I have a new niece with me in the world: Katherine “Katya” Elizabeth Martin. My sister-in-law Christine gave birth yesterday, and my brother’s family just got a little bit bigger.
Ever since I was old enough to understand, I have thought it strange that people tend to refer to children only as separate entities once they have been born. You don’t “become” a father, or mother, or uncle, or grandmother, or whatever until the baby is born. As I understand human biology, the unborn baby is completely dependent upon its mother, but is also a completely separate individual, according to one example, it is even possible for a baby and a mother to have different blood types. The baby is certainly by all accounts alive, and although the debate rages about when actual life begins in the womb, it is common thought that the baby will be its own person after birth.
But why? if they are separate biological entities, if they will be individuals, why can they not be understood to be alive and among us while remaining unborn? The question of dependence does not, to me, make much sense, as a newborn is hardly any less dependent upon its mother than a few weeks prior. Indeed, most new people are completely helpless until 3 to 4 years of age, perhaps at the very earliest. So why do we not speak of them as people until they are born? I have yet to figure that out.
I, for one, refer to unborn babies as the people they are, and continue to be after birth, from the moment I know the mother is pregnant. I “became” an uncle the moment my brother and his wife conceived their new daughter. Katya was as much a niece to me then as she now, all wrinkly and beautiful as a newborn.
If I can get my wife to agree, my children will always have two “birthdays” a year: the date we can most accurately identify as conception date, and their birthday, to impress upon them the personhood of the unborn baby.
Why should someone be less than a person merely due to their physical constraints and situation and for no other reason?
down the dusty road 