Before the pandemic, I met with different friends for coffee regularly. Since these are mostly former colleagues, we often reminisce on shared memories. Sometimes our conversations drift to other friends and how they’re doing. We occasionally talk about our current positions. Sometimes those conversations are celebrations; occasionally they are rants. That said, their different takes on the same events persistently surprise me. Everyone has different perspective and life experiences.
One such friend has an identical twin, though I’ve never seen them both together, save for the occasional picture. I found this fascinating. For instance, I listened intently of stories where they played on the same basketball team and was very amused by imagining how the opposing players would react to seeing the ‘same’ person twice on the court. Similarly, I wondered how well face detection technology worked between identical twins. There are many questions that a geek like me would ask about being an identical twin, mostly debates about ‘nature vs. nurture’.
That said, I would’ve never known about their twin had they not told me. My friend lived life completely independent from their sibling. Furthermore, they were easily as competent and passionate about their work than anyone I had ever known. Their having an identical twin didn’t make them any lesser than any of my other friends.
Life at conception?
Another term for identical twins is monozygotic twins, which is to say from one zygote. The reason they’re identical is because they have the same DNA. Furthermore, the reason for that is because they come from the same egg and sperm cell. The egg becomes fertilized and later it separates into multiple distinct embryos. Apologies for the high school biology lesson. This separation may occur as late as nine days after conception.
I’ve often said that my mind is a landfill of information, and I’ll often cross-reference ideas. With the recent overturning of Roe versus Wade, there are many states that will claim that life begins at conception and try to pass restrictive laws about access to abortion. I’ve made the case that medically, the definition of life should be defined in the same way we define death. We define death at the point where we effectively can’t medically bring you back (and that has changed as medical technology changes). Similarly, we should define birth when that pregnancy can survive without its mother (and this will change with improvements in medical technology).
Spiritually, you may choose to believe whatever you want, of course. Just don’t impose your religious dogma upon others, freedom of religion and all.
Many still maintain that life begins at conception, presumably that there’s a life, indeed a soul, attached to that egg at the point of fertilization. If that is the case, how does that single life and soul resolve with identical siblings? We won’t debate that they exist, right? If the union of that egg and sperm result in precisely one life and soul at that moment, which separates as many as nine days later, is my friend a fraction of a person?
“Well, maybe not exactly at conception”
This is the point in the conversation where people start to waffle. Understanding that identical siblings exist and knowing medically about how that occurs, then the options are:
- Life indeed begins at conception. When that zygote splits, each section gets a fraction of that life or soul.
- Life begins at some point later. Since that zygote splits as late as nine days later, it’d have to be at some point after that.
Some will assert that I split hairs; this zygote eventually becomes a life and that debating when that occurs is pointless. Except that it’s not. Legislation exists that relies on this timeline being beyond contestation; it’s not. The morning-after pill may be used as late as 120 hours after sexual activity. Those 120 hours (five days) is much shorter than the nine days before that zygote splits; the timing matters.
If you sit in camp #1 above (each identical sibling is a fraction), then what are the legal implications? If you slay an identical twin, is it murder if their sibling is still alive? Did you really slay them or instead only wound part of the whole? Perhaps this person was merely dismembered.
However, if you sit in camp #2 above, then you have to concede that any sort of contraception used before the nine days is not, in fact, affecting a life. Establishing legislation around any such method of birth control does not actually affect life, so it’s an abuse of that legislation. However, if you concede that life begins sometime between nine days and nine months, precisely when is that?
“Maybe two souls are assigned to that zygote”
This counterargument feels a bit like talking to a contortionist simply trying to make things fit. First, we discovered how identical siblings form fairly late in our world’s history. I know of no reference in a religious text that describes precisely when life begins with respect to cellular development. Second, let’s say that I entertain the idea that God somehow knows to assign two souls to that single zygote. We’ll entertain the notion that an omniscient and omnipotent being will simply dispense two to this particular womb with one zygote… that indeed, we don’t know how such a deity chooses to operate under these exceptional conditions.
However, we entertain the notion that God may dispense two souls to identical twins at conception knowing that it will split into two. Is it not also plausible that this deity assigns zero souls to miscarriages? Or to abortions? If we concede that we, as humans, have no insight into this process, we can’t definitively know that life begins at any point short of exiting the womb. Therefore, if we don’t know anything beyond the shadow of a doubt, how do we make our peace with legislating it and taking away people’s rights?
What we know and don’t know
We know by scientific observation that monozygotic twins may split as late as nine days. To assert that life definitively begins at conception is to redefine what we consider to be an individual life. If you acknowledge that each identical twin is their own complete being also means that you concede that life actually begins sometime after that. Unfortunately, that time window is large (nine days to nine months). Establishing a threshold is a source of great distress.
However, a human is biologically neither parasite nor symbiont; we are designed to be self-sufficient. If a pregnant woman dies abruptly, how far along must the pregnancy be before doctors can successfully deliver it? We can collectively agree that nine days is too soon and 8½ months is very possible. One logical conclusion is to look at the success rates of premature babies to establish that threshold; that’s when the pregnancy becomes self-sufficient. This is a very reasonable way to establish that threshold.
Except that it was reasonable when it was first proposed fifty years ago, in a well-known case called Roe versus Wade. The term that they used was fetal viability. It was originally set at 28 weeks and has dropped to 24 weeks as our medical technology improved.