jazzbird said:
The problem with your arguement here is that the 46 chromosomes of the fetus is new and unique. So, I have cells in my body with 46 chromosomes, so what? Don't you find your illustration of the appendix just a bit hyperbolic, and yes, even silly.
Your "unique" DNA = humanity equation doesn't work. According to this definition identical twins, triplets and quads aren't human because they aren't "unique" (their DNA is IDENTICAL). There is more that goes into making a PERSON unique than their DNA and that is all the experiences and memories that they acquire. Or are you now going to tell me that all identical siblings aren't also unique individuals unto themselves, despite the fact that their DNA is identical?
Some terminology since you seem to like to talk about a pregnancy as if it were always in the "fetal" stage...
A. A fertilized egg is a fertilized egg or conceptus . A conceptus or conception is known as a zygote (some would call it an embryo at this point) once it starts dividing.
B. A zygote that implants in the uterine lining (definition of a pregnancy..a conception does NOT a pregnancy make) SUCCESSFULLY is called an embryo. Remember that most zygotes aren't fortunate enough make it to the implantation stage....is God a murderer for "aborting" all these "unique human"? If so then He is a mass murderer without peer, according to your definition.
C. An embryo becomes a fetus if it makes it to the 8 week stage (30-40% of these will be spontaneously aborted before the 12th week).
But then it doesn't quite stir the emotions to use the correct terminology now does it? I guess that is why Joe Scheidler and other leaders of your movement are so into the
Use of Inflammatory Rhetoric (Chap. 47-Closed! 99 Ways to Stop Abortion). Then this lot has the profound hypocrisy to try and claim they "don't advocate violence" when that sort of language breeds nothing but violence! You will just have to understand when I find your disclaimers that you don't agree with them a bit disingenuous (Scheidler et al are the LEADERS of your movment, if you don't agree with sort of tack then why do you tolerate them and why are books like his sold on nearly every anti-choicer site with an on-line bookstore?)
jazzbird said:
We all know very well that your appendix is what it is: an appendix - one part of your body which is made to function in a specific way. It does not become something other than what it is: an appendix. It never can become a new and unique human being on it's own. So you argue that it can be used to clone a human being. So, what if it can? It isn't a human being. It's raw material. /snip rest of strawman/
I remind you that your definition of humanity is those 46 chromosomes. Therefore. ALL the CELLS in that appendix are human beings according to that definition. I wasn't talking about the appendix as a unit, but that is a strawman stuffed by you to avoid the FACT that the CELLS of that appendix would be classed a human beings by the DNA definition.
When you see the problem, you try to skam us with the "uniqueness" argument. The fact remains that IF I made a hundred clones of the person from whom the appendix came, using the nucleus from a single cell from that appendix for each clone, each one would be nothing more than an IDENTICAL TWIN of the donor. Again are you really going to try to tell me that these people aren't also unique human beings, JUST because their DNA is identical?
jazzbird said:
You cannot seperate humanness from personhood. They are synonymous. /SNIP rest of strawman now repeated TWICE by jazzbird)
I NEVER separated personhood from humaness... AGAIN that is a strawman of YOUR own stuffing and I challenge you to quote me where I ever said any such thing.
jazzbird said:
You admit that life begins at conception because you cannot deny that whatever it is inside the woman is indeed alive, so the only arguement you have left is that of personhood.
First, you will have to define what you mean by "life".
Second, WHERE did I EVER say that "life begins at conception"? And NO I don't agree that "life beings at conception". Furthermore, I suspect that what you mean by "life" and what I mean by "life" are not the same. OK, just for you I'll repost what I actually said (
Post #127)
WHAT BIOLOGISTS MEAN WHEN THEY DEFINE "LIFE"...
Actually the egg and sperm are "alive", as is every functioning cell in the body of the woman in whom a conception may occur. All cells are BIOLOGICALLY alive in that they meet the 7 criteria biologists associate with life:
- presence of carbon-All living things contain carbon. With few exceptions, carbon is found exclusively in association with living things.
- organization & complexity-All living things exhibit remarkable organization in their body plans and when compared to non-living things are extremely complex.
- metabolism-All living things absorb, convert, store, use and release energy in a variety of complex chemical reactions.
- homeostasis-Living organisms regulate metabolic processes to maintain a "steady state".
- response to stimuli-Living things respond to a variety of stimuli (Ex. temperature, moisture, concentration of chemicals, light, scent, etc.)
- growth-An organism continues to increase in size (even bacteria do this) til maturity is reached.
- reproduction-Living organisms produce generations of like organisms.
This is what scientists mean when they say something is "alive", so
- Is a fertilized egg "alive"?===>Yes
- Is a zygote(3-7 day old pre-implantation) "alive"?===>Yes
- Is an embryo (before 8 wks., post-implantation) "alive"?===>Yes
- Is a fetus[older than 8 wks] "alive"?===>Yes
The real question is not is a conception/zygote/embryo/fetus "
alive" and "
human'", but
when is it a human being. or a "person"
Anti-choicers are always saying that "life" begins at conception??? What do they really mean by that?
Most of them are theists, who really mean God implants a "soul", but most will hesitate to admit that this is what they mean. They know good and well there is no evidence for a soul nor can they prove when such an "endowment" takes place (provided one could prove that such a thing as a soul exists).
Christians just get hoist on their own petard with the soul argument. A soul is important to Christians because that is the medium through which they claim to experience eternal life. It is supposed to be our "badge" of superiority over the rest of creation. This notion that it's okay to kill, eat, and experiment on animals is supposed to be because they don't have souls. What is really funny here is that many other religions believe that not only do animals have souls, but so do "inanimate" objects like
rocks,
fire, or trees. Without some kind of empirical evidence, how does one decide which if, any religious viewpoint, is correct?
The question of just when a fetus gets this all-important soul arises. What many anti-choicers are ignorant of is that according to the early Church fathers, life did NOT "begin at conception". Aquinas and Augustine, following Aristotle's lead, declared that a male embryo acquired a soul at 40 days and the female embryo did so at 90 days. The "ensoulment" argument leads to one big philosophical problem, namely the logical impossibility of precisely defining the "ensoulment line" (the "bald-hairy" distinction problem). For instance, how can one PRECISELY draw a line between day and night? The "hairy-bald" problem with the fetus, is how could one draw the line as to when the fetus gets a soul (not to mention the FACT that there is no evidence that such a thing as a soul exists)? Such a determination is impossible because the fetus is continually growing.
The more scientifically sophisticated anti-choicers will point out that the conceptus has the DNA "blue-print" (46 chromosomes) for a human being, therefore, it IS a human being at that point. But does this argument really work? No, because the logical outcome of this argument would extend the definition of "human being" to ANY cell with 46 chromosomes. That would mean that when a surgeon chucks an appendix in the trash after an appendectomy he would be guilty of mass murder. The point is that every cell in the body has the "blue-print" for creating a new human being via cloning (
Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) (a tutorial). All I would have to do is use the nucleus from any body cell, put it into an egg cell and voila! I have a twin of the person who donated the nucleus. The technology has advanced to the point that using the process of
trandifferentiation, I could convert
adult stem cells to egg cells, which don't need to fertilized to become embryos (known as parthenogenic embryos):
Besides the unaccustomed idea of generating human oocytes in the laboratory, Dr. Schöler's research points to another anomaly: the oocytes can develop in a dish into embryos, a process that involves a spontaneous doubling of their own genetic material instead of acquiring a second set of chromosomes from a sperm. Dr. Schöler said he has not yet had time to test whether the mouse oocytes and embryos are viable or whether human embryonic stem cells behave in the same way.
These developments have surprised theologians accustomed to defining human life as something that starts at conception with the union of oocyte and sperm. "This scientific research is like a cannon ball fired across the bow of Christian bioethics," Dr. Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley said in a statement.
Dr. Peters added in an interview that ethicists in the past had thought human dignity could be seen to derive from the fertilization process. But mammalian cloning was the first shot at this argument and Dr. Scholer's generation of parthenogenetic embryos "is maybe the second shot," he said.
Hopefully you will see the problem with what I call the "life begins at conception and "DNA = humanity" anti-choice arguments. Even theologians realize that these arguments are on the way out. I can see why anti-choicers are do dead set against embryonic cell research and cloning considering that these technology gut these arguments. That is why I think that development is the determining factor here (the personhood argument).....
jazzbird said:
So you argue that one does not become a person until some certain point. What precisely is that magical point when a being that is made from other humans becomes a human being and a person, instead of a mere, though living, blob of tissue that you call human but not a human being? If life begins at conception, how can anyone arbitrarily decide when it is a human being?
You said it
IF "life begins at conception" (really meaningless phrase).
- What you refuse to acknowledge is that you have yet to define just what you mean by "life"
- NOR have you given an EVIDENCE that "life", as you have defined it, is really the EQUIVALENT of a human being.
In short, you haven't begun to prove that a murder is being commited. I am not going to let you get away with making these claims as though everyone agreed with your "definitions".
jazzbird said:
This is a non-issue. It's not a legitimate arguement for abortion because you are making no distinction between spontaneous death and murder.
I remind you that you have YET to establish that a person is in FACT being murdered. All you do is assert it. Where are your facts establishing that a human being IN FACT exists from the moment of conception?
You have made affirmative claim (it's a human being, therefore it's murder), therefore,
the burden of proof is on you (why it is on you) and so far all I see masquerading as evidence are appeals to emotion, bad science and inflammatory rhetoric. (babies are being murdered!)
jazzbird said:
I was wondering, Gladiatrix, to what extent you support abortion? Is there a certain timeline or do you believe a woman should be able to have one at any time during her pregnancy? Just wondering...
Abortion should be an option to an unwanted pregnancy up until the 20th week (90% usually occur before the 12 week and only 1% occur after the 20th week). The reason for choosing this "cut-off" (really nearly a month earlier than any preemie can survive) is given in Post #127. If a drug like RU-486 were readily available then most abortions could be done very safety without surgery before the 7th week. The RU-486 regime could be done in the privacy of any doctor's office (all he/she need to know is how to use it). In France, where this drug has been available for 2 decades, the cut-off for a legal abortion has been set at 12 weeks. Please spare me the usual lying anti-choicer scare stories about RU-486.
If there is a threat to the woman's life or future health, then her well-bing should take precedence over continuing the pregnancy That is of course up to he. If her life or health is at risk and she wants the to go to term, that is strictly up to her and those concerned.
Oh, well. Anyway, that's my reasoning.
