv is, however, a human liver cell, distinct in biological kind from (say) a canine liver cell. Since Liv is a being, and Liv is human, there's a sense in which Liv is a "human being."

We can, then, distinguish two purely biological senses of 'human being', in addition to the sense that includes psychological personhood. Let's say that something is a "human-being- 1" if and only if it's a member

343



EUGENE MILLS

of the genus Homo. (This is, I think, the normal biological sense of 'human being'.) Let's say that something is a "human-being-2" if and only if it's an organism that is a (not necessarily proper) part of a human- being-1.26 Liv is a human-being-2 but not a human-being-1 .

The unfertilized egg is, it seems, a human-being-2,27 but not a human-being-1. A baby is a human-being-1. The suggestion I'm now con- sidering is that biological conception marks the acquisition of the property of being a human-being-1.^

If you've bought my argument thus far, you'll agree that the question concerns the acquisition of this property by a preexisting being. You might still hold out hope, though, for the conception-as-origination thesis, on the grounds that particular genus-membership is an essential property of that which has it; if I first acquired membership in Homo at conception, then I must have originated then. Here, then, I'll make good on the promissory note I issued earlier.

26. These senses aren't exhaustive. A cell biologically indistinguishable from Liv but living in a petri dish is as much a human liver cell as Liv is, intuitively, even though it's a constituent of no human-being-1. The two senses given suffice, though, for present purposes. Roger Wertheimer hints at the distinction they capture in "Under- standing the Abortion Argument," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971): 67-95; see pp. 69-70, though he blurs the distinction between a human-being-1 and a psychological person.

27. This appearance isn't beyond argument. Some living beings within living human-beings- 1 (for example, the bacteria that live in our guts) are not human-beings- 2; there's more to parthood than interiority, and perhaps oocytes aren't parts of the human-beings-1 that harbor them. Still, an unfertilized oocyte is certainly a living being, and there's some intuitively clear sense in which it's "human." Whether this sense is what's captured by 'human-being-2' isn't important for present purposes - see previous note - so long as it's not what's captured by 'human-being-1 '.

28. Wertheimer, "Understanding the Abortion Argument," 79, gives several reasons for thinking that "one can't go back further" than conception in tracing the life of a human being; if you've followed me so far, you'll recognize all of them as either false or irrelevant. He also says that "no one is inclined to call ... an [unfertilized] egg a human life," and what he means by "a human life" is the life of something that is at least (though not merely) a human-being-1. He admits that "At one time people were so inclined, but only because they thought the sperm merely triggered the development of the egg and hence the egg was a human being." I take no stand on whether an unfertilized egg is a human-being-1; I do think, as should be clear, that the sperm triggers the development of the egg, though I wouldn't say it does "merely" this. I note, however, that even if (a) the sperm does merely trigger the development of the egg, (b) the zygote is a human-being-1, and (c) the zygote is identical with the unfertilized egg, it doesn't follow that the unfertilized egg is a human-being-1. So the diagnostic explanation Wertheimer offers for old inclinations doesn't render those inclinations reasonable, even given the background biological beliefs.

344




Is it true, then, that I first acquired my genus-membership at conception?

If we defer to biologists, we'll take the answer as a clear no. When biologists take population censuses, they count only beings that have been born. They certainly allow that unborn human fetuses and their biological predecessors (embryos, zygotes, unfertilized eggs, and so on) are human, just as Liv is human, but they don't count them as members of the genus Homo. They don't count them, that is, as human-beings-1 .

I don't assume, though, that we should defer to biologists on this matter. Suppose conception marks the point at which something becomes a human-being-1 . Suppose, too, that I was never a zygote. Then for every live human birth, two human-beings-1 die: the one born (who typically dies many years after birth) and the zygote from which that being developed (which dies soon after conception). The zygote from which I developed ceased to exist before the subsequent embryo came into existence. If the zygote and embryo were both human-beings-1, then conception caused something that was not a human-being-1 both to become one and then to die. The oocyte dies no matter what (if I was never a zygote). It dies different deaths, though, depending on whether it's fertilized, and only if it's fertilized is its death the death of a human-being-1 . So if it's the killing of a human-being-1 that is seriously presumptively wrong, then on this view conception must be seriously wrong. Perhaps overriding considerations make conception permissible in some cases - if it's necessary to the survival of the species, perhaps - but it always comes with a huge moral cost. If you nod at this result, you're beyond my reach.

Is there, then, any good reason for holding that I became a human-being-1 at the moment of conception and that I was once a zygote? The defender of the conception-suggestion can't defend that suggestion on the basis of genetic endowment. An unfertilized oocyte is clearly human - it is at least a human-being-2. It has fewer chromosomes than it will have after fertilization. But I now have fewer chromosomes than I would have were I to suffer the first case of adult-onset Down's syndrome, and I could certainly survive such an affliction. As my earlier discussion of genetic essentialism suggests, though, there's no principled basis for denying that every human-being-1 - every member of the genus Homo - simply has two genotypic stages, one before fertilization and one after. Given the difficulties I've pointed out with the hypothesis that conception marks the dawn of a new individual, this two-stage claim seems vastly more plausible than its denial if the zygote is a human-being-1 .

345



EUGENE MILLS

One sort of principled reason you might oppose to this appearance is a moral one. Suppose you have a good argument that abortion is seriously presumptively wrong from the moment of conception and not earlier. This argument might then contribute somehow to a larger argument that we ought to count conception as the moment at which something becomes a human-being-1 (and that I was once a zygote).

I don't mind the idea that we might properly reach metaphysical conclusions from moral premises.29 But if a moral premise concerning the permissibility of abortion offers the only route to these metaphysical conclusions, then it would be viciously circular to argue from the metaphysical claims about genus-membership or cross-time identity to a moral conclusion concerning abortion that's presupposed by the premise.

If the unfertilized oocyte is debarred from being a human-being- 1 on the ground that it, like Liv, is a proper constituent of a human- being-1 , then the zygote is debarred as well. For fertilization does not, on any standard view, cause an egg to go from being a proper constituent to not being a proper constituent of a human-being-1. So if a zygote is a human-being-1, there's no good reason to deny that an unfertilized oocyte is one as well.

John Noonan Jr. argues that conception marks the point at which there is a new "human being,"30 and he seems to mean that it is the point at which something becomes a human-being-1. In some respects his argument echoes, and shares the fate of, Marquis's defense against the contraception-objection that I've already discussed. Noonan also says something new (238):

The positive argument for conception as the decisive moment of humanization is that at conception the new being receives the genetic code. It is this genetic information which determines his characteristics, which is the biological carrier of the possibility of human wisdom, which makes him a self-evolving being.

29. Michael Thompson argues, in effect, that normative considerations play a role in fixing matters of biological taxonomy in "The Representation of Life," in Virtues and Reasons, ed. Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995): 247-97. He may be right; his account of species- membership is wholly consistent with all of my suppositions here.

30. Noonan, "An Almost Absolute Value in History," in Contemporary Moral Problems, 6th ed., ed. James White (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000), 136-41; reprinted from John T. Noonan Jr., ed., The Morality of Abortion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 51-59.

346




Unfortunately, this argument collapses under scrutiny. Leave aside for a moment the bald claim that at conception a new being receives a genetic code. It's false that the genetic information encoded in a (male) fertilized egg determines "his characteristics" if this means that it determines all the traits he'll have at maturity. (I suppose tem- porarily for argument's sake, as Noonan supposes in fact, that the fertilized egg is identical with the human adult into which it develops.) A zygote 's genetic endowment determines some of the adult's traits (ceteris paribus) and not others; some are determined by later genetic alteration, parenting, education, nutrition, and so on. The same goes for the genetic endowment of the unfertilized oocyte: it determines some adult traits (ceteris paribus) and not others. The only truth in the neighborhood is an impotent truism: the diploid genetic information bestowed by conception determines some of a being's characteristics -

namely those determined by that diploid genetic information. These aren't all of the being's characteristics, though, and it's an equally impotent truism that the haploid genetic information contained in the unfertilized oocyte determines some of a being's characteristics - namely those determined by that haploid genetic information.

Noonan suggests that a zygote 's having a distinctively human diploid genetic endowment is a biologically necessary condition for the eventual development of human wisdom. Suppose this is right. It's equally true that an unfertilized egg's having a distinctively human haploid genetic endowment is a biologically necessary condition for the eventual development of human wisdom. In both cases, we have a biologically necessary condition for the possibility of human wisdom. In neither case do we have a sufficient one. Again, there's no basis here for the view that conception marks the acquisition of being a human-being-1 .

What lies behind Noonan 's fallacious argument concerning the acquisition of "humanness" seems pretty clearly to be the explicit, unargued, and untenable assumption that biological conception is in fact ontological conception. It may not be silly to think - though it's also far from obvious - that whenever a new being appears that will someday be an uncontroversial human-being-1 , it's a human-being-1 from the beginning. You argue in a tight, vicious circle, however, if you invoke the thesis that conception confers genus-membership to support the conception- as-origination thesis, and then offer that very thesis as the sole reason for thinking that conception confers genus-membership. As I've shown, there's no good reason to think that a new being appears at conception. It doesn't follow that conception doesn't mark the first moment of

347



EUGENE MILLS

something's being a human-being-1 . I claim merely that no plausible reason for thinking that it does has been articulated.

I've been supposing for argument's sake that I'm a human organism. Suppose instead that I'm an immaterial being, or a compound of body and soul, or a material being numerically if not mereologically distinct from any human organism. Can ontological revision rescue the view that conception is ontologically or morally salient? It's hard to see how; it seems, in fact, to put this view farther out of reach. You might argue that conception is the moment at which a preexisting organism becomes (for example) ensouled, or at which a material being distinct from but colocated with the zygote comes into existence. It's hard to see how any such argument might succeed, but I await with interest attempts in this direction.

Nothing I've said here precludes the possibility of a compelling argument that abortion is presumptively wrong after conception but not before. Current arguments to this effect fail, though, and defenders of this view have their work cut out for them.

348



Documents

The Egg and I: Conception, Identity, and Abortion