No it doesn’t. All you posted was the development of a human being. Development starts with fertilization. However, nowhere does that define what a person is. Also, the first quote does not define a person only the beginnings of an organism. The second quote is from a LeJeune who is well-known to have been a devout Catholic. If LeJeune were alive, even he would tell you that science does not define a person and he is getting his views from his Catholicism.
Anyway, I could take your LeJeune and raise you with thousands of other scientists, including people I work with. Francis Collins, an evangelical pastor, supports stem cell research because he does not feel it is proper to impose his religious views on science.
Don’t say that science provides a definition of a person.
So, just to be clear** classylady**- your definition of “abortifacient” agrees with neither the legal definition, nor the medical one.
And your thoughts about whether users of those methods are baby killers?
Thoughts about whether these methods should be made illegal?
Thoughts on the impact that making these methods illegal might mean on the number of abortions (as recognised by the medical and legal meaning of the term “abortion”)?
If IUD’s prevent the sperm and egg from joining then that is ok. I don’t agree with IUD’s that prevent the embryo from implanting. I would rather people use these form of birth control then to abort and already implanted embryo.
I actually agree with you on this point. Of course, it also ends at conception, for the sperm and egg. Conception, to me, is two lives ending and one beginning.
Thanks for offering something in the way of a real discussion. Neither site is exactly scientifically neutral are they? Some of those facts are questionable and pretty slanted. Brain waves at 6 weeks is a stretch according to what I’ve read. The nervous system begins to develop around then, but not a developed brain.
A Zygote, or an embryo are human tissue. Nobody is denying that. We do know however that human tissue does not automatically make something a human being, or person. What you’re linking to is people giving their opinion and including some science in that opinion. That’s an improvement over just feeling something is true, but it’s not the science proving anything about when an embryo is a person.
The other issue is dealing with the practical real life implications of what we decide as a society. Women terminating pregnancies has been around for a long time. For much of that time it wasn’t illegal, just something not talked about. Now it’s out in the open and people feel the need to decide what choices they should be allowed to make. Abortions won’t stop if they become illegal. We’ll have more poor women suffering horribly from illegal ones. Hardly a compassionate way to deal with it. Offering viable alternatives and support systems is a much better choice IMO.
Yeah, time and the environment and nutrients of a woman’s womb. If that cell is expelled it won’t develop on the sidewalk.
If my body decides it doesn’t want to be pregnant any more, it will have a miscarriage. If my mind decides it doesn’t want to be pregnant, it will get an abortion. I don’t see why my body gets to decide whether it wants to be pregnant, but my mind doesn’t.
The thing is, both types of IUDs potentially work both ways.
While the Copper IUD acts mostly by direct toxicity on gametes, it may prevent implantation- we suspect not, but we can’t say for sure.
The MIrena IUS secretes a hormone which thickens cervical mucus, prevents ovulation and thins the uterine lining. While in the vast majority of users the sperm won’t make it to the fallopian tube, and there will be no egg there to fertilise, it is possible that the thinned uterine lining would prevent implantation, should an embryo make it that far.
So, while prevention of implantation probably isn’t a major mechanism of action for either type, it is a possible MOA for both.
Again, genetically human does not make an embryo a person with equal rights to protection by law. The fact that some scientists or biologists may agree with you philosophically is not proof. You’ll find in some areas highly educated people disagree on what certain facts mean.
If life begins at conception, should women who have had procreation-capable sex be holding funerals every time they have some spotting a few days after ovulation, or if their period starts a bit early, since those are potential signs that, like 1/3 will do, a fertilized egg hasn’t implanted and has instead been flushed right out of their uteruses?
If life begins at conception, shouldn’t we be terribly sad that our bodies abort 1 in 3 of our babies? Our own uteruses are big bullying abortionists. We should do something about that, shouldn’t we?
You don’t get to declare such things. You are not scientifically trained, and while you can state that you BELIEVE that life begins at conception, you are not an authority on the subject, no matter how strong your feelings are.
No, “science” does NOT inform us of that. A few pro-life scientists have offered that opinion. Again, opinions, no matter how strongly held, are not fact. I can almost certainly find at least as many scientists who will say that a zygote is NOT a new human being, that it takes time for the zygote to develop into a human. Scientists are not infallible, and in fact scientists are at least as likely as non-scientists to have wacky theories about everything under the sun. (And the sun itself, and the universe in general.) Citing one or two scientists, or a pro-life source, isn’t going to carry much weight. Citing a wiki isn’t going to carry much weight, either, since it’s open source editing, anyone can put in articles.
classyladyhp quotes a “biologist” who allegedly “defines a human being scientifically”. The individual quoted is Dr. Robert P. George, the same Robert George who pops up on a Google search as a Princeton law professor who is a Catholic anti-abortion activist, has written on such subjects as “natural law” and “legal positivism” and is publisher of the Review of Metaphysics. He has vehemently denounced Barack Obama as “the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to have ever run on a major party ticket”.
He’s entitled to his views, but I think he falls short of qualification as a biologist.
Actual biologists can define human life. What makes a human being goes beyond the realm of science.
Assuming it is the correct Robert George, he’s a doctor of philosophy. It seems rather misleading to call him a doctor in such circumstances, but I would tend to assume classyladyhp didn’t know he wasn’t a medical doctor.
Yes, the 6 weeks is some mythology started by the anti-abortion crowd. If you google, you’ll see that it started from some speech a Dr. made in 1964 when he was quoting one other study. That study was refuted quickly as an artifact (EEG are simply electrical signals and can come from anywhere). It is now established that EEG signals don’t appear in the fetus until about 24 weeks. Even then, it means very little because the cerebral cortex is, where higher brain functions originate, is not formed. So the 6 week things is an outright lie perpetrated by anti-abortion groups who could easily find the real number if they wanted to. There is also the lie among anti-abortion groups that the fetus feels pain at 6 weeks.
Here’s a meta-analysis of higher brain development and fetal pain in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Re: EEGs):
She called him a biologist (apparently because he referred readers to texts of biology). By the same logic, if I link to articles in law journals I must be a lawyer.
I think I’ve had all the fun I’m going to have in this thread.
I’d just like to note that it hardly seems like honoring the sanctity of life to try and legally force your personal philosophical and moral codes on others, knowing that if you succeed it will likely result in more human suffering. There is no realistic way to prevent abortions from happening so think about the realistic consequences of trying to pressure people and manipulate the laws so that fewer safe , legal, and affordable abortions are available.
There are much better ways and more productive ways to honor the sanctity of human life. There are already many people and children in need of our time attention and resources. That would be honoring human life as well.
I see. So more than just a misinterpretation of some data, it’s an outright falsehood repeated over and over. I’m always mystified by the concept of honoring life and God by spreading lies.
No, a fertilized human egg does not possess everything it needs to grow into an adult human except time. If that were so, babies would erupt from discarded tampons and my wife’s job as a NICU attending would be much simpler. Where do you think the embryo gets it’s increased mass from, I wonder?
If you want to amend your statement to say something along the lines of ‘under certain very specific circumstances and provided with carefully tailored inputs over a lengthy period of time’, then the same could be said for any other living diploid cell taken from your body.
Here’s an interesting Long Bets proposal: I wager that humans will find a way to force any given mature somatic cell(s) into a pluripotent embryonic state and thereby initiate a clone pregnancy in a living woman (without donor eggs/nuclear transfer, etc.) before we are able to create an artificial uterus capable of supporting an embryo from conception to viability.