A simple error?

How much of the support for abortion and embryo-destructive research results from a simple confusion of construction and development?

Dalton

Conley seemed to make this mistake last fall (in his plea for father's rights, in the New York Times) claiming  that most Americans think of the fetus only as “an individual under construction.”

Mr. Conley is right that something “under construction” does not yet exist when construction has just begun or, indeed, until construction is nearly finished--and even then the point at which to attach the label seems largely stipulative.  (No one would call a recently poured foundation a "house." But once the roof is on, some will call it a "house," while others will say "not quite yet"--just as they do re the unborn.)

But he’s wrong to think that the embryo or fetus is being made or constructed. Starting at fertilization, the new life develops itself, rather than being constructed  (having its form imposed) from the outside--as the Bible, the ancients, and the medievals had erroneously thought re early gestation. And a developing being is there from the very beginning of its development.