Some laws and definitions created within human societies are ignorant of, or defy, observable natural and structural laws existing in the world around them. The debate over when personhood is established in the human reproductive process is a very illustrative example. The word and concept of “person” is defined as a composite of characteristics that make up an individual personality. A person is a living human. To do something or go somewhere “in person” is to do it “yourself”. The “person” is the “self”. U.S. federal law ruled that an “unborn entity is not a person” until 2022. By overturning established law, the Supreme Court did not define embryo personhood but left the issue to individual states.
Most US jurisdictions treat stored, frozen embryos as property with contractual agreements between individual clinics and biological parents. Other states define extrauterine embryos differently. Louisiana defines such embryos as a “judicial person”. Alabama defines frozen embryos as legally “minor children” under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
In my opinion, giving a frozen, not yet implanted embryo the same status as a person bypassed all the traditional definitions of what a person is. The frozen embryo doesn’t have a composite of identifiable characteristics, does not have living breath, and cannot go anywhere “in person”. This change in definition of personhood originated primarily from male Christians who can participate in conception but are incapable of converting any fertilized embryo to a fetus then birthed into a breathing human person. To say a frozen human embryo is the same as a child is akin to saying an acorn is the same as an oak tree. This makes no sense to me because an embryo cannot sit on my lap, and I cannot get beautiful oak boards from an acorn. Let me explain my thinking.
When I am uncertain about a modern, human issue, I resort to watching how natural systems handle the topic. The natural world is the ultimate authority despite our modern capabilities and willfulness. We humans can make nuanced and spectacular influences on ourselves and in our world, but the life and death cycles embedded in the natural world will ultimately win out. Our modernity lulls us into thinking and acting with impunity from nature’s influence, but we are perilously foolish to do so.
Nature’s promise of sustained life is embedded in its profound fecundity. Every living organism produces enormous quantities of potential regeneration. There are seasonal clouds of pine pollen in the boreal forest while the deciduous forest floor is covered in maple winged seeds and oak acorns. Fresh and salt waters contain uncountable quantities of fish eggs and sperm. A mature human female will have approximately 300,000 eggs while the mature male will produce millions of sperm every day. Clearly, nature does not intend for all these numbers to bear fruit. The massive quantities are insurance that some will result in regeneration of the organism and sustain life over time. Nature’s wisdom in potential is not yet actualized. There are other conditions that must be met to fulfill regeneration.
Fertilization must happen next. Nature accomplishes this in multiple ways. The swirling wind and water for some plants and the fishes. Direct contact by bees, birds, and mammals can result in fertilization. Here again we see nature insisting on many more acts of potential, so some will result in fertilization. Conditions must be right for these acts of fertilization to result in regeneration. Air, water, and soil temperatures, as well as monthly and seasonal timing, must be correct.
Nature will produce more fertile seeds and eggs than will result in realized regeneration. Each organism requires optimal conditions for a certain time period to ripen the potential into actuality. If these conditions are not met, the parent plant or animal will reject that fertilized part of itself to maintain the parent’s health and safety. This is nature’s system for protecting the parent’s potential to reproduce in the next cycle. Pregnant deer in the boreal forest will spontaneously abort their fawns in a harsh winter if the adult is in danger of starvation. In drought conditions, fruit trees will drop their emerging crop to the ground to save the parent tree from withering. In observing nature, we see that her enormous reproductive potential is reduced to a very small fraction of successful regeneration due to many conditions of air, water, light and dark, time and space.
In vitro fertilization (IVF) was developed to bypass nature’s requirements in human reproduction as a way to help some families without optimal conditions for successful pregnancy. It is a testament to the desire for children that families go through this expensive, emotional, and sometimes unsuccessful process. To increase the odds of successful childbirth, the IVF community uses a tactic from nature’s playbook by harvesting multiple embryos. The desired outcome is for one embryo to be implanted, carried to term, and result in a live birth. If this process fails at any point, a second frozen embryo is implanted to repeat the process. The procedures continue until parental desires for children are met. This expensive and intimate process happens quietly between hopeful adults and legal healthcare practitioners while the arguments of personhood rail in some statehouses, courts, and churches. These moralistic and dogmatic laws have put pregnant women at risk. Arguing for the sanctity of all life, they have forgotten that in nature the giver of life, the mother of future generations, is more important than the fruit putting her at risk. They are ignorant that not all will be fertile, not all fertile will sprout, and not all sprouts survive. Their moral law disregards the Divine laws of nature.
An oak forest knows what a tree is even when acorn production varies from year to year with climate conditions. Some acorns will be eaten in the tree by squirrels, while some acorns will fall to the ground to nourish deer, squirrels, and others. In the Wisdom and Mystery of Divine Creation, some acorns will be buried by squirrels for their winter cache. These acorns “implanted” into the earth womb have the potential for sprouting. The acorn stays buried all winter until sunlight warms the moist soil, creating the conditions for underground sprouting. But the sprout cannot become a young tree until it emerges into the spring sunlight and fresh air. Then, and only then, can it become an oak sapling.
Our ancient ancestors were not confused about personhood. Only a living baby was the group’s blessing of a future. Continued community existence was dependent on the regeneration of persons with individual characteristics and able to do something “in person”. Modern scientific knowledge of human reproduction has been helpful to the well-being of mother and child but has been used by others to blur what a “person” is. Nature is not confused about what an oak tree is or isn’t.
