In light of the foregoing information, and particularly in light of the conclusion that death is usually bad for a living being, how are we to tackle the moral issues of abortion? On this topic, opinion is sharply divided and often bitter. When does human life start? What is good or bad for human life? Is abortion harmful to the aborted? Is it murder? When does human life have full moral status as a human being – or any moral status at all? What, if anything, does being a person have to do with it? Of what significance is it, if any, that (except in vitro) an embryo's life processes overlap with those of its mother? How are we justly to resolve conflicts of interest? These are some of the issues we need to consider in connection with abortion, and biocentric conceptions can give us some help in dealing with them. My primary concern at this point is not to commence arguing the rights or wrongs of abortion but to explore some of the background material needed for a well-grounded consideration of the moral issues of abortion.

The Beginning of Human Life

When does human life start? The factually correct answer is that it has already started, having done so quite a long while ago. Life comes from life before it, but never, so far as we have even the slightest reason to believe, does it now start afresh. Certainly human life does not. Every child, every embryo, every adult started from a microscopic living cell, a zygote. But life did not start there. The zygote was formed from a living ovum and a living sperm cell, each of which formed as part of, then separated from, other living beings (the parents) – and so on back. If we are creationists, then we believe that human life comes from previous human life, all the way back to the Creation. If we accept scientific orthodoxy, then we hold that human life comes from human life or (a long time ago) from prehuman life, all the way back in time and back in evolution, to the very first life arising in the primordial soup. Never at any time since has there been a nonliving stage. The process of life goes on continuously from first until now.