Is a Fertilized Egg a Chicken?

The Question

During a discussion among friends, Frank asked, "Question: is a fertilized egg a chicken?"

All my life, I have stayed out of the abortion issue, not unafraid to state my opinion, but unable, because I was so inadequate on knowledge and understanding. Anything popped out would be reminiscent of the ancient Sophists, the mouths for hire, BCE. Lawyer be he or no, anyone can take the side of any issue and speak up. Often, that is sophistry, the skill of weaving words and presenting a fine rug or a dirty rag.

A Bit of Background

What always was clear to me, or to others who wonder about chickens and eggs, trees and seeds, flowers and bees buzzing away at fertilization, is that the issue is organic in its essence. I did well in first semester Chemistry, the non-organic stuff like Mathematics and the logic involved in things that were still and patient, waiting to be measured and sized up in fixed numbers. But in second semester the course turned to Organic, and I got lost promptly. Never caught on; still haven't.

Living things, they taught us in Philosophical Psychology a couple of years later in the Jesuit brand of higher education, were separated from non-living by a collection of factors. They moved by themselves, as did beetles and their larvae, grubs. They had senses. We got five. Dogs got more or better ones for hearing and smelling. Eagles could fly and see through clouds and rain. Barracuda could swim, but died out of the water.

Then there were the intussusceptions of food. One of my first great and unforgettable words, sounded so lofty and hard to pronounce. Made me a learned college boy, I thought. Dad thought that I was bonkers and the Jesuits at BC were from another planet. Wrestling with a new way to think -- slowly, not impulsively -- I got to thinking about eating a live pear. Well, used to be live, now dead because plucked. Aborted? I chewed, swallowed, digested, and the masticated remnants were worked on by the stomach extracting nutrients, and dumped into the bowels, as the intussusceptions of food into shit. That excrement was also organic, I was told when I dared ask. And so were amoeba and plankton and mosquitoes and sharks.

Like art or pornography, I wasn't sure what life actually was or is, but I could tell it when I saw it. It moved. By itself. Poor Galileo muttered, "Eppur si muove," in his imprisonment for life. But Rome couldn't see planets moving around the sun then, because it wouldn't look in his telescope, and the Bible said the Earth doesn't move, and counsel for the prosecution was a Jesuit Cardinal.

As I grew older and more learned, I came to Logic and Epistemology, my first class in Scholastic Philosophy, enthralled that Thomas Aquinas from the Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries, CE, had found Aristotle from the Fifth, used to be the Greatest, but BCE. The portly Dominican of Italy, who ate a lot of straw, linked up with the Greek and gave us Thomism, which had become Neo-Thomistic by the time I reached Junior year in 1947. It's still the Official Philosophy, isn't it? You know, the one and only System of thought with clearly defined terms and syllogistic reasoning to help us discover Truth, as real live practicing Roman Catholics. That one.

Fr. Frank Low, SJ, was our Logic professor at BC. We adored him; he turned down a major league baseball contract to join the Jesuits when he was a young lad.. He set out the syllogistic method of reasoning by writing on the board "S = P". He stopped and hollered that, first of all, we were to define the terms lurking as that Subject and Predicate, which formed a Proposition when copulated with the verb "to be." e.g. Men (S) are (=) handsome (P). Women (S) are (=) beautiful (P). I am a Man -- Woman. Therefore, I am . . .

Father Low often said something like: Define your terms. Define your terms. Take mine and I will reason with you. Give me yours and I will defeat you with mine. Define your terms.

Questions for Discussion to Find Reasoned Answers

What is life?

When does it begin?

I know Who. I know Why. I know What. I know Where. I do not know When.

If murder is defined as killing a human being, and if a fetus is a human being, then it follows that abortion is murder. Has to. But murder is not that simple. There is killing that is justified, in self defense, when at war, by the State in executions of real bad felons. And mitigated, as in passionate, or due to insanity, or second degree, or manslaughter, or the other ones. And, of course, there is the real bad one: unjustified, deliberate, with the intent to deprive another of life, no excuses or qualifications, cold-blooded, and on and on, with lawyers and their courts of justice finding more and more distinctions as the issues grow tighter and narrower, until we gasp and throw up our hands, screaming, "Do words mean anything at all?" Fr. Low stammers on in memory over the years, 52 of them now: Define your terms.

At 80, fairly intelligent, a reader of a bit more than normal amounts, a worker who used mind more than hands during a lifetime of getting up and going to work each day, I do not recall ever seeing a definitive statement pinning down the beginning of life. Not just in human beings, but in anything alive. I know that living beings come from living beings. Steel pipes do not beget steel pipettes. Diamonds do not replicate. Tectonic plates don't ….. well, maybe they do.

At least, we are taught that there is no creation ex nihilo, every time a sperm fertilizes an ovum, and life comes from life somewhere along the line for those organic beings which spend time in utero prior to being birthed. Look closely in the womb with modern tools: a fetus begins to look like a tiny sparrow, a moving elephant, a baby girl, but isn't, yet. I suppose, we should not ask, "When does life begin?" We should ask, "At what stage of biological development -- conception, pregnancy, birth -- does a fetus become a sparrow, an elephant, a baby girl?" I do not know whether medical or biological science has yet determined that moment or span of moments.

From all I have read, I guess it is when the fetus can live on its own apart from the umbilical cord linking it to its mother and outside the womb. I do not know what medical science or biology says about that period of time. Nor, do I know whether the Law has accepted what science has determined. I honestly do not know what the Roman Catholic Church teaches officially when life does begin, nor where to find the language of that Official Teaching. Could it be so that deprivation before that moment is OK, but after that, it descends into a grave sin, for which hellfire is the only adequate punishment?

The question, I think, has something to do with a fertilized egg undergoing pregnancy, while attached to the mother in her womb, or with the first breath at birth. There have to be two to procreate by conceiving. Pro-lifers do not shoot men who masturbate and drip their seed on the ground, nor kill women who lose eggs without intercourse prior to that discharge. I suppose it would be a pretty desperate reach over the top to propose imprisonment of anyone who prevents fertilization of eggs by sperm, even to think of executing them for interfering with life. But, as we are aware, civility and restraint are not characteristics of those involved in what they conceive to be the sole issue of Catholicism in public life.

That is actually the other issue in sexual morality: Birth Control. Sometimes, just to make the Abortion issue much more difficult to comprehend, it is linked with Birth Control, as one of the procedures, and is somehow entailed within Official Teachings on Sexual Morality by those hierarchical leaders ordained for the primary purpose of presenting those Teachings. In the minds of many of the common people, however, use of the Pill prior to intercourse is not in the same emotional cauldron as seeking or procuring surgical intervention after conception and during pregnancy. Abortion is its own issue. Like Murder, it has many parts, many distinctions. Any simplistic definition of terms - whether for Murder or Abortion -- prevents all discussion, closes minds tight behind the wall of the Magisterium, renders reasoning incomprehensible, and leads to violence, even terrorism. Bishops turn their backs, put on stoned faces, excommunicate.

Pro-Life Militants Die to Join

Still, the scenarios are frightening. The Pro-Life group hollers to stop the killing. Resting on infallible Official Teachings, they do not take prisoners. In close quarters they march to the single tone of a one-beat drum and proclaim that there is no issue other than theirs. They march to the line drawn in the sand, stand on it, yell: You want definitions? These are ours. Take them, and you will have to take our convictions. When life is involved, we do not discuss. We act. You are murderers. We will ex- you, excommunicate or execute, for killing babies in the womb.

Us? We're no killers. We're Pro-Life. See. God said so. The bishop said so, too. Oh! Yes! We are on the Right and we are right. The bishop said so, and he told us that God said it was so and commanded him to say so.

Not in the Bible? Well, then, in infallible doctrine, which became dogma, ex cathedra. Right? We are the Right and we are right.

Who said so? We don't know and we don't care.

When? Oh! Gosh, it's in the Catechism.

Which one? All of them, silly. C'mon, what do you mean I'm rigid, brainwashed? You are anti-Catholic, an apostate heretic. You crucify Christ.

Pro-Choice Serenity Chooses Civility

The Pro-Choice group hollers back that the other group has but one issue, only one, judy the one. Both groups holler louder and louder.

Downshouted and berated, but uncowed, they hang onto reason, clings to Faith, though it seems to waver in the haze of anger. We are Catholics of 2009, not 1009. We wish to engage civilly, noting that it has been said that organic stuff is not as logical or tight and neat as non-organic. There's something fuzzy about Biology, you know. But in Physics, aha!, there we are on solid ground. Right?

Perhaps, once we got beyond molecules into atoms and then inside the atom to nucleus, protons and neutrons, and deeper into elusive subatomic particles -- until Hiroshima -- we began to see reality's matter and are coming to discover that there are those which must be present in cyclotrons, but exceed the speed of light, and so, begin to disappear before they begin to exist, and , well, maybe, there's something to the Spin Theory after all and we should continue looking into what makes our universe tick, whether large, out there, or small, in here. Soon, real soon, they promise us, we will discover the basic building block of our universe, i.e. all reality.

There's more. What? Where? Oh! Look. Listen. Our scientists are breaking through.

Talk with God? Right, but maybe that's just a term, a word we use for the ineffable, like "life."

Give us your definitions and we'll talk with you. Be careful. We will do an exchange and give you ours and we will change your minds.

The Finality

I just don't know. And that's why I have no position on hugging and kissing and petting and going all the way and conceiving with her and then holding her hand for nine months and beaming as a proud father, wondering how in all that is right and just and holy I'm going to help our child grow up, get an education, leave home, land a good job, meet and fall in love with a woman or man as good and decent as us, the parents, but better.

Unless, of course, some religious leader denounces me publicly for being so incorrigible a sinner that I cannot go to Communion, face excommunication, and should most likely be executed for murdering life, because I took sides and chose Pro Choice.

Maybe at my age, it's too late to stand and be counted. I am pretty worn out and tired and am not blessed with too many smarts. I don't think I am stupid, am I? Well, maybe just a tad slower than those with a cause. Not as fired us as they. Is fervor a hallmark of faith? Well, I don't have a cause. I want to have a Church, be at home in Church.

But, then again, there's the Sacrament of Reconciliation, isn't there? Is that one still around?

"Bless me Father for I have sinned. I took a fertilized egg for a chicken three times since my last confession. In a discussion on abortion."

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