At the Beginning of Life

Abstract

Understanding the origin of human life, as well as being a fascinating scientific enquiry, is also a profoundly important exercise from the point of view of ethics. The view we hold as to when individual life begins will influence the moral judgements we make when dealing with the complex ethical issues surrounding life in its early stages. As we shall see in Chapter 3, it will also have a bearing on how we define the end of life. We begin this chapter with a review of the account of the beginning of life found in traditional sources after which we will pause to reflect on its implications and its compatibility with current scientific knowledge. This will lead in Section III to a discussion of some possible objections to the Buddhist account of when life begins. After addressing these questions we will turn in Sections IV, V and VI to the substantive issues of abortion, embryo research and fertility control.