If the bolded is your opinion, then from an objective, scientific opinion, you would have to concede that a zygote or early embryo clump of cells is much closer to a tumor in all respects of life than it is to a human person. As others have stated, most humanists put the moral judgment on what constitutes personage at the time of the abortion. A zygote, embryo or even early fetus, certainly doesn’t come close.
The pro-life argument of giving special moral status to something simply because it has some potential to become a person not an objective, scientific argument but a metaphysical, subjective argument that requires some belief in destiny or something similar.
No, I don’t have to concede that. The naked eye may say so, but it’s DNA says something far different. We are all what our DNA decided we were going to be, back when we were a tiny clump of cells that might have looked like a tumor.
This is not at all true. Yes, *many *of our characteristics are determined by our genes. However, others others have nothing to do with our genes at all (e.g. a human embryo exposed to the drug Thalidomide during early development will have characteristic limb malformations, regardless of its genes). And many, many more are the product of the *combination *of genes and environment (e.g., a woman may have a gene that makes her more likely to develop breast cancer, but that does not mean that she *will *develop breast cancer).
I’m not talking from a perspective of ‘naked eye’. I’m talking about what is a cell and what is an organism that is called a person. Even defining a person is a philosophical definition. Taking it a step further and applying moral specialness to having a potential to be a person is meaningless in the science world.
The DNA only tells you what type of organism it has the potential to become. However, it’s still a cell or clump of cells. A tumor also has human DNA in it. Saying it has human DNA means nothing. Human DNA is just a combination of codons and non-coding DNA sequence. Big deal. In fact, tumor cells have a lot in common with embryonic cells. That’s what makes them bad.
So really, science can’t give you this kind of pro-life position all on it’s own. You have to start with the premise that “zygotes with potential to become human” has special status. Then you have to ask yourself why you think this has special moral status. Because it has a soul? Because of samsara (Buddhism)? Reincarnation? Don’t mess with Mother Nature? Boy, I sure would be pissed if I never got to be born? Honestly, I don’t get it.
Well, then the same applies to every gamete. There’s a quantitative difference in the odds of becoming a person for egg cell #297655 versus a ten-week embryo. Is menstruation murder?
I really think you want to say qualitative; you sound less crazy that way, though I’d still disagree.
It’s people who compare zygotes to tumors who sound crazy. It’s perfectly clear that are not the same thing…anyone with the tiniest smattering of knowledge about biology understands that. What value one wants to place on it based on that knowledge is up to them, but in any case, the analogy is fairly weak. That was the only point I was trying to make.
It is of course true that tumor cells have human DNA (I just read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, BTW…an excellent read). There’s still a specific difference between a tumor in which cells are merely replicating themselves and not specializing and developing into an actual organism.
No, I agree that science can’t do it’s on its own. Personally, my stance evolved from the fact that going backward from birth, I can’t find a dividing line between “person” and “not a person” that to me makes sense, other than conception. So, yes, that is somewhat subjective.
I can. It’s when the person who owns the uterus decides either “This thing growing inside me is not something I want to continue hosting,” or “This thing growing inside me is a baby that I want to give birth to.”
Again, no. Maybe the danger is people who have just the ‘tiniest smattering of knowledge about biology’. People who have a bit more than the tiniest smattering would know that, for example, a teratoma has a hell of a lot more in common with an early embryo than an early embryo has with a human baby. In fact, people who do research on this have found that embryonic cell transplantation sometimes results in a teratoma. What’s a teratoma? It’s a tumor that originally came from either germline or early embryo cells with the potential to form tissues and organs. Did you know that you can make a parthenogenic mouse that can grown into adulthood with just oocytes and no daddy in sight? Not hard to do at all once we learned a bit about imprinting. So really, nothing special, biologically, about a zygote.
Other cancer cells are like zygotes and early embryo cells because they’re not differentiated and divide. They’re motile so that they can metastasize. They can move into certain types of tissues and take residence using the same signal transduction pathways as normal developing cells. In fact, many cancer cells can even be differentiated under certain circumstances. All you need to do is fix the mutation that made them cancerous in the first place or use drugs that alter their epigenetic state.
So when you know a lot more about the biology, you’ll start to think that the cancer cell-zygote analogy is anything but weak.
Ok, sorry for boring anyone who reads this. I’ll shut up now. :o
No, you being a vapid twat is what makes you a vapid twat. There are plenty of people on this board I’ve disagreed with to whom I’ve never applied that perjorative.
As far as my answer to your question goes, apparently you’re *so *fucking thick that I need to spell it out for you. Going through an experience you don’t care to repeat more than once because you made the same mistake again and again (which is how I was *originally *reading FGIE’s story) is stupid. Get it now, tardface?
No, I was reading FGIE’s story, wherein it was clear that in at least one of the cases, the woman wasn’t sure that she wanted an abortion. And I never said that an abortion was mentally traumatic for *all *women. It is, however, a medical procedure that carries a certain amount of *physical *risk for *any *woman who undergoes it.
No, it’s science, you ignorant sow. The problem is that *you *seem to be attaching special relevance to whether a fetus is alive or not, whereas I’m not. I’m just stating a fact. I’d love to see you try to argue that there’s no difference between a dead fetus and a live one. (Protip: If the dead one isn’t expelled from the mother’s body, you’re probably going to want to go in there and remove it.) Do you also have to convince yourself that a mosquito isn’t alive before you can smack one when it lands on your arm? :rolleyes: As I said, and you apparently skimmed over in your rush to tell me how wrong I am, the question is not whether or not a fetus is *alive *('cause it is), the question is whether or not it’s a person.
Ok! Go on head and shut up, then. You did your duty for science today and dropped some heavy jewels on my head, at least. I will file your post away in my head and use that knowledge when I need to educate a fool.
And as a pathologist who deals with teratomas on an occasional basis (“Take that, teratoma! Back! Back!”), the comparison with fertilized eggs/embryos doesn’t strike me as something you’d want to inject into the abortion debate.
Pro-abortion rights as I am, I think there’s little to be gained with such comparisons.
Embryos have human potential. But they aren’t human beings according to what I think are reasonable criteria. Teratomas have only the potential to grow into bigger teratomas*, and in unusual cases to become malignant.
*I’ve considered writing a Stephen King-esque short story (“The Terrortoma of Tinsel Town”) in which a teratoma escapes confinement, grows to giant size and oozes around Hollywood on its pseudopods, drowning its celebrity victims in a sea of loathsome keratinous goo. I’ll entertain offers for the movie rights.
