The meaning of life - and death

One of the tasks of moral leadership is to draw lines which should not be crossed. Another is to distinguish between things which are different. In his latest encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, the Pope shows himself better at the first than at the second.

As an eloquent defence of the Gospel of Life against what he calls "the culture of death", the encyclical fulfils a noble purpose. It is impossible to doubt the sincerity or the urgency of the task the Pope has set himself in combating by all possible means the threats posed in today's world to the sanctity of life. He must surely be right in his repeated assertion that the protection of human life, and especially life in its weakest forms, is not only a Christian imperative but also the essential moral foundation for any truly human society.

But it is the details which give cause for concern. Are there really no moral differences between contraception, embryo research, abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia, that they should be lumped together within a single "culture of death"? Biologically speaking, there are very different issues at stake, so the first task of criticism must be to ask how seriously the Pope takes biology.

It clearly counts for something. In fact, the need for people "to respect the biological laws inscribed in their person" forms part of his justification for preferring so-called natural methods of contraception. But if moral theology is thus to take account of biology, then it must surely pay some attention to one of the most fundamental biological principles, the principle of gradualism. In the biological world, there are few sharp dividing lines. One thing develops or merges into another. Even life itself is hard to define, and the precise transition point from non-living material to living organism is to some extent arbitrary. The same is even more true of the transition from pre-human to human life in the story of evolution.

By relying exclusively on biblical material for his description of human life, the Pope faithfully echoes traditional Christian teaching. "The life which God gives man is quite different from the life of all other living creatures, inasmuch as man, although formed from the dust of the earth, is a manifestation of God in the world, a sign of His presence, a trace of His glory." As a statement about the present role which human beings occupy, the theological claim is compatible with a biological understanding of human origins. But we need to know whether the biological understanding is for the Pope also part of the total picture. Was there for instance some moment in prehistory when human life attained its unique value and significance? Or can we think in terms of a gradual growth of distinctive humanness, allied perhaps with the gradual growth of the brain and of human language?

The difference is not merely theoretical, because gradualism in evolution is complemented by gradualism in embryology. The absolutist argument against abortion and embryo research depends on the assumption that human life, in some reasonably full sense, begins at the moment of conception. The Pope admits an element of doubt in this assumption, but counters it with the statement that "the mere probability that a human person is involved would suffice to justify an absolutely clear prohibition of any intervention aimed at killing a human being".

But suppose there is not even a "mere probability", in that the claim simply cannot be squared with what is now known about the early stages of embryological development? The argument by which the claim is defended rests on an ambiguous use of the word "human". The Pope makes the point that something new begins at the moment of conception and adds: "It would never be made human if it were not human already."

Many things are human. Our genetic structure is human. Every cell in our body is human. But what is at issue is the existence of "a new human being", and that - at the very minimum - requires some identifiable cells which are going to distinguish that human being from all the other products of conception.

Biological gradualism blurs the sharp lines the encyclical tries to draw, and while it is possible fully to sympathise with the Pope's overwhelming desire to protect life, it is also important to see that this cannot be done by ignoring what is known about the nature of life. The lengths to which the Pope is prepared to go are shown by his failure to acknowledge any circumstances in which abortion might be permissible, not even to save the life of the mother. The idea that there might sometimes have to be a choice between evils disappears in face of the blunt assertion: "No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit." This takes us a long way from acting on the basis of "mere probability".

In its treatment of euthanasia the encyclical is on much firmer ground. The presumption underlying this debate, that post-natal human life must not be deliberately destroyed, may in some cases pose awkward problems of definition, but the principle is rightly seen as the foundation of law and morality. The Pope's stand against the excessive claims of personal autonomy, the belief that human beings can do what they will with their own bodies, rests on his earlier analysis of freedom in Veritatis Splendor, and is in my view profoundly important. But even here there are some difficult issues which are not faced.

Just as life is not easy to define, so death now has fuzzy edges. The fuzziest appear in the persistent vegetative state, about which the encyclical says nothing. Yet there is a deeply serious question posed by PVS. How much of a human body needs to be dead before it can be said that the human being is dead? Transplant surgery, again not mentioned in the encyclical, assumes that only the brain stem needs to be dead. It would be interesting to know how the Pope relates this conclusion, and all that follows from it in modern medicine, to what is implied in the encyclical about, say, the abortion of anacephalic infants.

Criticism of this kind should not be seen as detracting from the general thrust of Evangelium Vitae. In a world intent on manipulating life to suit its own purposes, these things need to be said. But to be heard they need also to be based on sounder biological insight.

The author is the Archbishop of York.