Sometimes helping someone out is the only viable alternative to letting them in in the first place. I have a nostalgic attachment for the days when life began in the male mind after the second drink. Much later came Roe vs Wade which I was told were alternative methods for leaving New Orleans a few years ago.
“Life” began eons ago. Life is a passed on thing. Even if one believes the Adam and Eve story it was passed on from then. Doesn’t the Old Testement say God breathed into a clay figure and that was the beginning of human life? Biology through evolution shows it going back eons. Personhood is another story. Would one call a fertile egg a chicken or a pollenated apple blossom an apple?
Monavis
I’m assuming this is about the new column (from today): When does human life begin (revisited)? - The Straight Dope
However, please note, there’s also a thread about the prior column from 24-Oct-2008: Life Begins When You Realize that Women have Rights - Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports - Straight Dope Message Board … in fact, this is the thread from which Cecil took the OP as the starting question.
I wish Cecil had said more about what I see as the main problem with that poster’s objections – that they’re totally irrelevant. The question the original column set out to answer was “When does life begin?” A woman’s right to control her own body is certainly relevant to the abortion debate, but not to the question of when life begins. To claim otherwise is as absurd as arguing that the state having a legal right to execute convicted murderers means that those murderers aren’t alive to begin with. “My rights trump your life” is not the same argument as “you aren’t alive”.