I'll believe the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists over your website any day.

I agree 100%. The conditions for life are actually just a construction of the human mind and the gray areas are up for debate.
We may as well be asking if a tuatara is really a lizard.

I think you are on the right track here. But I really don't see a plausible way to make both sides happy. I'd settle for a way to get both sides to argue civilly, understanding each other's points rather than yelling at one another.

My position is similar to Hillary Clinton's on this issue: the "safe and rare" argument. I think abortion is somewhat barbaric but there are enough circumstances to justify it to make attempts to stop it sometimes barbaric.
But furthermore I don't think anything good can come from illegalizing abortion. Like other widespread problems of its nature, all this does is makes a black market and creates additional problems.
It is better to focus on studying WHY abortions take place. Few (if any) women will callously have abortions with no bad feelings. There are social forces that make this ugly option seem good or make alternatives seem inaccessible.
First step is to look at demographics and try to find common denominators.


That might be nice... but we can't just hope for scientific development as a proxy for policy. And once this science does come forth (which it may very well) we'll have our hands full with other legal questions as this will surely not be the only application.

Again, I think you're on the right track... but you do have to consider that the pro-life and pro-choice forces that are involved are arguing based on very black-and-white principles: right of life and right of authority over body. Neither is likely to want compromise.
It really is mostly the people in the middle (who outnumber the activists, but do not care as much) who are the only hope for any kind of compromise.

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III
what your pet really thinks of you...

That's websiteS. But sure - you go for it! You're a man, right? You'll never be pregnant? So what you believe is irrelevant.

What actually happens is what is relevant. I am pregnant. I see medical specialists on an almost weekly basis. I also work in medicine. In fact, one of my employers is a neonatologist. Oh yeah, my uncle is a celebrated fertility specialist.

I know more than you about it. Pretty simple, really.

We could get into the nitty gritty, but, essentially, implantation doesn't happen over one day. It's a period of time and it happens in three phases: apposition, adhesion and the embedding in the endometrium. The embedding in the endometrium (the lining of the uterus) takes place about two weeks after conception, which is the fourth gestational week of pregnancy. The blastocyst is not fully implanted into the uterus until this time.

This is when pregnancy is considered to have `begun'.

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We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs, but we still can't just behave ourselves. Even if to save our own lives, we are a brutal kind. The Shins

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Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~ Ernest Gaines

Both. I felt different physically, and I also just `knew'. It's really very hard to explain!

__________________
We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs, but we still can't just behave ourselves. Even if to save our own lives, we are a brutal kind. The Shins

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Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~ Ernest Gaines

Pretty happy, actually. I went through a whole gamut though.

But because I knew the second I conceived, I'd actually had time to prepare myself for the idea of it before I had it confirmed with a test. Regardless, seeing that second blue line there made my mouth dry and my heart start palpitating. But I think that's what would happen regardless of planning or not. It's a really big deal!

I went through a lot of emotions in the first 14 weeks. Fear was there, for sure. But also excitement and pride, and happiness, and disbelief. There was also resentment (you really don't feel very good in the first trimester), and a feeling of rejection - like I had something growing inside me that I didn't want and that can feel very invasive. Those feelings didn't last but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have them.

You also have a sense of regret because you know that pretty soon your life is never, ever going to be the same, and your freedom and your relationship with the man you love is going to change forever. But then you have that anticipation of the love and joy and satisfaction and reward that it will bring - along with fear of the responsibility, tiredness, difficulties and worry of being a parent.

I think, though, the biggest thing you feel is anxiety over your pregnancy. Because you're not really in the `safe' zone until 12 weeks - so the weeks leading up to that are quite apprehensive. It's funny how even for something that is unplanned, once you make that decision to go ahead (and really, there was no decision for us in it at all) you are immediately a parent, you are immediately attached to that blastocyst (lol) and you immediately fear that you might lose it.

I had some very severe implantation pain at around the four - five-week mark, and my GP actually thought it might be an ectopic pregnancy. I'd known I was pregnant for about 10 days, and I cried all the way to the ultrasound.

Having said that, I also knew with an absolutely unshakeable belief that nothing was going to go wrong, that it wasn't ectopic, that I wasn't going to miscarry and that everything would be fine. You could call that the excess of oestrogen, or just a sixth sense, or wishful thinking. But I knew. I can't explain it.

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We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs, but we still can't just behave ourselves. Even if to save our own lives, we are a brutal kind. The Shins

A "celebrated" specialist ; well dang, that settles that. Everyone knows that celebrated specialists know far more than leading science organizations.

Lol. If you actually pay attention to any of my posts you might find that I am in acccordance with your `leading science organisation'. But are the words a little bit too big for you to understand?

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We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs, but we still can't just behave ourselves. Even if to save our own lives, we are a brutal kind. The Shins