A Spark of Light

by Jodi Picoult

personhood. Catholics believed in life at conception. Muslims believed that it took forty-two days after conception for Allah to send an angel to transform sperm and egg into something alive. Thomas Aquinas had said that abortion was homicide after forty days for a male embryo and eighty days for a female one. There were the outliers, too—the ancient Greeks, who said that a fetus had a “vegetable” soul, and the Jews, who said that the soul came at birth. Janine knew how to consciously steer away from those opinions in a discussion. Still, it didn’t really make sense, did it? How could the moment that life began differ so much, depending on the point of view? How could the law in Mississippi say that an embryo was a human being, but the law in Massachusetts disagree? Wasn’t the baby the same baby, no matter whether it was conceived on a bed in Jackson, or on a beach in Nantucket?

We are all drowning slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths.

“What about the mother’s rights?” asked Mandy. “Can’t have it both ways, darlin’,” Willie Cork said. “You don’t get to call her a mother if you aren’t willing to call what’s inside her a baby.”

Eighty-eight percent of abortions happened in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, Louie knew, but the antis acted like those fetuses were already eight pounds and holding their own bottles.

Egregious

You don’t look at another person’s plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.

Janine knew that there wasn’t a moral difference between the embryo you used to be and the person you were today. So the unborn were smaller than toddlers—did that mean adults deserved more human rights than children? That men were due more privileges than women? So the unborn weren’t fully mentally aware—did that preclude people with Alzheimer’s or cognitive deficits, or those in comas, or those sleeping, from having rights?

So the unborn were hosted in the bodies of their mothers. But who you are is not determined by where you are. You are no less human if you cross state lines or move from your living room to your bathroom. Why would a trip from womb to delivery room—a voyage of less than a foot—change your status from nonhuman to human? The answer was because the unborn were human.

Violence, from one angle, looked like mercy from another.

Or they said they were personally opposed to abortion, but believed in a woman’s right to choose. That was like insisting, I’d never abuse my kid, but I’m not going to tell my neighbor he can’t beat his son.

you want, but if this hospital was burning down and you had to decide between saving a fertilized egg in the IVF lab or a baby in the maternity ward, which would you choose?” “That’s a false equivalence—” “Which would you choose?” Mandy repeated. “Nobody is trying to say it’s all right to kill a child in place of an embryo. This is about allowing the embryo to be born and—” “Exactly. Thank you for proving my point. No one truly believes that an embryo is equivalent to a child. Not biologically. Not ethically. Not morally.”

The vast majority of protesters were men, and it made perfect sense to Louie—the male of the species felt threatened by the biology of women. Even in the Bible, normal female biological functions were made pathological: You were unclean when you had your menses. Childbirth had to occur in pain. And there was the questionable nature of those who bled regularly—but did not die. There was, of course, the history, too. Women had been property. Their chastity had always belonged to a man, until abortion and contraception put control of women’s sexuality in the women’s hands. If women could have sex without the fear of unwanted pregnancy, then suddenly the man’s role had shrunk to a level somewhere between unnecessary and vestigial. So instead, men vilified women who had abortions. They created the stigma: good women want to be mothers, bad women don’t.

if men were the ones to get pregnant, abortion would probably be a sacrament. The Super Bowl halftime show would celebrate it. Men who had terminated pregnancies would be asked to stand and be applauded at church for the courage to make that decision. Viagra would be sold with a coupon for three free abortions.

It seemed to Wren that having a mother had a lot less to do with a few sweaty hours of labor and delivery and a lot more to do with whose face you always looked for in a crowd.

that she realized that this woman who was anti-contraception was also anti-abortion. Wasn’t that counterintuitive? If you didn’t want abortions, shouldn’t you at least be throwing free condoms and birth control pills out to anyone who would take them? Shouldn’t that woman have been cheering for Wren to come to the Center and get the Pill, instead of berating her?

Was it a person? No. It was a piece of life, but so was a sperm, an egg. If life began at conception, what about all those eggs and sperm that didn’t become babies? What about the fertilized eggs that didn’t implant? Or the ones that did, ectopically? What about the zygote that failed to thrive when implanted and was sloughed off with the uterine lining? Was that a death? Up till twenty-two weeks of pregnancy a fetus wouldn’t survive without a host, even on a respirator. Between twenty-two and twenty-five weeks, a fetus might live briefly, with severe brain and organ damage. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists did not recommend resuscitating babies born at twenty-three weeks. At twenty-four weeks, it was up to the parents and doctors to decide together. At twenty-five weeks, the American Medical Association suggested resuscitation, but also said that the ability to survive was not a sure thing. There were plenty of babies diagnosed late in the second trimester with anomalies that were incompatible with life. If those babies were born past twenty-nine weeks, they would feel pain when they died. In those cases, was abortion murder, or mercy? If you decided this was an exceptional case, what about if the mother was a heroin addict? What if her husband beat her so bad she broke bones several times a year? Was it ethical for that woman to carry a baby to term?

Perhaps the question wasn’t When does a fetus become a person? but When does a woman stop being one?

abortifacient—just

“But we can’t make policies based on religion when religion means different things to different people. Which leaves science. The science of reproduction is what it is. Conception is conception. You can decide the ethical value that has for you, based on your own relationship with God…but the policies around basic human rights with regard to reproduction shouldn’t be up for interpretation.”

“No. Your religion should help you make the decision if you find yourself in that situation. But the policy should exist for you to have the right to make it in the first place. When you say you can’t do something because your religion forbids it, that’s a good thing. When you say I can’t do something because your religion forbids it, that’s a problem.” Louie glanced at his watch. “Duty calls.”

Where we draw the line shifts—not just between those who are pro-life and pro-choice, but in each individual woman, depending on her current circumstances. Laws are black and white. The lives of women are a thousand shades of gray.

If the greatest number of women choosing abortions do so because of economic issues, then this, too, is an area to consider. If pro-life advocates could prevent abortions by raising taxes and volunteering to adopt, would they? If pro-choice advocates believe women should be able to make a decision without external pressure, would they give up some of their income so that women who are financially strapped but want to continue their pregnancies can? To that end, it’s worth asking what would happen if we made social services more readily available to pregnant women. Increasing the minimum wage would give women the financial security to raise a baby, if they so choose. Government-funded daycare would eliminate the threat of losing their jobs. Universal healthcare would allow women to believe they could financially afford not just the birth of a child, but its continued existence.