Life Begins at Conception - Arguments against?

Great Debates
141

Now you’re getting close to the “spaceship with a stowaway” analogy that got kicked around in a much earler thread. That was a good one. Anyway, you could create “what if?” scenarios to your heart’s content. Frankly, I’d distrust anyone who would let his opinion be swayed by one. It suggests spinelessness.

Incidentally, if the difference between three days and nine months is simply an arbitrary one, I invite you to demonstrate by going without food for one and then the other and reporting back if the difference is trivial.

142

[QUOTE=YamatoTwinkie]
Say that one day, while camping in the wilderness (3 day journey by backpack)with my infant son, I suddenly decide that parenthood is too much of a burden to be worth it. I don’t want to care for this “parasitic” organism one second longer. I abandon my child there in the wild to fend for himself. My child later dies on his own.
[/QUOTE]
Did your child set up camp inside your gut? If not, then the situations aren’t even remotely similar.

I don’t know why people keep glazing over this little detail. The baby/fetus/zygote/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is inside the woman’s body. Any argument that doesn’t take that into account is inherently flawed.

143

[QUOTE=YamatoTwinkie]
It seems a lot of these arguments boil down to “arbitrary points”. How long do you believe a parent is obligated to care for an unwanted child before being legally/morally absolved of the consequences of abandonment?
[/quote]
You are attempting to conflate an unwanted child, and a fetus. They aren’t the same. You have obligations to a child; you have none towards a pre-mind fetus. And if 90 times is an “arbitrary point”, I suggest considering the difference between tapping someone on the head to get their attention and clouting them in the back of the head. I doubt the cops would buy the argument that it’s an arbitrary distinction.

To answer your question, that depends on circumstances, such as the likelihood of arranging an adoption.

[QUOTE=YamatoTwinkie]
What if I was snowed in all winter in a remote cabin with no outside communication (phone lines down, etc)? Enough food/water for the both of us, but only barely ?
[/QUOTE]
If the other occupant of the cabin is a giant insect - which would be of rough moral equivalence to a fetus - then kill the thing so you can eat better. Again, a false comparison.

And it’s still not as hard on the body as a pregnancy.

144

[QUOTE=NajaNivea]
Forgive me if I’ve overlooked something, but I’m not sure you’ve addressed the concept that no method of birth control is 100% effective, and possibly least of all abstinence; after all, abstinence, like any other method of birth control, is only effective so long as it’s used correctly and consistently 100% of the time.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you, Naja, for pointing this out. I’ve mentioned it twice already and nobody seems to have taken notice. Apparently, this is a fact people choose to overlook when they talk about withholding abortions from women who evidently didn’t make a good enough effort to prevent an unplanned pregnancy.

But I appreciate you sharing your experiences as a PP staff member. When I was young, I received services from PP, affordable birth control and counseling, for which I was very grateful. Without people like you, my life might have been so very different. So, thank you.

145

cracks knuckles

Okay, may as well jump back in here and glance myself off the tungsten-carbide hull of DT’s convictions.

Besides, I need to keep practice my flaccid debating techniques. So, why not?

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Because early on, that IS all that it is. It’s not an assumption; that’s what all the evidence shows.
[/QUOTE]

Ok, here goes…

Well, of course that’s what the evidence shows. Not sure if it’s as conclusive as you seem to think it is, but okay. Nevertheless… someone is terminating an organism that is on its way to establishing body and mind.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
First, regardless of your intent, oppression is what you’d get. And second, equating a lump of flesh with people denigrates actual people; there’s no way around that. A tumor is also life; are you going to insist that doctors no longer remove them ? And it undercuts the whole concept of rights, by undercutting the idea that there’s any reason for them.
[/QUOTE]

Answering the last part first: C’mon. You can’t be that dense to think a tumor is equivalent to a human zygote. The phenotypes are completely different. Tumors themselves are not humans. I’m talking about actual humans only here… always have been. Removing one’s appendix, or whacking-off, is not the same as ending a human life-form (which doesn’t begin until fertilization). Indeed, malignant tumors usually prove to end lives early. They do not become sentient, and have zero rights. You choose to apply the definition of personhood/individual/human-being to that which has a mind, I choose the moment a clump of cells acquire 46 chromosomes, and start dividing. Surly, you can see both sides?

As to whether oppression is the outcome is a matter of perspective. Let’s try and peel the reality off the situation that only females become pregnant. In my eyes they are humans first. Fuck gender. You get the body you got, so understand it, and take care of yourself. If you’re a woman, this means, if you have sex, you’re taking a risk of getting pregnant. Big shock, I know. All actions have consequences, and in this case, it would mean a new human life has been initiated. That’s one of those life-changing “Oh shit, I don’t get a mulligan!” sort of consequences. Heavy stuff. On one hand some people would feel not allowing the mother to abort would be oppression, okay… but there are some with the view that to abort would be something akin to murder. You can see how this situation becomes complicated real quick. But hey, you’ve got it all figured out. Good job.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
But whether or not an early term fetus has a mind isn’t one of them.
[/QUOTE]

If I’m to be perfectly frank, I don’t (or never have) believed an early fetus, or even a pretty developed one has much consciousness, if any at all. This kind of relieves me, since would this mean it wouldn’t feel any pain? I just don’t know really, and I’m not sure it’s within the grasp of science to find out. Anyway… as they say, no pain, no gain.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
WE are. A fetus isn’t.
[/QUOTE]

Hmm, this is a philosophical mind-fuck. Okay, so WE are more than just a lump of cells, but if you are to break us down to our constituent cells, and have a look under every nucleolus, there’s no “us” there. We know we can switch this “us” on and off using drugs or even natural states of unconsciousness. I don’t want to attract lekatt, but maybe there is something to a lump of cells, after all? Who knows? How big does a brain have to be before there’s “someone” in there? Just because we have no memory of the womb or for a while after, doesn’t mean we weren’t “aware” on some level at the time. That’s all I really have to say on that. While fascinated by the concepts, I have zero answers or insight.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
So ? As pointed out, the existence of grey areas just means that you leave a margin for error, not that you pretend that black and white don’t exist.
[/QUOTE]

I can accept that, and have. Not ideal, but we have to make compromises somewhere.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And in the near-impossible scenario where it happened, it would be ethical to do so. Just as it would be ethical to kill adult humans if you could prove they were mindless automatons that just faked sentience really well. Neither is a situation I ever expect to see in the real world.
[/QUOTE]

Right, just don’t miss the point. We can never be 100% sure what’s happening within the minds of others.

In the end, I’m no where near as sure in my convictions as you are, and perhaps they’ll change in the future? Perhaps your arguments along with the others here will persuade me. Would I still like to see abortion not happen at all? Sure. Do I think there are times when it’s acceptable? Yes. Do I think more abortions take place than are perhaps necessary? Most definitely. Is my opinion going to make it any farther than this board? Nope. Do I hope to be proven wrong? Hell yes, it would sure ease my mind.

146

[QUOTE=cmyk]
Well, of course that’s what the evidence shows. Not sure if it’s as conclusive as you seem to think it is, but okay. Nevertheless… someone is terminating an organism that is on its way to establishing body and mind.
[/quote]
Which isn’t the same as having one.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
Answering the last part first: C’mon. You can’t be that dense to think a tumor is equivalent to a human zygote.
[/quote]
Morally, yes. It’s just tissue.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
The phenotypes are completely different. Tumors themselves are not humans. I’m talking about actual humans only here… always have been. Removing one’s appendix, or whacking-off, is not the same as ending a human life-form (which doesn’t begin until fertilization).
[/quote]
It is exactly the same - unless, as I do, you define “person” by possession of a mind. Human life began tens, hundreds of thousands of years ago, not at conception; and if human genetics are what matters, then scratching myself is mass murder.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
Indeed, malignant tumors usually prove to end lives early. They do not become sentient, and have zero rights. You choose to apply the definition of personhood/individual/human-being to that which has a mind, I choose the moment a clump of cells acquire 46 chromosomes, and start dividing. Surly, you can see both sides?
[/quote]
Certainly. I just think the other side is wrong, and that their position leads to absurdity and tyranny and misery. And a fetus can kill too; does it suddenly become nonhuman then ?

[QUOTE=cmyk]
As to whether oppression is the outcome is a matter of perspective.
[/quote]
No, of history.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
Let’s try and peel the reality off the situation that only females become pregnant. In my eyes they are humans first. Fuck gender. You get the body you got, so understand it, and take care of yourself. If you’re a woman, this means, if you have sex, you’re taking a risk of getting pregnant. Big shock, I know. All actions have consequences, and in this case, it would mean a new human life has been initiated. That’s one of those life-changing “Oh shit, I don’t get a mulligan!” sort of consequences. Heavy stuff. On one hand some people would feel not allowing the mother to abort would be oppression, okay… but there are some with the view that to abort would be something akin to murder.
[/quote]
First, this is a situation where biological realities don’t let you get away with “fuck gender”. Women ARE in a different position than men. And birth control fails. And there’s no way that subordinating a woman to a fetus is anything other than oppression.

And I don’t believe that most of the “pro-life” people care about life in the slightest. I think that most of them are liars, and that oppressing women and brutalizing or killing the helpless ( including children ) is the primary purpose of the “pro-life” movement. movement. And that’s what they’ve done, wherever they’ve gotten the power to do so.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
Hmm, this is a philosophical mind-fuck. Okay, so WE are more than just a lump of cells, but if you are to break us down to our constituent cells, and have a look under every nucleolus, there’s no “us” there.
[/quote]
And if you take a painting and grind it to dust there’s no painting anymore, no matter how closely you look at the dust. Mind is a high level function that requires billions of cells in a complex organization; it’s not some mystic essence in every cell. That’s a throwback to vitalism.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
We know we can switch this “us” on and off using drugs or even natural states of unconsciousness. I don’t want to attract lekatt, but maybe there is something to a lump of cells, after all? Who knows?
[/quote]
We do. We don’t know everything, but we know enough to say that a clump of cells doesn’t have nearly the capacity a sentient mind needs.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
Right, just don’t miss the point. We can never be 100% sure what’s happening within the minds of others.
[/quote]
Certainly we can, under some circumstances. Such as the brain not being functional enough to support a mind, or not even existing.

147

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
This isn’t like picking out colour swatches. In one state, you’re inside another human body and in another, you’re not. I leave it to others to debate what can or should happen during the transition phase.

And yes, I’m pretty sanguine about there being no restrictions on abortion, simply because the idea of a nine-month purely elective abortion is so ridiculously unlikely that trying to ban it would be like banning people from flapping their arms and flying. It’s far more common for the mother to kill the child after birth then seek to do so immediately beforehand.

Canada is completely without an abortion law, yet we haven’t experienced these “one second” situations. It’s a pointless argument, used to justify bad laws because if one second is considered shocking, why not one day? Or one week? Or one month? Or three months? Or the whole nine? There’s your arbitrary standard.
[/QUOTE]

The point is that choosing a time period that at least somewhat corresponds with the reality that a fetus at some point becomes a child makes more logical and ethical sense.

A law that chose birth as the “magic moment” would indeed be a bad law, because it would be based on nothing at all. If birth can be the “magic moment”, why not conception?

To my mind, it is important to display some sort of logical and ethical justification for one’s position, which takes into account two facts:

  1. It is an unacceptable and immoral intrusion into a person’s bodily integrity to tell them what they can or cannot do with their own bodies; and

  2. Killing humans is morally wrong.

Sometimes, it seems that each side of this debate simply ignores one or the other of these points. Your position certainly does, in the name of convenience.

Yet they can be reconciled, by attempting, as much as is within our scientific abilities, to determine when a fetus becomes a “human”. Before that point, fact #1 is paramount; after that point, fact #2 becomes paramount.

148

[QUOTE=Brown Eyed Girl]
Thank you, Naja, for pointing this out. I’ve mentioned it twice already and nobody seems to have taken notice. Apparently, this is a fact people choose to overlook when they talk about withholding abortions from women who evidently didn’t make a good enough effort to prevent an unplanned pregnancy.

But I appreciate you sharing your experiences as a PP staff member. When I was young, I received services from PP, affordable birth control and counseling, for which I was very grateful. Without people like you, my life might have been so very different. So, thank you.
[/QUOTE]

It doesn’t really surprise me–after all, it’s not really a point they want to address. If they cared about the preservation of life even a fraction as much as they purport to, we wouldn’t be having this argument. I don’t agree with Der Trihs on every single point, but I think he’s spot-on in that analysis. It appears they’d have you believe everyone who has an abortion is a stupid slut who deserves what she gets. After all, if no pregnancy is “accidental”, she asked for it in the first place by spreading her legs, right?

Thanks for the kind words. Once in a while we’d get a thank-you note and donation in the mail from a long-gone former patient; it’s a big deal how we can affect our patients’ lives, and I try very hard not to forget it, especially in those moments where it feels like nothing you say will ever get through. I’m only there very occasionally now, and though there are many things about the clinic I don’t miss–working with patients isn’t one of them.

149

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Life began once, about two billion years ago. Conception does not begin life, it continues it, by the merger of two living things, the egg and the sperm – neither of which is considered a human being with rights, so why should that change the moment they come together?
[/QUOTE]

Because…

If left alone that union of egg and sperm would go on to form a human being?

150

[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Because…

If left alone that union of egg and sperm would go on to form a human being?
[/QUOTE]

No.

If left in my body to drain my precious bodily fluids, using my body’s hormones, my blood, my food, my oxygen, and my body’s waste removal mechanisms, that union of egg and sperm *might *go on to form a human being.

If left alone, without my body, they won’t do squat.

151

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
The person hosting that life at considerable financial/medical risk, expense and inconvenience, obviously.
[/QUOTE]

OMG just kill it then!

:rolleyes:

152

[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Because…

If left alone that union of egg and sperm would go on to form a human being?
[/QUOTE]

‘would’? It’s not even the most likely outcome.

153

[QUOTE=Malthus]
To my mind, it is important to display some sort of logical and ethical justification for one’s position, which takes into account two facts:

  1. It is an unacceptable and immoral intrusion into a person’s bodily integrity to tell them what they can or cannot do with their own bodies; and

  2. Killing humans is morally wrong.

Sometimes, it seems that each side of this debate simply ignores one or the other of these points. Your position certainly does, in the name of convenience.
[/QUOTE]

This is something that seems to me willfully obtuse. Do you actually believe anyone in the pro-choice camp would dispute or ignore the concept that “killing humans is morally wrong”?
It appears there are at least a couple points you’re ignoring, here. One is that a conception is not a human. The other is that for all the hysteria over “killing humans” the vast, overwhelming majority of abortions happen early in the first trimester, well before even our earliest suspicious of consciousness and sentience. This is also well before the point where a pregnancy is considered “viable” in the “don’t make announcements to friends and family until after the end of the first trimester, because there’s a significant chance of miscarriage and such anyway” sense. A span of time that includes a highly significant percentage of conceptions that do not continue under natural circumstances.

No one here is disputing that killing humans is wrong. What we’re disputing is that a zygote, blastocyst, or embryo is a human, and neither is a fetus for at least a good portion of development.

But you know what? Even if you were to succeed in labeling an unconscious, non-sentient mass of dividing cells in someone’s uterus as “human”, a label that denigrates you, me, and every other conscious and autonomous human on the planet, then I guess I’m just okay killing humans when they’re unconscious, non-sentient, and living in someone else’s internal organs.

154

Der Trihs, first off I agree with many of your comments, but at the same time, I’d caution you from going to far into the opposite extreme to make your point.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And a fetus can kill too; does it suddenly become nonhuman then ?
[/QUOTE]
(My bolding.)
I’m not quite sure where you’re going with this, but if you are trying to equate passive medical impact of a fetus that results in hazards to the mother’s life with actively removing embryonic or fetal tissue resulting in that tissue’s death, you are seriously stretching your credibility.

It’s that kind of hyperbole that causes both sides to sound like idiots. Perhaps I missed something that you could clear up by expanding on this thought. Otherwise, you might consider retracting it.

155

[QUOTE=NajaNivea]
This is something that seems to me willfully obtuse. Do you actually believe anyone in the pro-choice camp would dispute or ignore the concept that “killing humans is morally wrong”?
It appears there are at least a couple points you’re ignoring, here. One is that a conception is not a human. The other is that for all the hysteria over “killing humans” the vast, overwhelming majority of abortions happen early in the first trimester, well before even our earliest suspicious of consciousness and sentience. This is also well before the point where a pregnancy is considered “viable” in the “don’t make announcements to friends and family until after the end of the first trimester, because there’s a significant chance of miscarriage and such anyway” sense. A span of time that includes a highly significant percentage of conceptions that do not continue under natural circumstances.

No one here is disputing that killing humans is wrong. What we’re disputing is that a zygote, blastocyst, or embryo is a human, and neither is a fetus for at least a good portion of development.

But you know what? Even if you were to succeed in labeling an unconscious, non-sentient mass of dividing cells in someone’s uterus as “human”, a label that denigrates you, me, and every other conscious and autonomous human on the planet, then I guess I’m just okay killing humans when they’re unconscious, non-sentient, and living in someone else’s internal organs.
[/QUOTE]

You seem to be missing that I’m on the pro-choice side, and have in fact been arguing all along that a fetus is not a “human” deserving of rights until it develops capacity for conciousness. :smiley:

Nice to see some of my arguments repeated, though. Do try to keep up. :stuck_out_tongue:

156

[QUOTE=Malthus]
You seem to be missing that I’m on the pro-choice side, and have in fact been arguing all along that a fetus is not a “human” deserving of rights until it develops capacity for conciousness. :smiley:

Nice to see some of my arguments repeated, though. Do try to keep up. :stuck_out_tongue:
[/QUOTE]

You seem to be missing that I wasn’t disagreeing with you on a “pro-choice side” standpoint, only disputing that “killing humans is morally wrong” is a point of ethics that “pro-choice” “simply ignores”. Nice to see that I’m not completely invisible in this thread, though. Do try to keep up? :stuck_out_tongue:

157

[QUOTE=NajaNivea]
You seem to be missing that I wasn’t disagreeing with you on a “pro-choice side” standpoint, only disputing that “killing humans is morally wrong” is a point of ethics that “pro-choice” “simply ignores”. Nice to see that I’m not completely invisible in this thread, though. Do try to keep up? :stuck_out_tongue:
[/QUOTE]

Then why are you parroting back at me arguments I’ve made myself, claiming that they are “at least a couple points you’re ignoring, here”? :dubious:

I stand by my statement: sometimes, each side seems to ignore one or the other of those points - and arguing that immediate pre-birth abortion “isn’t wrong”, as I was responding to, is one of those times.

158

[QUOTE=Malthus]
Then why are you parroting back at me arguments I’ve made myself, claiming that they are “at least a couple points you’re ignoring, here”? :dubious:

I stand by my statement: sometimes, each side seems to ignore one or the other of those points - and arguing that immediate pre-birth abortion “isn’t wrong”, as I was responding to, is one of those times.
[/QUOTE]

Because it appears that you believe that elective “immediate, pre-birth abortion” is something that actually happens.

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
It’s a pointless argument, used to justify bad laws because if one second is considered shocking, why not one day? Or one week? Or one month? Or three months? Or the whole nine? There’s your arbitrary standard.
[/QUOTE]
Emphasis added.

Your comment that in general, pro-choice folks ignore the killing of humans, assumes that anyone believes humans are actually being killed in 99% of elective abortions.

159

For sake of clarity, strike “anyone” from that last line before the “every sperm is sacred” camp jumps all over it.

The point is, I don’t think he was really saying pre-birth abortion “isn’t wrong”, just that using it as a point to argue against the ethics of abortion is a bit specious, since it just doesn’t happen that way.

160

[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Because…

If left alone that union of egg and sperm would go on to form a human being?
[/QUOTE]
Could you give me a similar example of a time when you’re willing to recognise rights exist on something that only has the potential to become that which is deserving of rights?

I’d agree with WhyNot’s point that it’s not a matter of “being left alone”; it will only become that “if left alone” because the mechanics of depriving* the mother of the various things needed are already setup. But if this is the argument - that things for which development into something else is at least 50%** likely deserves to be given those rights early - I hope you’re willing to have medical students operate on you, law students defend you in court, and the like. I presume that you believe children should be given all the rights and privileges of adults, since again if they have parents or guardians then they’ll become adults if “left alone”.

Likewise, I can only assume you don’t want rights for anyone at all, since while all these things are only partially inevitable, death is inevitable in all cases. And since if left alone we will all become dead, we should be treated as having all the rights and privileges associated with the dead. No? No. It’s a silly argument to suggest we should just have the rights of corpses. But it is entirely within the logic of the argument you’re making.

*This to me sounds pretty harsh, but I couldn’t think of a better way to put it.
** Going with the earlier stats.