Moral Status of Embryo

DETERMINING THE MORAL status of a human embryo means that a moral principle is applied to biological facts by human reasoning at some point in a biological process. The point in the process chosen unites natural facts as understood by humans with ideas of ought, or right, or moral principle(s). The evaluative reasoning used to make a moral judgment about the moral status of an embryo has numerous consequences. The consequences significantly affect the embryo, individuals related to the embryo, and society as well.

The moral status of a fetus that is the product of natural reproduction is a matter that has been generally settled around the world from millennia of human experience. The developments of modern medicine making abortion very safe have reopened the issue of the moral status of a fetus in a natural pregnancy. In an example of the fact that law and morals are not always in agreement, the issue of abortion has been settled in Anglo—American law with the decision that an embryo as it develops into a fetus is not given full legal rights until after birth.

The politics of the abortion controversy have affected the moral debate about the status of embryos that are the product of advancing reproductive technology. Many of those who claim a moral status for an embryo in all cases of natural pregnancy extend this claim to both in vivo and in vitro fertilization.

It is generally understood that an embryo begins its existence when a sperm fertilizes an egg. In normal reproduction, this cycle ends with birth of the being the embryo was destined to become at fertilization. Actually, the early development of an embryo is not quite so simple nor so determined because the biological development of a fertilized egg is a much more complicated process than it was understood to be by previous generations. The process involves a variety of possibilities that affect the future of the embryo, and therefore its possible moral status. As a consequence, the moral status of an embryo as a human being at conception is a matter of serious debate for a number of reasons. Some reasons are religious, and others are secular.

In general, most controversy about the moral status of an embryo in regard to stem cell research is about the life of the embryo between fertilization and its development to about the 14th day of in vitro fertilization. Broadly, the stages in reproduction can be called the prefertilization stage, the early development stage, and the later development stage. Only the early development stage arouses moral controversy. The prefertilization stage usually does not raise moral controversy, and the later developmental stage is not controversial because the embryo was successfully implanted, with the pregnancy then proceeding normally.

There is a problem, however, that arises in using the term stages, in that it seems to imply that the stages are events. This is really an older way of looking at the reproductive process, which rendered the act of fertilization of an egg an event, which seems to suggest that it is fixed. Contemporary science has shown that reproduction, whether natural or technologically assisted, is a fluid process in which a number of things can occur that can produce several possible futures for the embryo in its earliest stages of development. This understanding makes it more difficult to mark some point in the process as a définitive biological development.

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