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The beginning of individual human life.

When did I begin? When does any individual human being begin? At what stage of its development does a human organism become entitled to the moral status and legal protection that we give to the life of a human adult? Is it at conception, at birth, or somewhere between the two?

The three alternatives--at conception, at birth, or between--do not in fact exhaust the possibilities. Plato, and some Jewish and Christian admirers of Plato, thought that individual human persons existed as souls before the conception of the bodies they would eventually inhabit. This idea found expression in the Book of Wisdom, where Solomon says, "I was a boy of happy disposition: I had received a ...

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