Finally, abortion

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I think that when defined as needing only nourishment, an unborn baby is much easier to understand as a person since nourishment is a concept that every living thing requires to live.

Having once accepted that nourishment subsists in the egg before implantation and then what is delivered via the placental medium, I don’t think anyone could honestly say that the unborn child is not alive.

Often it’s the very simplest arguments that are the strongest. We don’t need to know about the mechanics of cell division or to try to pin down when brain waves start. That’s all a red herring. We have a biologically unique being that consumes food to live. That’s the absolute definition of being alive. Sentience is a question that comes afterwards.
 
Samuel_Monosov said:
why must this cell be a person? Mutated cells are not people, but they have DNA that is separate and distinct from the person.
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The infusion of the soul into the body is a definite event. It only makes sense that it should coincide with another definite event- at conception, a distinct organism (however simple and dependent on the mother it may be) is created.

At conception, a distinct organism (however simple and dependent upon the mother it may be) is created. At what other stage of development is there such a defining event? Birth is a defining event, but it isn’t nearly as radical a change (nothing can beat non-existence becoming existence). We are not just a soul living in a shell (a body)- we are body AND soul. With that in mind, it makes sense that both come to be at the same time. If you can think of another, more logical time, for the soul to be infused into the body, what time would that be?

I have asked people who are pro-choice when a fetus becomes a person. They say they don’t know, yet they seem certain it is not a person when they want to get rid of it. Their answer, though they do not say it, is clear to me- when it is wanted.
 
m134e5 said:
The infusion of the soul into the body is a definite event. It only makes sense that it should coincide with another definite event- at conception, a distinct organism (however simple and dependent on the mother it may be) is created.
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This makes good sense. This is a good religious argument for the personhood of single-celled organisms.
 
Samuel_Monosov said:
Why do you think a single cell can be a person? Do you think it’s a person? Is this a religious conclusion, something in metaphysics, or do you think this is based on science?

What are your arguments for it?
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Well considering that the only thing a woman has ever given birth to is a human baby, then I think you’d have a hard time saying that a new being formed in a woman’s body is anything else. I tend to be snarky about it though – I usually ask if the woman is pregnant with a dog, a cat or hippopotomous. It’s usually enough to make the point. Or at least make them stop and think for a minute.
 
septimine said:
Well considering that the only thing a woman has ever given birth to is a human baby, then I think you’d have a hard time saying that a new being formed in a woman’s body is anything else.
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The question is when the thing in the body becomes a person. Women have >100,000 potential eggs in their bodies. Are these ostrich eggs?

Is it murder not to fertilize them all? Is mastrubation mass slaughter? Why is the moment of fertilization the moment of personhood?

Ever have a good conversation with a single cell?
 
Samuel_Monosov said:
Mutated cells are not people, but they have DNA that is separate and distinct from the person.
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Mutated cells are corrupted where the DNA of a zygote is pristine. Also, the mutated cells’ DNA is not separate (it came from uncorrupted DNA) even though it is distinct (in the form of its mutation).
 
Samuel_Monosov said:
The question is when the thing in the body becomes a person. Women have >100,000 potential eggs in their bodies. Are these ostrich eggs?

Is it murder not to fertilize them all? Is mastrubation mass slaughter? Why is the moment of fertilization the moment of personhood?

Ever have a good conversation with a single cell?
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???
A woman does not have ~100,000** potential** eggs. She has ~100,000 eggs. Please go study some basic biology.

How is it murder to not fertilize those eggs? They are no more alive than the other cells in our body. The same with sperm. But at fertilization something happens, they become distinct from the woman’s body, they become a whole new human organism.

Ever had a good conversation with yourself?

Seriously it is hard to have an honest, good conversation about this topic with people who are completely ignorant of biology. This killing the sperm, egg argument is not even biologically correct much less a logical argument.
 
Samuel_Monosov said:
The question is when the thing in the body becomes a person. Women have >100,000 potential eggs in their bodies. Are these ostrich eggs?

Is it murder not to fertilize them all? Is mastrubation mass slaughter? Why is the moment of fertilization the moment of personhood?

Ever have a good conversation with a single cell?
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The moment of fertilization is key because it is at that moment that life begins. As has been stated an unfertilized egg does NOT become a human being. A sperm left on its own does NOT become a human being… but when sperm and egg come together you have a unique fusion that creates life.

You can throw out your silly arguments about unfertilized eggs and lone sperm all you want but in the end the two are not human until they become one.
 
nickybr38 said:
As has been stated an unfertilized egg does NOT become a human being.
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Some unfertilized eggs become human beings.
A sperm left on its own does NOT become a human being
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A zygote left on its own does not become a human being. It needs more material and more energy.
 
jilly4ski said:
How is it murder to not fertilize those eggs?
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Maybe these eggs are people.
They are no more alive than the other cells in our body.
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Cells in our body are dead? It’s true, I’ve not studied much biology. Apparently, neither have you.
This killing the sperm, egg argument is not even biologically correct much less a logical argument.
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Educate me. What is biologically incorrect about it? Where is the logical mistake?

Carl Sagan was fairly well-educated in biology, and he stated this argument. Richard Dawkins also knows some biology, and he has used this argument as well.

Maybe you need to educate them, also?
 
SonCatcher said:
Mutated cells are corrupted where the DNA of a zygote is pristine. Also, the mutated cells’ DNA is not separate (it came from uncorrupted DNA) even though it is distinct (in the form of its mutation).
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Why can’t I say “the zygote’s DNA is not separate (it came from uncorrupted DNA)”
 
Samuel_Monosov said:
Some unfertilized eggs become human beings.

A zygote left on its own does not become a human being. It needs more material and more energy.
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If left alone in it’s natural habitat it does become a human being.

You may disagree on where life begins but if you do not introduce that egg to that sperm you don’t get a human baby. Period. I think it’s obvious where life starts and if that’s where life starts that is also where murder starts (IE, deliberately killing that zygote, that cell, that whatever you want to call it is murder).
 
nickybr38 said:
If left alone in it’s natural habitat it does become a human being.
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If it’s in its ``natural habitat’’ then it’s not alone.
You may disagree on where life begins but if you do not introduce that egg to that sperm you don’t get a human baby.
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Our improving technology may change the validity of this statement.

Sperm and egg are very much alive. They are organic parts of living systems. Do you not agree? So my first living cells were the sperm and egg that eventually met to make me.

It’s also true that if you don’t inject organic material into the zygote it dies. That’s true for me, too. I need organic material.

So how does independence get us personhood? And how is any of us independent?
 
Samuel_Monosov said:
If it’s in its ``natural habitat’’ then it’s not alone.

Our improving technology may change the validity of this statement.

Sperm and egg are very much alive. They are organic parts of living systems. Do you not agree? So my first living cells were the sperm and egg that eventually met to make me.

It’s also true that if you don’t inject organic material into the zygote it dies. That’s true for me, too. I need organic material.

So how does independence get us personhood? And how is any of us independent?
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It’s also true that babies require feeding and that they are unable to feed themselves. Yet you wouldn’t say it’s all right to deny a baby the organic material it needs just because it burdens the mother - would you? Do you believe it’s okay to leave a newborn in a dumpster to let it die? Do you believe a parent has a right to make that decision simply because that child is incapable of communication and independence?

So why is it that this fertilized egg, this zygote, somehow has less right to live then a baby? Is it only because it exists inside of it’s mother? Why should this lessen it’s right to eventual personhood?

A zygote may not feel. It may not be a ‘person’ in your estimation… but it is a potential person in a unique way because with time it becomes a baby and that baby eventually becomes a viable adult. No other body part does this. No other human cell does this.

You can try to justify it all you want but you name me another body part that, if left alone inside a womb, becomes a baby (which in turn becomes a human adult) and I will concede. But you can’t… so I stick by my statement that the moment of conception is the moment human life begins.
 
SonCatcher said:
Care to cite your source?
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The egg and sperm that became me were at one time separate. Therefore the egg that become me was at one time an unfertilized egg.
50% of the zygote’s DNA is separate from each parent’s DNA. Possibly more if you count the phenomenon of crossing over during meiosis.
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Some percentage of a mutated cell’s DNA is separate from the DNA of the surrounding cells.

I don’t understand the significance of this.
 
Samuel_Monosov said:
Maybe these eggs are people.

Cells in our body are dead? It’s true, I’ve not studied much biology. Apparently, neither have you.

Educate me. What is biologically incorrect about it? Where is the logical mistake?

Carl Sagan was fairly well-educated in biology, and he stated this argument. Richard Dawkins also knows some biology, and he has used this argument as well.

Maybe you need to educate them, also?
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Of course it is alive, in the same sense that your skin cell is alive. But you are not alive in the same sense as your skin cell is alive. When an egg is fertilized and becomes a zygote, it no longer part of either the mother nor the father, it is its own separate entity with unique DNA. That is the difference between the sperm and egg and a zygote. That is your logical and biological mistake. You are equating unlike things.

Educate yourself, there are plenty of pregnancy websites you could read with the process completely laid out.
 
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