The nature and status of human embryo

Abstract

The article dwells about the human embryo’s belonging to the category of beings possessing personal human life. In fact, its human subjectivity is not always acknowledged. Some authors question the fact that an embryo might be defined - right from its one-cell stage - as a human being with full rights or as a human person.

The Catholic Magisterium has tackled the issue with two arguments . The first is anthropological and it is based upon the assertion of the substantial unity of body and soul in the human being and on the biological observation that, from the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun with his own growth. The second argument is probabilistic and can be found in the John Paul II’s indisputable observation 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 embryo. But the full human nature of the embryo, right from its zygotic stage, is testified to by modern genetics, which has demonstrated that from the first instant there is established the programme of what this living being will be.

In conclusion, scientific evidence can in no way and certainly not alone grant the human embryo the ontological status of a human being in every sense, i.e. a person, because being and the human person do not belong to the field of biological concepts and are not formal objects of empirical research. Genetics and develpomental biology do suggest, however, and with the support of evergrowing research results, that the embryo is none other than an individual of the human species in the initial stage of its life cycle, which will lead it to become an adult as we are.