When an individual life begins - and the ethics of ending it
THE SOUL OF THE EMBRYO. An enquiry into the status of the human embryo in the Christian tradition. By David Albert Jones. 266pp. Continuum. Paperback, Pounds
16.99 (US $23.95). - 0 8264 6296 0
AIMING TO KILL. The ethics of suicide and euthanasia. By Nigel Biggar. 240pp.
Darton, Longman and Todd. Paperback, Pounds 8.95. US: Pilgrim Press. $20. - 0
8298 1503 1.
Where did I begin? When does any individual human being begin? At what stage of its development does a human organism become entitled to the moral and legal protection which we give to the life of human adults? Is it at conception, or at birth, or somewhere between the two? In his rich and fascinating book The Soul of the Embryo: An enquiry into the status of the human embryo in the Christian tradition, simultaneously erudite and accessible, David Albert Jones records the answers to this question that have been given by different moral communities across cultures and across centuries. He takes the story from the Book of Job and the Hippocratic corpus right up to the Warnock and Harries Reports and the Human Reproductive Cloning Act of 2001. Jones offers closely reasoned arguments for the position he eventually defends, while treating fairly and courteously those he rejects. Though he concentrates on the Christian tradition, his book can be recommended to all those who have a serious interest in the moral issues surrounding abortion, IVF and stem-cell research.
The three alternatives -at conception, at birth, or between -do not in fact exhaust the possibilities. Plato, and some Jewish and Christian admirers of Plato, thought that individual human persons existed as souls before the conception of the bodies they would eventually inhabit. This idea found expression in the Book of Wisdom (8: 19-20), where Solomon says, "I was a boy of happy disposition: I had received a good soul as my lot, or rather, being good, I had entered an undefiled body".
Clement of Alexandria records an early Christian notion that the soul is introduced by an angel into a suitably purified womb. Jones is surely right to treat such fantasies as having little relevance to any contemporary moral debate.
