Once long ago, an egg and a sperm

The sun sets today at 626 pm As usual I am scratching my head The sun is a rather sizeable celestial object and looks even larger near the horizon What precisely happens at 626 pm I ask no one in particular that is called a sunset Does the lower edge touch the horizon Is it sunset when half of it has dipped below the horizon Or is it when the entire solar disc is out of viewAs insecure human beings we crave precision in all things We will meet at 632 pm this evening not give or take 45 minutes We will pronounce the happy couple man and wife at this precise muhurat exactly when the shadow planet Rahursquos time ends Our salaries will be Rs 32500 not around Rs 30000 plus or minus Rs 5400What about the moment of sunset in a human life the instant when someone beloved passes away The death certificate and the coroner must record a particular minute and we may ask the same questionmdashwhat died in that minuteThe dead heart has been known to kickstart itself after being pronounced deadA person can be completely brain dead and comatose and still be kept alive for years heart pumping awayThere are cases when both brain and heart have died and come back blazing full of stories of the afterlifeAs a lifelong hobby astrologer I know how important the exact time of birth is for ascertaining a personrsquos lagna or rising sign I have spent my years asking in vain whether that moment is when the head appears or when the whole infant is out Or is it when it draws first breath What if it was a Caesarian birthNo one questions that the baby is alive at the moment of birth except in a few rare tragic cases All that remains is to proclaim the gender and let the orchestra playA recent court ruling has brought up a disturbing question if the baby is alive when born at what precise moment during the nine months after conception did it become alive When does a cluster of cells become a personIn the opinion of Tom Parker Chief Justice in the primitive American state of Alabama a person comes into being the very moment a male sperm fuses with a female egg to form an embryo and a new baby gets going Alabamarsquos Supreme Courtrsquos judgment addressed damage or destruction of embryos frozen as part of in vitro fertilisation IVFEven a frozen embryo says Justice Parker is a person Damaging or destroying one is the same as murderAs evidence he cites classic Christian theologians like St Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin to modern conservative Christian manifestos Aquinas he says ldquodistinguished human life from other things God made including nonhuman life on the grounds that man was made in Godrsquos imagerdquoGod told the prophet Jeremiah ldquoBefore I formed you in the womb I knew yourdquo Surely He was talking about frozen embryosHuman life Parker declared ldquocannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God who views the destruction of His image as an affront to HimselfrdquoIVF is how couples that cannot have children have them Itrsquos the solution for couples who donrsquot want a child quite yet but fear declining fertility may impede them when they do Eggs are extracted from the mother and introduced to sperm from the father Once fertilisation happens and an embryo forms it is implanted into the mothermdashor frozen and kept in waiting for years In 2019 eight million children were born through IVFItrsquos an iffy process About 50 per cent of fertilised eggs do not mature into foetuses and perish In Alabamarsquos new law this is murder since embryos are persons equal constitutional protectionOf course they are The problems begin after birth when the child alas turns out to be brown black or have Oriental features It is afflicted with Tourettersquos syndrome It is not tall enough Its parents are migrant workers Worse itrsquos female Ooopsie Turns out yoursquore a nonperson after all Sorry about thatLife may or may not begin at conception but it ends not long after birth for a big chunk of humanityAs usual Bollywood has all the answers and it comes in the voice of Amitabh Bachchan in his delightful movie Mr Natwarlal In this scene a younger dashing Bachchan is thrilling a crowd of hill children with a story about a terrified hunter who meets a terrifying tiger in a jungle The meeting does not go well for the hunter Bachchan singsmdashKhuda ki kasam maza aa gayaMujhe maar kar besharam kha gayaI swear on God that shameless tiger killed me and thenmdashate meA child says ldquoBut yoursquore not dead quite aliverdquoMr Natwarlal deadpan and flat on the ground says ldquoArre yeh jeena bhi koi jeena hai lallurdquoYou call this living a lifeYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper