Best argument against the abortion "clump of cells"?

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RealisticCatholic

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I have some initial thoughts, but I would like to see how you deal with this kind of argument.

You know – the one that says am aborted embryo is just a “clump of cells”?
 
Then when does the clump of cells become more than a clump of cells?
 
RealisticCatholic said:
I have some initial thoughts, but I would like to see how you deal with this kind of argument.

You know – the one that says am aborted embryo is just a “clump of cells”?
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Use science. A clump of cells is formed through mitosis. Human life begins at conception. Scientific fact and indisputable. “Clump of cells”/Tumor/growths etc have absolutely no inherent or biologically programmed ability to become an adult human being. Human embryos do. Clump of cells are part of a person’s body. An embryo is a new and separate entity from the body.

Pro lifers are often accused of denying science… but it’s not them that’s doing the denying. 🙂
 
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I would say that with the most por choice honest science, the most anyone can say is that we can’t be sure whether it’s a baby or not. If you can’t be sure, then you can’t do it.
 
Technically, adult humans are just clumps of cells. This entire line of argument makes an arbitrary distinction that does not hold up under scrutiny for any person even after they are born.
 
Sonograms have been around since, what, the 1950’s?

Anyone who isn’t familiar with basic human development either slept through science class or is being deliberately obstinate.

In the case of someone who is obstinate, there’s not a lot you can do— “there are none so blind as those who will not see”. 🙂

In the case of someone who didn’t pay attention in junior high/high school biology, you can ask them when they thought they stopped being a clump of cells, as @Writer_for_God pointed out. Chances are, they’ve got the notion that somehow, humans spend nine months in the blastocyst stage, and then suddenly emerge through the magic birth canal as a fully-formed baby.

Once they give you a date— “20 weeks”, “30 weeks”, “40 weeks”— it’s easy to point out how developed they are at that moment in time-- especially keeping in mind that, because we don’t have a good idea as to when conception occurred, babies’ development is tracked from “last menstrual period”. So you can subtract another 2 weeks from that developmental milestone to get a better grasp of how long in realtime it took them to develop to that point.
 
Thank you for the arguments!!

What about someone who says these two things:

(1) Feeling of Pain is necessary for right to life
and
(2) Saying only humans deserve right to life is due to religious argument, because there is no reason why a human that feels pain should have a right to life over an animal that feels pain.

I happen to think these are bad arguments, but someone actually posed these two to me, and so I need to find a way to help this person in particular.
 
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RealisticCatholic said:
Thank you for the arguments!!

What about someone who says these two things:

(1) Feeling of Pain is necessary for right to life
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Not all born people can feel pain (like being under general anesthesia or a condition like CIP) so this is invalid.
(2) Saying only humans deserve right to life is due to religious argument, because there is no reason why a human that feels pain should have a right to life over an animal that feels pain.
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Completely fallacious. The pro choice side is full of these. There are also lots of secular arguments as well as religious ones defending right to life.

Good pro life arguments will establish that the unborn child is a human being right from conception, and a person worthy of right to life. Once this is established, it makes whatever the other side has to say irrelevant.
 
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re: the pain argument, have you checked out the “Science and Pro Life” thread from the other day ago? If you look around posts 25-50, it covers that pretty thoroughly, both the arguments that say, “They don’t feel pain until 27 weeks!” vs "Um, the science is showing 7 weeks’ development LMP for reaction to external stimuli, and a variety of scientific articles that indicate physiochemical stress responses at 18 weeks LMP, 15 weeks LMP, brain scans showing pain responses, and so on.

Their argument is based in the fact that the RCOG says, “Well, the cortex isn’t hooked up properly, and every dummy knows you can’t feel pain without your cortex hooked up!” and our argument is like, “Um, hello, look at the data…”

Because we already know that immature systems in utero aren’t necessarily identical in how they operate as how they do in a mature human individual. And heck, even looking around at nature— the octopus doesn’t have a cortex— it doesn’t even have a centralized brain— and yet no one’s going to suggest octopi live in a sensory vacuum.
 
We are all just clumps of cells. It’s our brain that recognizes patterns that sees the form of that clump.
 
Also advanced imaging is proving that the “clump of cells” is only very very early on in pregnancy and in no time at all fetuses began to resemble roughly human form.
 
RealisticCatholic said:
You know – the one that says am aborted embryo is just a “clump of cells”?
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LOL is anybody really still saying this anymore?
It shows a complete ignorance of embryology but whatever.

The cell division of the fertilized egg proceeds along a very precise pattern. We don’t proliferate into a bunch of formless cells that later form themselves into something recognizable.
You can tell the age of the wee embryo by what he/she looks like.

Tell your friend to pick up a biology textbook.
 
Anybody can find a video of an ultrasound of a baby in the womb. It’s a human baby.
 
I think the best argument has already been put into practice, namely showing a pregnant women considering abortion a sonogram of her own developing baby.
 
I love these replies so far.

I think what I meant to get at was when people identify the first few weeks as OK for abortion. Say, what if someone says the blastocyst is just “a clump of cells”?
 
A unique human being has a development period which starts at conception when the sperm unites with the egg.
 
Were you the one who cited to me the percent of women who get an abortion because of rape? If so, could you provide that again?

If not, sorry, I may have mixed you up with someone else.
 
I just don’t understand. I feel like I am saying all the right things. But it’s not clicking with certain people I’m talking to. I just don’t get it. Why is this so hard for some people?

Talking about pro-choice people in general.
 
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