It is an extremely rational and morally defensible position to hold that a human embryo in a test tube is NOT a person.
Such an embryo is human, but is not necessarily a human person.
Once such an embryo is returned to the womb and implants, that embryo is fully alive and developing and the law should protect such an embryo as if he/she was a person - we don’t know exactly when such an embryo attains personhood in God’s eyes so we err on the side of caution.
Conception is when human life begins. But when does human personhood begin? If we say at conception, then we have a conundrum with all the embryos in freezers - are these frozen persons? Do they stay suspended in ice until the end of the world or the freezer breaks?
I don’t think the questioner had any clue about what he was asking and the necessary nuance in Newt’s answer.
The moment of personhood is not an easy issue to be certain about.
Of course as a Catholic I err on the side of protecting human life in the womb - and I also want to halt the creation of embryos invitro precisely because of this abhorrent situation in which we have thousands of these frozen human beings who almost certainly don’t meet the definition of “person”.
You offered, "It is an extremely rational and morally defensible position to hold that a human embryo in a test tube is NOT a person." Allow me to offer an alternate perspective.
The human begun at union of the father's chromosomal addition to the mother's chromosomal addition is a unique human being at his or her earliest age. With the very first cell division (mitosis), the new individual life is directing his or her own growth and development according to the plan/system/pattern God established for human children.
By the time normal implantation occurs, the new individual has already divided cells into two basic groups based upon the job for gestation about to be done; an nner cell mass will build the body of arms, legs, organs, etc, while another cell group will build the first organ for survival, the placental sac. But both groups are the construction of and by the newly conceived individual human being implanting for survval.
The new individual life seeks to implant for sustenance and protection, but the mother's body builds none of the body or placenta or amniotic sac; the new individual is so conceived to do it all if just sustenance and protection are available.
From the first division of the zygotic human, there is a unique human present, whether in a petri dish or abdomen ...and men could be made to carry a child to term by arranging implantation in the external tissues of an abdomenal organ. Would make no difference to the child.
To arbitrarily cite the moment of implantation as the start of an individual human life is not scientifically sound and a forked road of self deceit: if the embryo does not implant in the female body where conception occurred is not a flawless point of clarity, since the child conceived in a petri dish can be implanted to any willing body and continue living and growing.
I have heard Orrin Hatch claim that embryonic beings in a petri dish are not human beings until they are implanted. The technicians watch for a growth stage to a few hundred cells before trying to implant an embryo. They are not watching pigs or cows or monkeys, they are watching tiny humans grow to the age for implnatation.
The embryonic individuals in the petri dish are already human beings and do not magically become human beings just because of implantation. The technicians are now even determining the sex of the embryonic individual before selecting for implantation. That the sex can be determined before implantation ought o tell us the embryo is already a human being at earliest age.
Thank you for that very intelligent post. It is an interesting question b/c until the egg implants, it can never live. I guess you could talk about the difference between fertilization and conception.
In any event, Newt’s stance is firmly opposed to conception b/c obviously that concerns an egg that has implanted.