I just read about a news article showing a poll that says 6 in 10 U.S. adults support protecting the rights of embryos to some degree. It mentioned a court ruling in Alabama state, which says embryos, even fertilized outside the womb, have equal rights as humans do. This ruling almost forced IVF treatment centers in Alabama to halt operation because if embryos are indeed humans, they are basically killing hundreds of lives every year as they dispose unused embryos!
Absurd as the "embryo equals human" argument seems at first glance, it actually leads to a deeper, philosophical question: when does life begin, and when does it end?
According to the same poll, 3 in 10 Americans believe the statement: "human life begins at conception," which sounds perfectly logical. But when put into legal context, not so much.
The Article 7 of the Civil Code of Taiwan stipulates that "An unborn child is considered as if it were already born with regard to its interests, except it was subsequently born dead."
This was simple when woman could only conceive naturally with all the child-bearing processes happening inside their body. But now, with the advent of IVF treatment, which carries out egg and sperm fertilization artificially in a lab, the answer isn't that simple anymore. One needs to think twice about what defines "an unborn baby."
In the past, few had really doubted the vague line between an non-living egg, fertilized or not, and a fetus. Lawyers and legal scholars were more concerned about the line between a fetus and a born baby. They have developed several legal doctrines for deciding life status, or whether an "organism" is living or not.
A widely adopted one is the "independent respiration doctrine," which takes the baby's first breath as the beginning point of its life. Before that moment, the baby is just a BODY PART of the mother.
But the Criminal Code has a different definition of fetus and living human.
The Criminal Code criminalizes the carrying out of abortion by pregnant women, unless otherwise permitted. Exemptions include potential genetic diseases of the baby, life threatening risks to the mother, unlawful sexual misconducts, or severe impacts to the mother's mental health or family life.
The majority opinion says that it starts from the 14th day after intercourse, and ends before the 24th week of pregnancy, from which point it will be deemed as an independent child. This has a reason because the egg and sperm usually meet 2 weeks after sex, and in medical practices, children born after the 24th week of pregnancy have a greater chance to live rather than die.
(To be continue...)
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