Madam, — Dr Stephen Sullivan debates (April 25th) the moral question: "Is the embryo a person?" He states that an embryo without access to a womb can never become a foetus and/or a baby. The implication is that therefore it cannot become a person.
While an embryo which is growing in the womb is, or can become, a person, one which happens to have been conceived outside the natural womb environment has not got that capability. It would appear, following this reasoning, that the environment is the defining factor. The "personhood" of the embryo is evaluated retrospectively, depending on how it began, and where it lives.
The embryo needs the womb, for the provision of nourishment, and of safe, suitable shelter. In due course the foetus is born, a baby. Human infants continue to need intensive support outside the womb: food, warmth, protection - very similar to their pre-birth needs, though administered differently. Their lives are not viable without it. They are as completely dependent after birth as before.
Where along that life-line does personhood happen? The decision as to when or if an embryo, being human, is recognised as a person, has many implications. Is an adult with profound intellectual disability needing total constant care, without which they would die, fully a person? Is someone who is very old, sans everything, a full person?
The only responsible point of view must be that the life which began at conception continues until death, and is to be honoured. It is no more acceptable to kill an embryo (even in the noble cause of research) than it would be, for the same reason, to kill an adult who happened to be helpless. — Yours, etc,
RUTH CHIPPERFIELD, Butterfield Park, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.