When one person breathes, one person eats, one person shits, then there's (duh!) one person.

A woman is one person. A pregnant woman is one person.

When a baby is born, that is the beginning of the baby's life.

And before anyone scoffs at that notion, consider that life-beginning-at-birth is how we as a people, in our own culture, treat the entire issue. Consider:

When a baby is born, there is a birth certificate. The birth certificate is used to confer rights. When you can vote, when you can drive, when you can drink, when you can marry, when you join catechism, when you have a bar/bat mitzvah, when you qualify for Social Security, when you go to kindergarten, when you can sign legal contracts by yourself, when you are eligible to be drafted, when you qualify for Medicare, when you can get a discount at the movies, and every other way we as a society determine age-contingent matters. We say, "Since the day I was born," to indicate our entire lives. Our tombstones show the year of death following the year of birth.

We celebrate birthdays, not erections, not that moment Mom and Dad did the dirty in the back seat of the car. We talk of "one on the way" (but not yet here). When a baby is born, we say, "A new life came into this world." We send out birth announcements. Christenings happen after birth. And as we have bridal showers before the woman is a bride, we have baby showers before the woman gives birth to a baby.

When a woman menstruates, we don't have a funeral. When there's a miscarriage, there can be terrible suffering and grief, but there's no funeral or death certificate. When a birth delivers a dead fetus, it is called "stillborn," not the death of a 9-month-old baby.

Even in the rhetoric employed by those who advocate government control of women's bodies employs very clear language: "unborn" and "pre-born." Both terms mean, literally, "not born," meaning not yet of this world, not yet persons.

It's a romantic to engage in nostalgia for the man's small contribution by entertaining notions of life beginning at conception, but conception is just one prerequisite to birthing a new life, along with the billions of events that must happen in the woman's body, including implantation and gestation, use of the woman's body's entire metabolism, sufficient nutrition for the woman, adequate health of the woman, as well as proper progress of all the cellular development within the woman's womb ... and, most important, childbirth.

Of course, we could demand that the government control all contributing factors to human life. Of course, unless one is using artificial insemination, an erection and ejaculation are also required -- so perhaps the government should regulate and control men's penises as well.

Or maybe not. Maybe not, because all of this talk of life beginning at any point other than birth is just ridiculous.

About author

media girl also blogs at other places.