Why hasn’t the scientific community chimed in with a firm declaration on when life begins? We seems to have a fairly good grasp on what life is:
From NEWTON, an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators.)
But I’m not so sure this definition is valid for the abortion debate. After all, white blood cells are alive by the above criteria. Perhaps the anti-abortionist should stop calling the fertilized egg “alive” and start calling it potential life. On what authority does one declare that a fertilized egg is “alive”? Are the voices of authority (biologists, geneticists, ecologists, et al.) as divided and conflicted as the lay-public?
Since we know what life is, why can’t we get an authority ruling on when life is?
I think a fertilized egg is a human being, although it’s part of the lifecycle that’s outside normal experience. My main reason is that every human who is alive or ever was alive was a fertilized egg at one point.
The comparison between that and an epithelial cell is not valid. Left on its own, an epithelial cell doesn’t produce an adult human, ever.
The years make a fertalized egg into a human being. A chicken egg isn’t a chicken. A seed isn’t a tree, a drop of water isn’t a cloud, and an egg that can grow up to be a human isn’t YET a human. Potential, that is all it has.
Agreed. The problem is that we are not only talking about fertilized eggs here. A 4-5 month old fetus exhibits a little more than human “potential”, wouldn’t you say?
It is ridiculous to assert that a newly fertilized egg has the same inalienable rights as a person. It is equally ridiculous to assert that the moment before birth, there is no human life, and the instant after birth, a human life exists.
What really gets my goat is that no one is trying to find a common ground somewhere in-between. You’d think that the situation would be resolved (with the exception of the most radical opinions) if we were to outlaw abortions after the first trimester. I know the line is arbitrary, but we have to find a way to at least get the debate to an area that can actually be discussed rationally. Right now we have one side showing 8-month saline-burned fetuses while the other side is demanding their right to abort fertilized eggs from incest/rape.
that logic is similar to the logic that made masturbation a worse crime than rape, in some medieval areas. is not having sex equivalent to abortion, since we are denying a potential human its life?
you make a good point. now, if only we could get people to agree that the potential to become a human is not equivalent to being a human.
personally, i’d like a little less arbitrary definition. perhaps something like when the life has value equal to a human life. since we are basing these choices off of the value of human life, it seems like a good place to start. for some, the fertilized egg alone might be as valuable through its potential to be human as a human being would be. for that person, it would be immoral to have an abortion. for some, it’s at birth, when they first get to see the baby. also, after birth, the baby has the potential to be valuable to many people, not just the parents.
of course, we’d have to limit the referents. an anti-abortion person could simply say “that child’s life is valuable to me”, and expect everyone to value the life as a human being. but the motives are all wrong. then we get into, what about the father? does he have a right to be a referent? how about anyone other than the mother?
if not, we’re right where we are today, where it is the mother’s choice.
It bothers me a lot that the abortion debate seems to focus on such definitions, when in fact I think a pragmatic approach via societal costs is more than sufficient. Before Roe v Wade we had unapproved, untrained people performing abortions. This cannot be ignored by ideology, any pro-life society will have to address this issue. If they feel the costs to society that come from breaking a pro-life law are worth the risk, then I suppose the point where life “begins” is moot.
Appealing to potentiality as a criterion of human life seems disingenious given the potential of cloning. Appealing to stimulus-response based actions as a criterion of humanity aslo seems specious: anything alive has response mechanisms that are triggered based on the environment. Appealing to whether the organism in question could survive outside the womb is probably on the wrong track as well, because it seems to focus on the intrinsic value of a life regardless of who is going to care for it or how that care will affect it (I am thinking of the “give it up for adoption” camp).
Questions that can arise from definitions of the beginning of life in a pro-life context are: do miscarriages count as manslaughter? There are, in fact, many miscarriages that are not the direct result of irresponsible behavior, for example.
What troubles me is that I think I can understand the pro-life camp’s desire to stop abortions; after all, if I thought that people were being legally murdered I too would get upset and want to take a stand.
This issue troubles me. I have my own opinions, but I do not see a simple societal solution that is tolerable for all parties involved.
I doubt that the scientific community is all that together on deciding when a fetus becomes human.
I have no religious inclinations, but I can completely understand why a religious person who believes in an afterlife (i.e., that we all have “souls” that live on after death) would be against all abortions. Think about it: Let’s assume we all have souls. Who the hell knows when the soul comes into being? How can you kill something with a soul?
Now, I don’t know the numbers, but I’d wager that the vast majority of US citizens believe in the human soul. How can they possibly support abortion?
Anyway, I’m not saying I agree with them, but it’s pretty clear to me that there will always be a large number of vocal, anti-abortion folks around. I would question a person’s faith if they told me they believed in the concept of a soul, but thought abortion was OK.
And a zygote can’t become human without a human (womb) of ITS own. And a strand of DNA placed within an egg sans egg nucleus with a womb CAN become human. So what?
Let’s not kid ourselve, scientifically speaking, a fertilized egg is a human at its earliest stage of life. Sperm is not, since it correctly does not have the requisite genetic/chromosomal structure (meaning that it has the structure it has, not due to some cellular screw up like Down’s or something).
Philosophically speaking, a fertilized egg may or may not be a human. That’s what the real debate here is, when does a fetus, morally speaking, become a human being on the same moral level as the rest of us.
Sorry, and not to hijack the thread but…
I often read and don’t comment on these message boards, but here I’m tempted to point out one small detail…
If the human life begins when the egg is fertilized, could one not contend that a women who has a miscarriage is criminally liable?
If she was not in perfect health, or did not keep herself completely healthy or if she smoked, or had a friend who smokes any thousands of possibilities…
If life begins then, she is legally responsible for that life and thus could be held liable if the child were not to make it to full term and be born healthy.
See how rediculous these things could get? If the law were to say life begins at the moment of fertilization, the mother could become legally reponsible if the potential child did not survive.
If mcdonalds can be sued for making people obese, don’t you think this could be taken to court as well?
That is certainly a debate, but I am not convinced it is the most important one. My criteria for “do not kill” is not “if it is defined as a human”. I guess this is my problem, though. Feel free to ignore it.
