Person 1: We check for brainwaves to see if someone’s dead, so a fetus without brainwaves isn’t alive. Person 2 (our hero): I agree the brain is a critical organ. But it’s not required for biological life. E.g., trees don’t have brains, but they are alive.

Trees Don’t Have Brains

Following fertilization, the zygote undergoes cellular reproduction, responds to stimuli, and converts food into energy. These are the sort of features that biologists look for to establish life, not brain activity. It’s debatable whether viruses are alive, but it seems pretty clear that a zygote is already biologically alive.

It may be helpful to emphasize that at this stage of the conversation, we aren’t yet saying anything philosophical about how valuable a zygote is or how we ought to treat zygotes. We’re just saying that biologically speaking, a zygote is a living organism.

First posted May 21, 2018