Terri Schiavo and Life in the Abstract

Not too many yeasr ago, if I remember rightly, there was a case vaguely similar to that currently trying the conscience of America, in which a baby born without a brain was being kept on a respirator—whether in the UK or in the States, I can’t recall—and there were calls to keep its heart and lungs working on the grounds that despite not having a brain, it was at least alive.

I remember wondering at the time what purpose this could serve. To what extent could this baby’s life be regarded as a human life, given that there was no possibility of consciousness or the prospective development of consciousness (where the Schiavo case differs, obviously, is on the possibility of recovery)? What was to be gained by the perpetuation of this life? Had I had a blog at the time, I might have suggested that we could harvest the body for stem cells so that at least other people might benefit from the birth of this being, but that would have just been me being provocative, and the hate mail directed my way would have served no purpose except justify my retention of site meter.

Anyhoo, it occurs to me that the reason why protestors could not, even in that case, allow the respirator to be turned off was that old “slippery slope” scenario, according to which, if you concede that it is NOT the case that “every human life is worth living” and therefore sustaining, you risk falling into the trap of having to define “quality of life” limits that make it possible to introduce the acceptability of involuntary euthanasia into the zeitgeist. The alternative was to concede that the baby was not human, which would have led to the equally problematic prospect of having to redefine the boundaries of human existence without conceding ground to pro-choice supporters who contend that partially developed fetuses are “less than fully human.”

As it happened, the “baby” in question died before any real argument could take place (I think the heart gave out), much to the relief, I suspect, of parties on every side of the debate. But the questions remain: Was this recognizably a human existence? If not, do we have obligations to an entity simply because it is living, and would that thereby extend to beings such as plants or nonhuman organisms without brains? And more to the point, do those obligations include keeping it alive or, on occasion, allowing it to die with dignity if it is already moribund?

As a parting thought, and just to be macabre, should it be possible for us to generate fetuses in future without brains, what possible objection could there be to harvesting their stem cells? Indeed, why not produce them precisely for that purpose?