Brain birth

Ivan Padovani (March 10) avers that the foetus, from conception to birth, is a person for three main reasons: firstly, it is alive, secondly, it is human and, thirdly, it is a member of the human species.

I certainly agree that the fertilised egg is biologically alive and that it is human. So are blood cells, hair follicles, cancer cells. The list is endless, although one would not choose to confer the status of personhood on any of these cells.

As to his claim that a fertilised egg is a member of the human species, this is as true as saying that an acorn is a member of the oak family. Like many leading bioethicists, I believe that a fertilised egg is a potential human being, just as an acorn is a potential oak tree. But potential does not mean actual.

The notion that personhood is related to mental capacity may be arbitrary, but it remains the most appealingly logical concept of all, simply because the brain epitomises the essence of every human being. Without a brain, there can be no person.

For several years, brain death has been the accepted legal definition of death and the end of personhood. The whole field of human organ transplantation depends on this arbitrary concept, wherein brain-dead individuals are kept on ventilator support until all their other still fully-functional organs - heart, lungs, kidneys, liver - are removed and used to save other people's lives.

If brain death indicates the end of personhood, then brain birth must logically indicate its beginning; and it is known that the hard wiring of the cerebral cortex and the processes of memory and learning do not begin until about the end of the fifth month of gestation.

The importance of the brain in the personhood debate can be further demonstrated in a hypothetical situation. Suppose it were possible for Dr Padovani and me to have our brains surgically removed and exchanged, so that I ended up with his brain in my body and he ended up with my brain in his. Which individual would Dr Padovani now consider himself to be?

The one which consists of his body, but which now has my thoughts, memories and experiences, or my body which now contains his brain? The answer is obvious because, although every part of the body may be replaced without altering one's personhood, as soon as the brain is replaced, that person is no more.

The rest of Dr Padovani's wordy discourse is nothing more than the inflammatory drivel one has come to expect from the anti-choice lobby. Likened to Nazis and white supremacists, adherents of the individual's right to choose are depicted as the purveyors of genocide. What Dr Padovani appears to overlook is that, in modern rights-based societies, to coerce a woman to resort to abortion is a crime and just about as permissible as forcing her to chop off one of her arms!

The caption accompanying Dr Padovani's article reads, "When we can loftily decide... that we can summarily deprive others of their rights, we are oppressing them." How true. The countless women who have lost their lives because, in their desperation, they had no option but to resort to using the services of a back-street quack, operating in unsanitary conditions, are a testament to the tyranny that claims to represent the voice of the unborn, but which pigheadedly ignores the voice of those who are very much born and whose grievances deserve to be taken into consideration - if anything, for what they consider to be their best interests on a matter in which opinion is so evidently divided.