When fetus’s start spontaneously developing into babies without the benefit of being born, you’d have a valid point. Fertilization is just a step, like an egg turning into a blastocyst. And, of course, it is possible to turn an egg into a baby without sperm. Difficult, true.
I’m sorry, but that makes no sense to me. Your progression was:
eggs/sperm–>fertilized egg–> embryo–>fetus–>baby–>child–>adult
This progression is completely correct, if the egg and the sperm come together to become fertilized, and nothing stops it (whether it be a natural “death” or deliberate act). If you start with an egg or sperm, which come together through fertilization, you will end up, eventually, with an adult person.
If, on the other hand, you have just an egg, the following will never happen, at least not naturally:
egg–>fertilized egg–> embryo–>fetus–>baby–>child–>adult
An egg is a living cell, as all of our cells are, but it is not a person, and will never develop into one if left on its own. An egg is not a step in becoming a person, the fertilization of it is.
…especially if one is a sexually repressed bible thumper who’s so totally obsessed with sex it practically oozes from their pores, so much so that it inexplicably causes them to attempt to make everyone else as miserable as they are.
Actually, all we need to do is require males to freeze their spooje so that it can be used later. Or they can just spooje into a cake decorating tube, then break into the houses of young women and squirt it into them when they’re sleeping.
The Catholic church says that masturbation is a sin.
Life is already started and is a passed on thing, fertilization just makes personhood possible. Life started eons ago. Fertilization is a step toward personhood,just as a chicken egg when fertilized becomes a chicken, or pollenized apple blossom will become an apple if left to grow to term.
Monavis
I just want to write that the IVF we were supposed to start last week has been cancelled. My thirty-six year old ovaries are simply not working the way they should and have apparently turned to jello. The fundies can leave me alone for now. I’ll be in the corner crying my eyes out if anyone else wants me. 
What’s this about? I tried doing a username search on ted_baskerville and got “invalid username specified.” Is this that dumb stupid memory-hole policy at work again? Og dammit, even a banned member’s posts should be accessible to the morbidly curious!
I’m sorry to hear this; it must be a huge disappointment for you and your husband.
Og grant you live long enough for human-cloning technology to be (1) perfected and (2) legalized. (Although that’s rather a chicken-egg problem . . .)
That is . . . well, I doubt you would want a baby who were simply an identical twin of yourself or your husband . . . but maybe they could just clone you fresh ovaries.
Of course, it’ll never happen if the fundies have anything to say about it. :mad:
The problem with your thinking is that you are selective in what you consider natural and what you do not. You can’t have it all ways at once depending on what suits your argument.
You say that “If you start with an egg or sperm, which come together through fertilization, you will end up, eventually, with an adult person”. Sure you will, if there are a number of inputs along the way. For the fetus to become a child, the parents have to input vast amounts of resources, consciously applied. Those resources are of course applied because parents make a decision they want to apply them. Without those resources, the fetus won’t make it.
But if you are going to allow that as being “just natural” then to be consistent you also have to allow the basic urge for males and females to create fertilised eggs as also “just natural”.
You say “If, on the other hand, you have just an egg, the following will never happen, at least not naturally: egg–>fertilized egg etc” If you have just an egg - in its usual place in a female - the female will behave in ways that will end up with the egg being fertilised. If you have just a newborn baby, she will behave in ways that end up with the newborn becoming a child. If she doesn’t behave in those ways, neither thing will happen.
Indeed, it is much, much easier for
The whole pro-life debate is shot through with inconsistency and arbitrariness.
I am ONLY talking about the basic biology of what makes an unfertilized egg different from a fertilized egg. As I said, I have never understood how it is that people can equate the two, when it is clear that a fertilized egg has a biological destiny to become an adult person. It may not make it that far, due to outside factors, but it is capable of doing so if nothing interferes. An unfertilized egg has the biological destiny to die and be flushed out with the menstrual blood. It will NEVER, barring the MAJOR outside interference of being cloned, develop into an adult person without the benefit of being fertilized by a sperm cell.
Whether or not the fertilized egg gets the “inputs” it needs to survive has nothing to do with my point.
The method of fertilizing the egg, whether through “natural” or “unnatural” means has nothing to do with my point.
Whether humans have natural urges to have sex and procreate has nothing to do with my point.
My ONLY point is that the argument that DrDeth and gonzomax made show a fundamental lack of understanding of the biology of procreation:
Anyone who argues that unfertilized eggs and fertilized eggs are the same thing biologically is not helping the pro-choice cause.
But they don’t show that at all. The fundamental lack of understanding comes from assuming that there is any huge difference between the biology that results in sperm and egg getting together, the biology that results in sperm and egg making a fetus and the biology that results in a baby becoming a child.
I DON’T think there is any huge difference in those things. Never said I did. The only thing I am saying is that there is no reason for the pro-life movement to worry about eggs that don’t get fertilized, for whatever reason.
I agree that much of the pro-life movement has inconsistent ideologies, but to be fair, the pro-choice movement isn’t perfectly coherent in vision either. Have you ever noticed that in the US if you attack a pregnant woman and she lives but miscarries as a result of your attack, you can be charged with murder? How is it that that’s murder but abortion isn’t?
I think you’ll find that such legislation was put forth and enacted by anti-choice legislators. It’s been a grave concern of pro-choice people from the start that it’s a legislative stepping stone towards outlawing abortion, and that it’s bad law and shouldn’t hold up for the very reason you point out. If the thing killed is not a citizen of any country, not a legal “person”, then it can’t be murder. If it can, we’ve essentially rewritten entire books full of laws about everything from accidental miscarriage to animal cruelty without actually going through the proper legal steps to change those laws.
Should we start charging women with manslaughter for menstruating? With reckless endangerment for jogging while pregnant? Do we charge people with murder for killing dogs or cats? How 'bout ferrets? Mosquitos?
It’s terrible law, but it’s not because of the pro-choice movement. I’m puzzled as to why you think it makes us inconsistent.
I don’t seem much difference between the biology that results in eggs not getting fertilized to the maximum extent possible and the biology that results in babies not becoming adults to the maximum extent possible.
What do you imagine as an appropriate punishment for someone beating up a woman to the point where she loses her baby or gives birth to a baby with physical defects that can be traced to said event?
I think the perpetrator should be locked away for a long time, especially if the pregnancy is fairly far along. One could read your post and the hyperbolic statements afterwards (no, a mosquito isn’t the same as a growing baby, neither is an egg) and come to the conclusion you think nothing should be done in such a case. I will only assume you didn’t mean to convey that.
Are you only uncomfortable due to the use of the word murder?
If murder is illegal killing, abortion can simply be a case of ‘legal killing’ recognized by the government, like the death penalty or (maybe some day) euthanasia. But then again, I don’t know much about the law in this area. I don’t see why it couldn’t be set aside in principle.
I say all the above as a big supporter of abortion, if it matters.