A separate and unique human being

Excerpted from The Doctrine of the Christian Life by John Frame (pp. 725-726):

The relevant scientific data confirm the argument from Scripture that unborn children are persons. From the point of conception, unborn children have a full complement of chromosomes, half from the father and half from the mother. Therefore, the unborn child is not "part of his mother's body." His genetic makeup is different from hers. So we should not treat the unborn child as we treat hair or fingernails, or even as we treat organs like the gall bladder or liver. The unborn child is a separate and unique human being.

It is also true that the unborn child is dependent on his mother life support: oxygen, nutrition, and immunity. In this sense, the unborn child is similar to the parts of the mother's body. But this dependence is not essential to his existence. Technology has been able to provide life support for very young fetuses, and it is certainly possible that future technology will be able to support the embryo/fetus through the whole gestation period. Furthermore, even after birth children are dependent on adults for life support. So dependence does not count against the independent personhood of the child.

It is also significant that science is no more able than theology to pinpoint a time during gestation at which the unborn becomes a person. There is no point at which a mere physical collection of cells turns into a person with a right to life. The various points that have been suggested -- implantation, detectable heartbeat, detectable brainwaves, quickening, viability, and ability to feel pain -- are significant developments, but none of them persuasively marks a transition from nonpersonhood to personhood.

. . . But I would caution readers that this is not fundamentally a scientific issue. The chief issue here is the personhood of the unborn, for that conveys a right to life. Personhood is a metaphysical, religious, theological, and ethical category, not a scientific one. There are no scientific observations or experiments that can detect a difference between a person and a nonperson. To reason from scientific premises alone to a conclusion about the rightness or wrongness of abortion is therefore to commit the naturalistic fallacy.

. . . [I]n my judgment the religious dimension cannot be escaped. Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) gives us an adequate argument against the sin of abortion.