Francesca's Analysis of "When Life Begins"

Francesca Bruno
Dr. Kerry Spencer
Writing 150 Section 100
10 October 2011
The Unanswerable Question: When Does Life Begins

Scientists and politicians have spent countless hours pondering this seemingly unanswerable question, but it is one that no one is able to answer perhaps because there is no finite answer. The truth is no one really knows when life begins. If they did, there would be no debate on whether abortion was right or wrong, and women who miscarried would not feel so frustrated and guilty. Kerry Spencer ponders this baffling question when she explains the complicated and emotional journey that is in vitro fertilization. In the essay When Life Begins, Kerry Spencer effectively relates to the general audience the uncertainty of life’s beginnings by using diction and imagery to appeal to pathos and logical fallacies and statistics to appeal to logos.

Since this essay is related to a subject of child-bearing, it is almost impossible not to react emotionally to the subject. Whether pro or anti-family, everyone has an opinion. In the LDS culture, the ability to procreate is considered one of God’s greatest gifts. In The Family: A Proclamation to the World, it states that a woman’s most important role in life is to nurture her children. Spencer explains that “if there is any way you can get an embryo to turn into a baby, you do it” (Jorgensen 190). She uses diction to portray grief because with the right connotation of words, the audience can more effectively feel the range of emotions that an author is feeling. The diction used throughout the essay has the connotation of mourning and pain. The essay begins with Spencer at a graveyard. The graveyard automatically foreshadows eeriness and death. By describing the tombstones as “degraded by elemental wrath,” the reader can feel a sort of tension building (190). The thought of wrath and degradation connote to anger and embarrassment which are very strong emotions. She also references physical pain she is experiencing such as a massive headache and stinging legs alluding to discomfort. This mood is appropriate for the essay because of the discomfort and pain that IVF treatments can cause. The emotional climax of this essay appears after Spencer receives the call from the clinic. The diction is frenzied. Spencer uses words such as hysterical, cry, mourning, and upset. This response is only logical upon receiving the news that the prize so time and energy-consuming was lost because of a silly fluke. The diction used provides the article with the overwhelming sense of emotion that Spencer is feeling, and it appeals to the audience’s sense of ethos.

Likewise, the imagery used in this essay appeals to the audience’s sense of ethos. Spencer describes “the green fungus,” (190) “the hum of the mower slowly fading to an insect-like background,” (191) and “the small, rose-colored tomb of an ancestor” (191). These descriptions appeal to the audience’s senses and paint a picture in their minds. When the audience is able to envision the events Spencer is going through, they can connect to her writing on a higher level. The audience feels included in the hysteria her sister felt when Spencer describes her “holding a chocolate muffin and smears of chocolate encrust the bottoms of her fingernails” and the audience is reminded of a time when they were not concerned with anything but the solemn matter at hand (191). The “tiny blue bathroom” reminds the audience of the chance the IVF had of working, and the color is certainly applicable. The imagery used helped make Spencer more relatable and helped describe the situation she was in.

Because of the emotional connection that Spencer has for the experience she wrote, it was difficult to use her best logical judgment. Because of the lack of logic, she uses logical fallacies. One fallacy used was argument to the person. This fallacy occurs when she “curse[s] the ghosts of [her] ancestors” (192). It is highly unlikely that her dead ancestors had anything to do with the missed opportunity, but because of the emotions she felt at the time, she associated the blame with her ancestors, who were irrelevant. She also places blame on “the leftover hormones” she has for being grumpy (191). She is not concerned with being reasonable; she has other things to worry about. Although she is so emotionally invested in the experience she is going through, Spencer includes more logic.

She includes some statistics with the embryo process. She knows that they have “lost fourteen embryos so far in the process… [and] there are two embryos floating somewhere in [her] gut” (190-191). The IVF doctors have told her that there is “a fifty percent chance of conception” (191) with the two embryos she has left, but the frightening statistic is that “a single embryo can become two or three human beings. Two embryos can fuse into a single fetus with a double genotype. And fourteen embryos can die and no human beings ever result in the meshing of their cells” (191). These statistics are important for the audience to realize. It makes the idea of IVF seem grueling, and it makes people question, when does life begin? A woman could have several embryos but never get pregnant, but it is impossible to know if those embryos are considered human life. An even scarier statistic she mentions comes from Janet Shibley Hyde and John D. Delamater. They say, “As many as forty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. About half of them occur before the mother even knows she’s pregnant” (191). If a person thought they knew when life began before, this statistic would certainly baffle them. The statistics used by Spencer create a compelling case for people to question when life begins.

It is uncertain because there are many processes that lead to the creation of a child. Does life begin when there is an embryo inside a woman, when there is a fetus, or when a child exits its mother’s womb?
Spencer admits neither she, nor her husband “knows when life begins” (192). It’s likely to say that no one really does. Despite the fact that she does not answer the looming question proposed at the beginning of the essay, Spencer appeals to logos and ethos in her essay to relay the message that the question is irrelevant. The fact that she has lost something so precious to her is the real message.