N
Nathan45
Guest
There seems to be a lot of argument about when life begins, Barack Obama even famously said that the question was above his paygrade.
As for myself, I think the question is silly, it all depends how you define life.
Life begins at conception if and only if you define life as beginning at conception. It's not a scientific question, it's not even a moral question, it's a semantic question.
Now, aside from a rather famous Monty Python sketch, everyone agrees that a sperm is worthless. Males are capable of producing hundreds of millions of them on short notice. Eggs are likewise not terribly valuable commodities.
With a zygote, what we have is a sperm inside of an egg. So the argument is that, even though sperms and eggs are both common and nearly worthless, a zygote, being a sperm inside of an egg, is worth the same as a fully grown human, or is at least worth protecting.
Pro-lifers will point out that a zygote has a unique, complete set of human DNA... a fact which I do not find particularly impressive. DNA was first discovered sometime around the mid-20th century, did people not know what human was before then? Or perhaps being a human about something other than having human DNA?
I do not think that having human DNA makes one human. Let us take a thought experiment:
A school kid named Molly is 10 years old. She's an average student, has several friends, gets a long very well, and when she was 8, she got in big trouble for stealing a bike. Her parents love her to death. She wants to be a Ballet Dancer when she grows up.
So, they do a DNA test for molly, for whatever reason, and they find something unusual: She has the DNA of a cow. It's completely inexplicable.
She gives all appearances of being a normal child. Nobody has any idea how she got cow DNA. But Genetic tests confirm, and they repeated the test often, that she is actually a cow.
Now, the question, is Molly human, even though she has cow DNA?
I think everyone would agree that she is, indeed, completely human, despite all DNA tests to the contrary.
Back to a zygote, what does it have in common with a human?
It has a unique set of human DNA. Otherwise, not a lot, really.
It should be noted Any combination of sperm and egg, together, have a unique combination of human DNA. Furthermore, with proper technology, those eggs, too, could be fertilized, if someone really wanted too.
Why not fertilize them? They have just as much potential as this zygote. I think that the answer is that not every potential human really needs to become a human.
A zygote has the potential to become a human, it is the seed of a human.
It could become a human if it was given raw materials and a warm place to stay in the womb.
But, it is not, make no mistake, it is not human, not yet.
It is the blueprint for a human, it has a complete set of human DNA.
Is the blueprint for a house a house?
Is the blueprint for a house anything like a house?
Is one cell with a complete set of DNA anything like a living, breathing, thinking, feeling, talking, person... a person with years of experiences under his or her belt, with friends, family, a complete body and complete consciousness, really the equivalent to one cell with a complete set of DNA?
A zygote cannot think or feel, it is, as yet, incapable of love, incapable of pain, it is the blueprint for a human who does not exist yet, a blueprint among many... there are nearly boundless combinations of sperms or eggs that could meet, and the only thing that separates those from this zygote is that this zygote's sperm won the sperm race.
Furthermore, a zygote, with it's unique combination of DNA, is like a blueprint for a human. Creating the fetus in the womb, could be considered like a construction project.
To take this analogy further, let's consider what happens in a construction project:
first you make the blueprints, or acquire them elsewhere.
then you lay the foundation,
then you start building.
Now, imagine two scenarios.
The first scenario, you have the blueprints together, you start laying the foundation, then you decide that you don't want a house after all... so, you pick back up what you've laid down, and use your land for other purposes. So you've "Aborted" your house, so to speak.
The second scenario: Someone burns down your house.
Now, the second scenario is Arson, obviously.
What is the first scenario? Well, it looks stupid. That much is certain. You started building a house, then changed your mind. Clearly, you should plan ahead better.
But it's not arson. It's not even malicious destruction of property.
At the end of the day, it is your land, you changed your mind, and you can do what you want on your land, you have sovereignty over your land, in the same way that I would argue that a woman has sovereignty over her own body.
the point of this is that there's a huge difference between murder and abortion... if abortion is like murder, than stopping construction of a house is like arson. And furthermore, even destroying your own house, even though you own it, is not legal in many jurisdictions without a permit. (why waste a house?)
You might say, that a person doesn't own her baby like she owns her house. I would say that a person does own her own body, and the "baby" should not be considered to have the rights of a baby at least until it has a functional nervous system.
So, obviously, this whole discussion is about abortion, so let's cut to the chase:
What you have is a girl, or woman, who screwed around when she shouldn't have. She sinned, you could say. Needless to say, It looks stupid. We're not going to focus on the man here, because men can't get pregnant, so he's not the one who has to deal with any of the immediate consequences.
The girl in this case, has no one to blame but herself, unless she was raped, which is not the case in our example. Only a small fraction of abortions occur because of rape, likewise, only a small fraction of abortions occur after the first trimester.
Rather than focus on rape victims or grotesque late term abortion procedures, for this post, i'd rather focus on your basic every day "oops I got pregnant" abortion.
Let's keep in mind several things:
1) It is considered perfectly proper for a woman to never get pregnant in the first place.
2) If she were to secretly get an abortion, say, 6 weeks into pregnancy, without telling a soul, everyone else would be none the wiser.
The end result difference between scenario 1) and scenario 2) is essentially nothing, for all actors, including the embryo. In scenario 1), the embryo never existed. In scenario 2), nothing became of the embryo. From the embryo's perspective, there is no difference. Nor is there any difference for any other actors.
If she were to get pregnant, and not have an abortion, then she would have a baby-- But is she obligated to have this baby? As stated, it is considered perfectly proper for her to not have children. But if she gets pregnant, this changes?
The general unsaid assumption is the woman owes the embryo something. I would argue that the woman owes the embryo nothing at all, in the same way that she owes nothing to any of the numerous eggs in her ovaries or to any of the trillions of sperm from thousands of men she may come across. Why is this particular embryo better than any other blueprint that could be made into a human? For example, if the woman decided to have an abortion, because she did not feel that she could support the child financially, she may, down the road when her financial situation improves, decide to have other children, which she would never have had if she had gone through with her first pregnancy. Now, why is the embryo of the first pregnancy entitled to be grown in a child, but any other hypothetical embryo, which is created by random combination of sperm and egg, has no such entitlement?
...
Now, it's important to consider that I am only talking about first trimester or early 2nd trimester abortions (which account for 90%+ of abortions). Late term abortion is rare, often occurs for medical reasons, and is a different animal.
At some point the child should be given rights apart from it's parents, but I don't think this should occur so early as the first trimester.
During conception, the zygote gains a full set of DNA. But as stated above, i do not think that being human is about having DNA. Therefore, i do not think that a zygote or an embryo, or an early fetus, should be considered to have any rights. I think that the Fetus should not be considered to have any rights at all until it has a relatively well developed nervous system, which is built gradually and is probably functional enough at around half-way through the pregnancy. At that point the fetus does have thoughts and feelings, and as such it should be treated humanely.
The fetus could be given full rights at the point of viability, when it is no longer dependent on the womb for sustenance, after which point an abortion would be illegal.
For practical reasons, "viability" would have to be set at a legally defined point (such as half-way through the pregnancy or the beginning of the third trimester) so that there is no confusion about when an abortion is legal. (in any scenario you wouldn't want to make doctors guess at whether what they're doing is legal) Furthermore, i would argue that if the fetus is deformed or needs to be aborted for medical safety reasons the fetus should not be considered viable even if it is later than the "viability" point.
As for myself, I think the question is silly, it all depends how you define life.
Life begins at conception if and only if you define life as beginning at conception. It's not a scientific question, it's not even a moral question, it's a semantic question.
Now, aside from a rather famous Monty Python sketch, everyone agrees that a sperm is worthless. Males are capable of producing hundreds of millions of them on short notice. Eggs are likewise not terribly valuable commodities.
With a zygote, what we have is a sperm inside of an egg. So the argument is that, even though sperms and eggs are both common and nearly worthless, a zygote, being a sperm inside of an egg, is worth the same as a fully grown human, or is at least worth protecting.
Pro-lifers will point out that a zygote has a unique, complete set of human DNA... a fact which I do not find particularly impressive. DNA was first discovered sometime around the mid-20th century, did people not know what human was before then? Or perhaps being a human about something other than having human DNA?
I do not think that having human DNA makes one human. Let us take a thought experiment:
A school kid named Molly is 10 years old. She's an average student, has several friends, gets a long very well, and when she was 8, she got in big trouble for stealing a bike. Her parents love her to death. She wants to be a Ballet Dancer when she grows up.
So, they do a DNA test for molly, for whatever reason, and they find something unusual: She has the DNA of a cow. It's completely inexplicable.
She gives all appearances of being a normal child. Nobody has any idea how she got cow DNA. But Genetic tests confirm, and they repeated the test often, that she is actually a cow.
Now, the question, is Molly human, even though she has cow DNA?
I think everyone would agree that she is, indeed, completely human, despite all DNA tests to the contrary.
Back to a zygote, what does it have in common with a human?
It has a unique set of human DNA. Otherwise, not a lot, really.
It should be noted Any combination of sperm and egg, together, have a unique combination of human DNA. Furthermore, with proper technology, those eggs, too, could be fertilized, if someone really wanted too.
Why not fertilize them? They have just as much potential as this zygote. I think that the answer is that not every potential human really needs to become a human.
A zygote has the potential to become a human, it is the seed of a human.
It could become a human if it was given raw materials and a warm place to stay in the womb.
But, it is not, make no mistake, it is not human, not yet.
It is the blueprint for a human, it has a complete set of human DNA.
Is the blueprint for a house a house?
Is the blueprint for a house anything like a house?
Is one cell with a complete set of DNA anything like a living, breathing, thinking, feeling, talking, person... a person with years of experiences under his or her belt, with friends, family, a complete body and complete consciousness, really the equivalent to one cell with a complete set of DNA?
A zygote cannot think or feel, it is, as yet, incapable of love, incapable of pain, it is the blueprint for a human who does not exist yet, a blueprint among many... there are nearly boundless combinations of sperms or eggs that could meet, and the only thing that separates those from this zygote is that this zygote's sperm won the sperm race.
Furthermore, a zygote, with it's unique combination of DNA, is like a blueprint for a human. Creating the fetus in the womb, could be considered like a construction project.
To take this analogy further, let's consider what happens in a construction project:
first you make the blueprints, or acquire them elsewhere.
then you lay the foundation,
then you start building.
Now, imagine two scenarios.
The first scenario, you have the blueprints together, you start laying the foundation, then you decide that you don't want a house after all... so, you pick back up what you've laid down, and use your land for other purposes. So you've "Aborted" your house, so to speak.
The second scenario: Someone burns down your house.
Now, the second scenario is Arson, obviously.
What is the first scenario? Well, it looks stupid. That much is certain. You started building a house, then changed your mind. Clearly, you should plan ahead better.
But it's not arson. It's not even malicious destruction of property.
At the end of the day, it is your land, you changed your mind, and you can do what you want on your land, you have sovereignty over your land, in the same way that I would argue that a woman has sovereignty over her own body.
the point of this is that there's a huge difference between murder and abortion... if abortion is like murder, than stopping construction of a house is like arson. And furthermore, even destroying your own house, even though you own it, is not legal in many jurisdictions without a permit. (why waste a house?)
You might say, that a person doesn't own her baby like she owns her house. I would say that a person does own her own body, and the "baby" should not be considered to have the rights of a baby at least until it has a functional nervous system.
So, obviously, this whole discussion is about abortion, so let's cut to the chase:
What you have is a girl, or woman, who screwed around when she shouldn't have. She sinned, you could say. Needless to say, It looks stupid. We're not going to focus on the man here, because men can't get pregnant, so he's not the one who has to deal with any of the immediate consequences.
The girl in this case, has no one to blame but herself, unless she was raped, which is not the case in our example. Only a small fraction of abortions occur because of rape, likewise, only a small fraction of abortions occur after the first trimester.
Rather than focus on rape victims or grotesque late term abortion procedures, for this post, i'd rather focus on your basic every day "oops I got pregnant" abortion.
Let's keep in mind several things:
1) It is considered perfectly proper for a woman to never get pregnant in the first place.
2) If she were to secretly get an abortion, say, 6 weeks into pregnancy, without telling a soul, everyone else would be none the wiser.
The end result difference between scenario 1) and scenario 2) is essentially nothing, for all actors, including the embryo. In scenario 1), the embryo never existed. In scenario 2), nothing became of the embryo. From the embryo's perspective, there is no difference. Nor is there any difference for any other actors.
If she were to get pregnant, and not have an abortion, then she would have a baby-- But is she obligated to have this baby? As stated, it is considered perfectly proper for her to not have children. But if she gets pregnant, this changes?
The general unsaid assumption is the woman owes the embryo something. I would argue that the woman owes the embryo nothing at all, in the same way that she owes nothing to any of the numerous eggs in her ovaries or to any of the trillions of sperm from thousands of men she may come across. Why is this particular embryo better than any other blueprint that could be made into a human? For example, if the woman decided to have an abortion, because she did not feel that she could support the child financially, she may, down the road when her financial situation improves, decide to have other children, which she would never have had if she had gone through with her first pregnancy. Now, why is the embryo of the first pregnancy entitled to be grown in a child, but any other hypothetical embryo, which is created by random combination of sperm and egg, has no such entitlement?
...
Now, it's important to consider that I am only talking about first trimester or early 2nd trimester abortions (which account for 90%+ of abortions). Late term abortion is rare, often occurs for medical reasons, and is a different animal.
At some point the child should be given rights apart from it's parents, but I don't think this should occur so early as the first trimester.
During conception, the zygote gains a full set of DNA. But as stated above, i do not think that being human is about having DNA. Therefore, i do not think that a zygote or an embryo, or an early fetus, should be considered to have any rights. I think that the Fetus should not be considered to have any rights at all until it has a relatively well developed nervous system, which is built gradually and is probably functional enough at around half-way through the pregnancy. At that point the fetus does have thoughts and feelings, and as such it should be treated humanely.
The fetus could be given full rights at the point of viability, when it is no longer dependent on the womb for sustenance, after which point an abortion would be illegal.
For practical reasons, "viability" would have to be set at a legally defined point (such as half-way through the pregnancy or the beginning of the third trimester) so that there is no confusion about when an abortion is legal. (in any scenario you wouldn't want to make doctors guess at whether what they're doing is legal) Furthermore, i would argue that if the fetus is deformed or needs to be aborted for medical safety reasons the fetus should not be considered viable even if it is later than the "viability" point.
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