THOUGHTS ON THE 'A' WORD

I posted this on another site, and after re-reading it, and after recently posting on bonobos, thought it raised too many issues not to share here, as well:

"I don't have a dogmatic response---I don't claim to know 'THE Truth' on this topic---but I do have a lot of uncomfortable questions, based on what I know about the state of biology at present.

At what point is a child not a child? We don't actually know. But we know this: gametes are potentially zygotes, and at some point in the very near future, it will be possible to clone a person from any cell, not just a gamete, so any cell will potentially become a zygote. The same thing can be said for any mammalian species.

Since that's the case, shouldn't our deliberations about what is sacred and worthy of legal protection focus on that which is uniquely human, rather than the biology we happen to share with all mammals? The scientific community can't make that determination at present, of course, but unless there is a systematic worldwide campaign to eliminate research in reproductive biology, that data will eventually emerge, I think. What will happen to the entire notion of the sacred if we have committed ourselves, in advance, to an absolutist position on the sanctity of human life?"