THE EDITOR, Sir:

As the abortion debate heats up, we are being told that there will be a number of public meetings to solicit feedback from the populace. Central to the discussion will be the question 'when does a human life begin?'

This question clouds the issue. When one asks the question 'when did life begin on earth?' it is understood that before life began there was no life. Some scientists theorise that there was a primordial soup of amino acids and other chemicals which somehow combined to start life. Other persons believe that God breathed life into an inanimate object to form life. And so on.

In the case of a pregnant woman, life does not begin within her body. In reality, a living sperm and a living egg combined within her body to form a living zygote. The life cycle, as the name suggests, is a continuum of life. Life has not begun, it has merely continued in the form of what will eventually become a human.

So when we ask the question 'when does a human life begin?' what we are asking is 'when does personhood begin?' At what stage in the life cycle of humans is another human person formed? At what point did you, dear reader, become a person? Was it when you were born? Or was it at conception when the egg and the sperm met? Or was it somewhere in between?

vital importance

The question of life is of vital importance in the debate on abortion. To assume that life 'started' at some point during the pregnancy, allows a woman to eradicate an object within her that is not yet alive, somewhat like passing out kidney stones. Her conscience will probably not be troubled as long as she is convinced that the thing she has terminated was not yet 'life'. But I suspect that most women know that the zygote is alive, it's just not yet a person.

Personhood is an important concept in considerations of life and death. Hitler called the Jews 'bacilli' before killing 6 million of them; the Hutus called the Tutsis 'cockroaches' whilst killing hundreds of thousands of them. If you are about to kill something, it is convenient for it not to be human - otherwise you would have committed murder.

In the debate about abortion, let us not waste time arguing about when life begins. Instead let us focus on the personhood of the thing being aborted. We will save lots of time and effort.

I am, etc.,

JOHN RICHARDS

Stony Hill