Only human
Karen Beilharz / 11th February 2008
/ All around the world...
This article in The New York Times about whether or not a foetus can feel pain (and the resulting implications for abortion) makes fascinating—but highly disturbing—reading. But as opposing viewpoints were traded back and forth between doctors, anaesthetists, and specialists in the area of foetal pain, I couldn't help feeling acutely uncomfortable about their desire to define that line between what is human and what is merely a collection of cells—particularly because that delineation is being drawn on the basis of biology and psychology. This is the problem of looking to humanity to define what it is to be human rather than to the Creator in whose image we have been created (Gen 1:26-27).